Dr Paul Thompson

A groundbreaking study of music and musical history in Leeds. This is the first scholarly volume to focus on popular music in Leeds. This first academic collection dedicated to popular music in Leeds - developed from the work of interdisciplinary scholars, drawn from a major public museum exhibition “Sounds of Our City” and built upon contemporary research. Leeds has rich musical histories and heritage, a long tradition of vibrant music venues, nightclubs, dance halls, pubs and other sites of musical entertainment. The city has spawned crooners, folk singers, punks, post- punks, Goths, DJs, popstars, rappers and indie rockers, yet – with a few exceptions - Leeds has not been studied for its scenes in ways that other UK cities have. In ways that the chapters explore, Leeds’ popular music exemplifies and informs understandings of broader cultural and urban changes – both in Britain and across wider global contexts – of the social and historical significance of music as mass media; music and migration; music, racialisation and social equity; industrial decline, de-industrialisation, neoliberalism and the rise of the 24-hour city. Charting moments of stark musical politicisation and de-politicisation, while concomitantly tracing arguments about “heritagising” popular music within discussions about music’s “place” in museums and in the urban economy, this book contributes to debates about why music matters, has mattered, and continues to matter in Leeds, and beyond.

A groundbreaking study of music and musical history in Leeds. This is the first scholarly volume to focus on popular music in Leeds.

The recording studio as a site for creative collaboration has received growing attention over the past two decades by scholars, a range of studio practitioners, and those who combine some or all of these competencies. This presentation builds on recent scholarship via the scholarly collaboration of an interdisciplinary research team consisting of two producer-engineers and two musicologists. Taking a recording session conducted in November 2018 as the material for our study, we focus both on musical interactions and the interpersonal dynamics that affect the flow of various contributions and ideas during the recording process. The material for our analysis will consist of video recordings made during the sessions, which will be supplemented by the recollections of participant-observers.

In this contribution, three authors from three different but broadly cognate disciplines, engage in shadowplay, a conversation about archaeology and music, emphasising how shadows provide a novel conceptual and pragmatic framework for studying both the past and the contemporary world through music. Those shadows might be more literal (sites used after dark, or where fieldwork takes place behind or underneath buildings) or they can be metaphorical or figurative, with people working in the shadows of their disciplines’ conventions, countering the authorised heritage discourse, for example, by focusing on subaltern communities. Taking an archaeological perspective, the conversation centres on the study of music and those who make it. Perhaps counterintuitive for some, music and music-making are, we believe, relevant subjects for a book concerned with archaeological and heritage practice, because they bring into play non-traditional and sometimes marginalised heritage communities; the contemporary and everyday places that those communities use and value and the things (musical instruments, recording equipment) that they use there; the production process (music-making as heritage); and the traditions and everyday practices performed in those places and which typically contribute to or feed off the values that are constructed by participants and audiences. These examples of cultural heritage are central to our conversation around music, alongside the alignment of practices with the things that represent them.

Since its relatively low-key introduction in 1979 Hip Hop has grown into a global phenomenon that has completely changed the profile of American popular culture (Perkins, 1996). Typically consisting of backing beats or tracks and accompanied by rhythmic vocals (referred to as rapping) Hip Hop formed part of a subculture principally among Latino and African Americans in New York City, USA (Chang, 2005). The terms ‘Rap’ and ‘Hip Hop’ are commonly used synonymously and Gangsta Rap is a sub-genre of Rap and Hip Hop, first popularised in 1987 by Los Angeles-based artists such as Ice-T and NWA. Its lyrical content depicting gang culture, gun violence drug distribution and prostitution has often been at the centre of critical debate among mainstream social commentators and its graphical references to specific urban locations has been the subject of spatial analysis between urban geographers and popular musicologists alike. Its spatial discourse is an intriguing insight not only to physical representations of the urban environment but its social commentary within that environment. Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, simply called ‘Nas’ in his commercial releases, is a rapper from within the Gangsta Rap tradition. Nas originates from Queensbridge, Queens, one of the 5 boroughs in New York. Often called ‘Queensbridge Houses’, it is the largest public housing development in North America (Queens County Census beaurea, 2005) and an area of poverty and social deprivation. This paper seeks to investigate the spatial discourse of Nas’ work within the broader framework of rap and how he represents the local and the extreme local urban environment through his use of personal narrative, lyrical description, Album artwork and promotional videos and interviews.

The first of its kind, this book focuses on empirical studies into creative output that use and test the systems approach. The collection of work from cultural studies, sociology, psychology, communication and media studies, and the arts depicts holistic and innovative ways to understand creativity as a system in action.

