Burgess has already published his successful book The Art of Music Production, which includes a sort of how-to approach to music production, but which is clearly not aimed at popular music scholars. Now he adds The History, which focuses on technical developments, societal framings and a selection of key figures in either technical inventions or music production itself. Having this focus, the book competes with other seminal publications such as the ones by Mark Cunningham (Reference Cunningham1998), Mark Katz (Reference Katz2004), Evan Eisenberg (Reference Eisenberg2005) and Virgil Moorefield (Reference Moorefield2005). However, this book also needs to be compared with basic articles on recording, recording studios or processes in encyclopaedias such as the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World and The New Grove Dictionary. Surprisingly none of the titles mentioned can be found in Burgess's bibliography or notes.
The book consists of 18 chapters, some of which are more technically oriented, while others stress socio-economic aspects of music recording or music business, and one chapter is on key producers themselves. It begins with look at the history of mechanical acoustic recordings. This section is well documented, factual and precise. It is followed by a look at the ages of electromechanical and then electromagnetical recording and the distribution of music in the twentieth century. In the fifth chapter Burgess describes some fundamental techniques such as editing, mastering, sound on sound or overdubbing that were introduced or professionalised by the invention of tape machines. He then explains some developments alongside the electrification of instruments and amplifiers. In this section, as well as in Chapter 15, one can clearly see the author's own expertise, as he is also himself the inventor of a drum machine. In addition in his writing on aspects such as these he continuously uses ‘we’, while his whole writing style gets more autobiographical as the book progresses.
In Chapter 9 he ‘roughly sketch[es] some examples of the skills, styles, and backgrounds that have shaped and been shaped by the history of music production’ (p. 82). Even though he knows that a/his list of producers cannot be complete, he tries to build one that ‘is intended as dots that may be joined to form a bare outline, not to be encyclopedic, nor to reflect my personal favorites' (p. 82). Every producer or producing team discussed is given between half a page and one page here. This appears to be rather inappropriate, even while knowing his aims and the preamble of this chapter. However, also it rather appears to be an advertising snippet for his other publications, because facts given are cursory, and substantial works such as the one by Timothy Warner (Reference Warner2003) on Trevor Horn or authors and publications mentioned above are not included at all.
The following chapters include technical descriptions as well as accompanying personal picks from music or social history, and some aspects of copyright or performance rights. Burgess occasionally starts to jump between styles and hi(stories) in his finishing chapters. One can even find aspects or passages twice, only slightly differing in aspects (e.g. on Disco or Hip Hop). He also adds a lot of his own opinion and comments on certain developments, even though these are of a reasonable manner, such as: ‘Copyright laws need to be revised and (as much as possible) aligned internationally. They need to provide for equitable and accessible systems that do not encourage the hoarding of intellectual property. They should reflect the democratization of the creative and distributive mechanisms, making all copyrights publicly available with the potential to reward all creators and owners of the sound recording’ (p. 176).
The overall impression of the book remains a little ambiguous: Burgess himself as a well-known, award-winning producer, studio musician, editor and lecturer on music production delivers in his 179 main pages, 26 pages of notes and a 17 pages bibliography a rather compressed and sometimes personal insight and look back into ‘his’ field of interest, profession and labour. So the book is well recommended as a first start or as an overview, which is at times very personal. However, there are definitely aspects, as well as academic expertise, missing here, thus meaning that this book needs to be complemented by additional readings.
