Date of Award
2010
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program
Popular Music and Culture
Supervisor
Dr. Norma Coates
Second Advisor
Dr. Jay Hodgson
Abstract
This thesis explores rhetorical and sonic manifestations of realism in recorded popular music from the acoustic era onwards. With reference to timbre, I investigate the commercial origins of fidelity, and describe, through various examples in history where arguments over what is “real” or is not “real” arise most articulately, how those records were made. By addressing the sounds themselves, I address how fidelity∕realism is a fluid standard that guides and shapes modes of aesthetic record production and consumption. I demonstrate how rhetorical analysis is useful for identifying ideologically maintained understandings of recorded sounds, but maintain that if musicologists are to understand recordings and the sounds they contain as artifacts of aesthetic consumption, which I propose we do, then we must investigate beyond how sounds are rhetorically social to examine how social relations express themselves materially. As such, I propose a method of analysis that considers both the rhetorical and material aspects of timbrai processing through the purview ofveridic recording practice, which acknowledges the processes and considerations made toward the material construction of timbral rhetoric.
Recommended Citation
Coverdale, Kara-Lis, "SOUND, RHETORIC, AND THE FALLACY OF FIDELITY IN RECORDED POPULAR MUSIC: TOWARD A CRITICAL APPROACH TO TIMBRAT ANALYSIS" (2010). Digitized Theses. 4808.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4808