Sound engineering in the recording studio has historically been viewed as a technical rather than creative endeavour (Kealy, 1979), particularly within the commercial recording industry where the sound engineer, the record producer and the musician have an identifiable history of delineated, unionised roles. Predominantly it is the artist and, more recently, the record producer who are regarded as creative individuals in the process; a point that is often reflected in both the remuneration mechanisms of recorded works and the promotion of commercial records (Zak, 2001). There is general agreement in the literature however that creativity may be best thought of as the bringing into being of ‘an idea or product that is original, valued and implemented’ (Wolff, 2000: 81) and there is growing evidence that creativity occurs through the convergence of multiple elements; an agent, a knowledge system (the domain) and a social organisation that holds the domain knowledge (the field), through a dynamic system of interaction (Csikszentmihalyi: 1988, 1997, 1999 & 2004). Rather than focussing on these individual elements Csikszentmihalyi promotes a perspective of creativity that integrates all three elements within a collaborative system that can be observed by examining moments within it. Drawing upon current literature, interviews, case studies and data gathered during an extended ethnographic study in the recording studio, this paper explores the systems model of creativity from the perspective of the sound engineer at various moments in the stages of making a popular music recording. Through observation and analysis of the sound engineer’s thoughts and actions, the systems model of creativity can be viewed in operation and through the application of Susan Kerrigan’s revised systems model (2013) the process of sound engineering is identified as a creative practice within the broader creative and collaborative systems of record production.

Record production research attracts researchers with varied approaches who pursue answers to markedly different research questions. As the field grows, we stand to gain as much from comparing methodologies as from comparing results. This round table discussion will facilitate that dialog, reaching across a range of approaches and methodologies. Panelists, distinguished by training in different disciplines, will represent different approaches to record production research. Each will discuss their personal research objectives and the methodological issues surrounding their chosen approach. Comparisons will lead workshop participants to a better understanding of the scope, directives, and methodological concerns of researching record production. Topics include: 1) What is the breadth of disciplines covered in record production research? Each panelist will give a brief intro of their disciplinary field, their research objectives, etc. What are the pros and cons of these various approaches? Given the breadth of research approaches being used and the range of topics being studied now, how can we define the field of record production research? At present, is it musicology-centric? Does musicology offer a core of commonality? 2) How are we/can we conduct interdisciplinary research in record production research? 3) How does our work/could our findings relate to those in other disciplines? (i.e., what is our position relative to other fields of study?) 4) How do different methodologies relate to funding potentials? Are we hemmed into approaches by our potential funding sources?

Historically, the apprenticeship model of training in the recording studio allowed student engineers to learn from the masters of their craft. However, recent studies have shown that the recording studio sector has suffered a significant decline within the broader musical economies (Leyshon, 2009), which has resulted in the fragmentation of the knowledge capitol that was traditionally found in larger recording facilities. University music production programmes have assumed the role of instruction, changing the nature of knowledge transfer from entirely informal and in-situ, to more formal experiential and theoretical (Thompson & McIntyre, 2013). Educational institutions offering music production programmes are therefore challenged to provide appropriate resources to support learning that would have otherwise been learnt on-the-job. However, currently available literature and AV resources often overly focus on technical knowhow and typically fail to connect technical decisions to the potential aesthetic consequences upon the musical output (Askerøi, Viervoll, 2016). In other words, there is a “virtual absence of pedagogical resources” (Zagorski-Thomas, 2016) that help to explore and connect technical, aesthetic and musical relationships. This paper explores the ways in which three institutions, Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada and Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, UK are working to address some of these questions. We argue that multitrack materials afford a rich historical, practical and aesthetic resource for use in music production programs that help to connect technical decisions to aesthetic consequences within a musical context. Importantly, we illustrate the ways in which music production education can tap into the well of historical knowledge by using multitrack materials and, how moving the master into the classroom, can provide a greater level of access to their knowledge and ways of working.

In his introduction to The Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field (Frith & Zagorski-Thomas, 2012), Simon Frith proposed that producers in pop and dance music genres have a significantly different role to music producers in other music genres such as rock. A prominent difference is that pop music producers are often part of a production team that involves direct collaboration and participation with songwriters, programmers, musicians, artists, management and record company representatives. Pop music songwriting and production teams are therefore more frequently part of a larger creative collective (Hennion, 1990) in creating a musical product. The following study explores the creative production workflow system at Pete Waterman Ltd. (PWL) Studios during the 1980s and investigates the way in which the production team worked within a creative system of pop-music making. Drawing upon a series of interviews and data gathered during an extended ethnographic and auto ethnographic study, this paper presents the pop music ‘service’ model, which underlines collectivist rather than individualist thinking and illustrates the various stages of the commercial pop songwriting and production process at PWL during the 1980s.

