One may think that after years of important contributions to the field of phonomusicology (Bennett and Bates Reference Bennett, Bates, Bennett and Bates2018), no approach to popular music analysis would discard the production side as arbitrary anymore, at least not in the form of outright ignorance. Yet just this happened at a conference on the German genre of Schlager in 2020: a musicologist presented a rather traditional take on the biggest domestic hit of recent years, Helene Fischer's ‘Atemlos’. While authoritatively seated behind a grand piano and dissecting writer Kristina Bach's score in a 19th century style, the presenter's few words about the cheap production suggested that the producer's work (that of acclaimed artist Jean Frankfurter), was little more than some clicks on a PC, only adding commercial noise to the song.
This may serve as an extreme example of what Jay Hodgson criticises. Even when the impact of sound engineers and producers on aesthetics is reckoned, seldom do researchers delve into the techniques and processes of the ‘musical practice of recording technology’ (p. 206). Even when they do, the recording studio is often exclusively understood as ‘a site for social, cultural, and industrial struggle’ (p. 206), and not as a creative tool. We may understand these closing remarks as the motivation behind the book, to get the reader to know the tools of recording practices and to understand their constituent role in popular music aesthetics. Hodgson refers to the people operating these tools as ‘recordists’, a term that Albin Zak (Reference Zak2001) established to ‘describe those individuals who are in some way responsible for either part or whole of the recording process’ (in Bennett Reference Bennett2019, p. 1).
Hodgson's book is structured along the recording process. After explaining (electro)acoustic basics, he follows the tracking, mixing and mastering of audio signals. In every chapter, he addresses single tools like different microphone types (p. 23 and ff.), effect units (p. 141) and techniques like the ‘DI–transduction tandem’ (p. 48). In his quest to make the reader familiar with studio instruments, he relates their technical capabilities and features to actual recording practice, extensively citing personal interviewees. Adding to this are Hodgson's own experiences. Besides academia, where he edited many books in Routledge's Perspectives on Music Production Series, he works as a master engineer and producer. Although this study clearly focuses on standard techniques, the author stresses the need to keep in mind that – urged inter alia by the commercial and competitive setting in which record production takes place – these rules are broken constantly: in ‘recording practices […] product far outweighs process’ (p. 39).
This fact makes it more important to train the listeners’ ears for the traces of sound production, which also include the exploitation of psychoacoustic effects like the haas-trick (p. 135). Thus, the book comes with much illustrative material: a Spotify playlist containing self-produced material to showcase the naked application of single effects, several more lists containing examples from the history of (mostly Western) popular music and finally self-produced videos demonstrating visual aspects of music production. Additionally, the author finds many practical graphic and verbal solutions to describe and analyse production techniques like tape bouncing (p. 72) and the application of filters in synthesizers (p. 50).
Two central aspects underpin Hodgson's work and tap into central topics of phonomusicology: the historical changes and practices of the professional field and the ontological nature of recorded music.
Hodgson details the variety of combinations of (famous) spaces and technologies that recordists used to curate audio signals in ways that defined the sound of the US Top-40 charts (p. 45), or popular music in general, like in the case of the close-miking paradigm (p. 39). Here the author traces differences between sounds to individual approaches in the UK or the USA, which also holds true for mastering philosophies (pp. 160 and ff.). In this context, he also delves into concepts like the ‘sound box’ that was developed as an influential pedagogical tool long before entering academia (Dockwray and Moore Reference Dockwray and Moore2010), and can be used to put the ‘auditory narrative’ of recording into a spatial perspective (p. 75).
Although the tone stays descriptive most of the time, there is sentiment between the lines, regarding quality and working conditions, especially in sound mastering nowadays (p. 158). Additionally, Hodgson diagnoses a widespread mindset of ‘optimal provisionality’ (p. 64): the lack of definitive decisions afforded by the non-destructive workflow of the DAW and the proliferation of practices like re-amping (p. 116). However, such notions are balanced by differentiated takes on newer developments like the abrupt end of the loudness wars through the standards forced upon mastering by streaming services (p. 184).
In terms of philosophical concepts, Hodgson understands records not so much as an acoustic representation of the actual sounds (for example the single instruments of a recorded performance), or sounds per se, but more as an ‘auditory perspective’. What listeners hear, when listening to a record, is a single sound coming from speakers and headphones that always, no matter the time, day or position, reproduce the same mix. This mix, as the deliberate aesthetic decisions of the recordist, fixates a ‘past-auditory narrative […] of how some sounds were once ideally heard’ (p. 74). For the author, this fact makes it possible to study recording in the first place, and makes it more necessary: the misunderstanding of recordings as mere captions of performances would tend to minimise the curation and mediation of the recordist (p. 74).
However, there are some points missing. Ethnographic work, the backbone of many important studies in phonomusicology, is not addressed at all. Also, Hodgson exclusively uses examples from Western popular music with the focus on canonical recordists and artists. This ignores not just the historical international proliferation of recording practice, but also the interest of students and scholars in recording practices from all over the world. Still, I hope they, and – like my introduction suggests – even veteran musicologists, will turn to Hodgson's field-guide when they want to get into popular music's aesthetics. At least to my knowledge, up to this date, they will not find anything more complete and handier on recording as a practice and as an art and craft.