Identified as both a temple (Cogan and Clark, 2003) and laboratory (Hennion, 1989), the recording studio was historically the place where the very best musicians, producers, and engineers came to produce music recordings. The apprenticeship model of learning and training allowed student engineers to learn from the masters of their craft and often created famous lineages of music producers and engineers; the family tree of George Martin, Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott at EMI’s Abbey Road is perhaps the most well known. However, recent studies have shown that the recording studio sector has suffered a significant decline within the broader musical economies (Leyshon, 2009), which has resulted in the fragmentation of the knowledge capitol that was traditionally found in larger recording facilities. So, what remains when the masters are gone? The legacy of their work is the music that they have helped to create and these exist in the form of vinyl records, CDs or digital downloads, but they only tell part of the story. The true primary sources that help to reveal some of the creative and technical approaches to music making are the multitrack recordings from the recording sessions. These primary sources, the multitrack audiotapes and the archives that hold them are an emergent resource for both scholars and students in the field of popular music. This paper introduces the way in which three institutions, Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada and Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, UK are using multitrack materials in the classroom as part of their music production programmes. Importantly it illustrates ways in which popular music education can tap into this well of historical knowledge and, how moving the master into the classroom, makes access to their knowledge and ways of working more accessible.

The creative process has been described as a four-stage process: ‘preparation, incubation, illumination and verification’ (Wallas, 1976: 69-73). However, this is often a distortion of what actually happens (Csikszentmilahyi, 1997). The creative process is frequently interrupted by insights, which lead to further insight into the original idea and some of Wallas’ creative stages can appear as a single stage. Tony Bastick labels this ‘intuition’ (Bastick, 1982), which he describes as the: ‘non-linear parallel processing of global multicategorised information’ (1982: 215). He argues that Wallas’ first three stages (preparation, incubation and illumination) can be integrated into the term intuition and that the creative process can therefore: ‘be thought of as just two stages…intuition, as a form of global processing of multicategorised information, followed by verification’ (1982:310-311). Intuition in this context is a useful term in helping to explain how more experienced individuals can appear to make an imperceptible leap from preparation to illumination almost instantaneously. It also helps to explain how practitioners in record production often describe the song writing itself or the track mixing itself. Using video and audio data gathered during a number of commercial mixing sessions, this paper explores intuition as it applies to the creative process of mixing a record. Critical moments during each of the sessions have been selected and amplified in order to highlight the creative decisions of the mix engineer. The study also considers intuition in relation to the knowledge and experience of the mixing engineer and further highlights preparation as a necessary element in the intuitive creative process.

To each decision inside the recording studio, producers bring their personal experience, expertise and skills. They fold in information about the immediate context, sometimes receiving input from collaborators and adapting to changing information, influences and expectations; and they also apply their knowledge of the expectations of the field, domain and social context in which they work. Every new decision in a session requires the producer to engage in a re-weighing or re-prioritizing of factors, a re-evaluating of risk and an adjustment of means for validation. Each decision requires a producer to consider how to approach decision making as well as deciding. This paper investigates the cognitive, meta-cognitive and socio-cultural processes governing what kinds of decisions are taken during a recording session, this rather than the decisions themselves. We have considered how producers respond and adapt to events, changes, the behaviors of others as a session progresses; and looked for reflections of these patterns in the producer’s approach to decision making. We have drawn upon current literature, interviews, articles and data gathered during an extended ethnographic study inside the recording studio. Video and audio recordings, fieldnotes and responses from a number of semi-structured interviews with the project’s record producer have been used to explore decision-making in the recording studio.

This study explores the music practices and learning strategies of nine popular electronic musicians (DJs, turntablists, hip hop and dance music producers) through the consideration of current literature in empirical music studies, trends in music education and the theme of musical enculturation as a key component of a popular electronic musician’s development. Following the investigation into the learning practices employed by the musicians, as they gather the necessary skills and knowledge to compose, arrange, produce and perform dance and hip hop genres of electronic music, the article goes on to consider whether the learning practices and values expressed by the musicians could be realistically adapted or included within formal music education.

Professional artistic contexts, such as studio-based music production, are rarely investigated in naturalistic decision-making (NDM) research, though creative work is characterised by uncertainty, risk, a lack of clearly definable goals, and in the case of music production, a complex socio-technical working environment that brings together a diverse group of specialized collaborators. This study investigates NDM in the music production studio. In music production, there is a professional role explicitly tasked with taking decisions—the (record) producer. The producer, as a creative collaborator, is differentiated as a problem-solver, solution creator and goal setter. This investigation looks at the producer’s metacognitive abilities for reflecting on the nature of problems and decisions. An important challenge for this study is to develop methods for observing decision-making without unrealistically reducing the amount of uncertainty around outcomes or creative intention within a studio production. In the face of that, a method is proposed that combines socio-cultural musicology and cognitive approaches and uses ethnographic data. Preliminary findings shed light on how the producer in this study self-manages his decisions and his interactions with, and in response to, the production environment; how decisions and actions sustain collaboration; how experience is utilized to identify scenarios and choose actions; and the kinds of strategies employed and their expected outcomes. Findings provide evidence that exercising producing skills and performing production tasks involve metacognitive reflection.

Although Multitrack audio recordings are a critical component of nearly every recorded musical work they have, historically, been difficult to acquire because of their commercially sensitive nature. However, one example of an emergent archive and collections, that allows researchers to peer into the record company vaults, is the EMI Music Canada Archive at the University of Calgary (UoC) in Canada. This archive holds demo tapes, song lyrics, concert planning documents, promotional material, cover art, correspondence between artists, management, producers and executives in addition to the multitrack tapes of the recordings. The following paper draws upon materials gathered from the UoC archive (that of Canadian Rock band 'Grapes of Wrath' and their album These Days (1991) produced by British Record Producer John Leckie) and describes how researchers at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA, and Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, UK, designed and delivered a project to students using these multitrack materials. Students were asked to reflect on their own learning and experience throughout the project, which gave some useful insight into the students’ expectations, challenges and successes. Through these reflections, it was concluded that in this example, employing multitrack materials, along with contextual information of the studio, equipment, the band, the producer can do more than just improve students’ technical mixing skills. Instead it can help students to develop a wider appreciation of the ways in which their technical decisions might be received by the relevant stakeholders such as the band, the producer etc. and, importantly, help them better understand their role as a mix engineer within the production process.

Songwriting has been a feature of the PME curriculum for some time now but there are few studies specifically employing contemporary models of songwriting in the classroom (Butler 2014; Bell 2020; Moir & Medbøe 2015; Bennett 2015; Söderman & Folkestad 2006; Gooderson & Henley 2016; Marrington 2016; Anthony, Thompson & Auvinen 2020). This study explored the application of the ‘Service Model’ for Pop Music, Creativity and Commerce (Thompson and Harding 2019) at Westerdals University in Oslo, with 16 music students and pop music producer, Phil Harding (Kylie Minogue, East 17, Boyzone), acting as both researcher and ‘Executive Team Leader’ (ETL). The study showed how the input of an industry professional’s experience can give students important access to the social interactions of a specific field of pop music production and help them gain a critical understanding of the criteria for selection that operates within it or: ‘educating for creativity’ (McIntyre et al 2018: 115).

This workshop will focus on how multitrack audio archives of commercial music are used at post-secondary institutions like The University of Victoria and Drexel University, and more generally, how multitrack recordings are utilized as objects of study and as stimuli in student research. The panelists will address the advantages, challenges and opportunities of including multitrack recordings into the teaching and research within higher education programs.

Archaeological researchers are finding new ways to explore historical events, practices and processes. A particularly potent method is experimental archaeology, which involvescontrolled experimentation in order to answer specific questions. For researchers working in the fields of music performance and music production, this approach can help to gain new insights into what happened during a recording session, and more importantly, why certain decisions were made. The starting point, or the archaeological data here, are the recordings that were produced in Havana and New York in the late 1950s and late 1960s. A method of working backwards from the finished product, or reverse engineering, can only reveal some information of the processes involved however. Recreating the conditions of a recording session as closely as possible can provide an additional direction of analysis (Ingold, 2009) as the creative process is examined forwards. Bringing together performers, producers and engineers to record Cuban dance music repertoire from the late 1950s to mid 1960s, the following study offers another take on the aesthetics of engineering, production and performance (both inside and outside the recording studio) through the use of experiential archaeological methods to further examine the contributing factors of performance and production within the genre. Elements of the recording context for the original repertoire were recreated to investigate the influence of earlier recording technologies and studio practices. and to gain some insight into the interaction between musicians within the recorded Cuban Charanga tradition.

Studies have shown that the recording studio sector has suffered a significant decline within the broader musical economies (Leyshon 2009), which has in turn affected popular music education and specifically the area of music production. For example, the continued loss of many larger recording studio facilities has resulted in fewer internship and apprenticeship opportunities for students, once a pillar of many music production programs. Perhaps more important is the fragmentation of the knowledge capitol that was traditionally found in larger recording facilities. Evidence that this knowledge is still valued by the broader community abounds on the internet, with any number of tutorials by commercially successful and historically significant engineers or producers on “how to give your mix more punch” or “tips on recording drums like a pro.” Indeed, entire business models are built upon providing a virtual studio experience and allowing consumers to access the knowledge, skills, and materials associated with that space. A prominent example of this practice is the Shaking Through online series offered by Weathervane Music, a recording studio based in Philadelphia. Their multimedia website consists of episodes centered on an artist or a band as they record a new song, and subscribers can watch documentarystyle videos of the band recording in the studio, along with a traditional music video (Weathervane Music 2014). The multitrack audio from the sessions is available to download alongside other material such as mix stems and recording notes. The recordings are advertised by Weathervane as “high-end” and “professionally recorded,” and subscribers are encouraged to create and share their own mixes of the song so they can receive feedback, critique, and encouragement from the studio’s in-house mix engineers.

Both romantic and inspirationalist understandings of creativity that promote the image of a lone, introverted ‘genius’, or the artist awaiting inspiration from their muse, are often reflected in the music industry by the ways in which artists discuss their work and the ways in which audiences imagine what happens inside the recording studio during the making of a record (McIntyre, 2012). These ideas are reinforced through Hollywood or documentary depictions of artists working inside the recording studio (Williams, 2011). These views of creativity not only privilege the individual within the creative process, they are often widely accepted as common sense (Boden, 2004). However, a growing body of research has dismissed these romantic ideas as myths (Ibid) with increasing evidence that creativity emerges through the conflation of several factors within a dynamic system of interaction (Csikszentmihalyi: 1988, 1997, 1999 & 2004). This paper explores the systems model of creativity as it applies to the production of a popular music recording inside the recording studio. By drawing on a particular example during Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall (1979), the dynamic interaction of the system’s symbiotic factors of domain, field and agent are shown in operation at different interdependent scales whilst engineer Bruce Swedien engineers Jackson’s vocal performance.

'Place’ is a prominent element within music research in which music, and the places where it has been produced or performed, increasingly feature as part of the heritage of cities, regions, and specific places within them. This Heritagization often involves promoting local landmarks (Cohen 2007; Lashua 2018; Staiff, Bushell and Watson 2013; Gibson and Connell 2007) in order to create tangible associations between places and events from the past to connect them to the present for visitors. The historical narratives around these landmarks are usually ‘official’ or ‘authorized’, and curated by public institutional, top-down cultural producers (Zevnik 2014: 282). Some sites are considered so significant they are commemorated with heritage markers or plaques (e.g., “Blue Plaques” used by English Heritage) whilst other music landmarks may be overlooked, not recognised or preserved, and become part of a ‘lost heritage’ (Carr 2019). Using Leeds, UK as a case study (Lashua, Spracklen, Ross and Thompson 2023), this paper explores the production and reproduction of popular music historical narratives through the politics of place and some of the processes involved in selecting musical locations for the development of Leeds’ first dedicated music map app. This involved carefully balancing the diverse musical offering of the city whilst, at the same time, including locations that were no longer there, or had changed function, such as former indie music venue The Duchess of York which notoriously hosted Nirvana in 1989. We interrogate the ways in which object narrative, alternative heritage discourses and the politics of place can all contribute to the production and reproduction, or re-imagining and re-telling, of popular music histories in a digital form through the development of a dedicated Leeds Music Map App.

This book provides fresh insight into the creative practice developed by Paul McCartney over his extended career as a songwriter, record producer and performing musician.

This chapter explores drummers’ experiences inside recording studios from social, spatial, and technological viewpoints to highlight the drummer’s place in the creative processes of making popular music recordings. Through our ongoing ethnographic research in studios, this chapter draws from observational fieldnotes when both authors were acting as ethnographers and drummers (‘drummer-as-ethnographer’) and a series of semi-structured interviews with eight drummers of varied backgrounds and experiences. Our analyses critique widely-accepted beliefs about drummers (or in Bourdieu’s terms “Doxa”) by spotlighting three key areas: (1) the social spaces of drummers in studios (i.e. where drummers ‘belong’, or not); (2) the production of social identities in studios (i.e. who drummers are in relation to power hierarchies within the recording process); and (3) the knowledge and involvement of drummers within the creative process of record-making (i.e. what drummers ‘know’ and are able to do with their knowledge in studios). We conclude the chapter by highlighting that although they are often overlooked, drummers are vital actors within the social, spatial, and technological worlds of the recording studio.

Since the publication of Paul Théberge’s seminal book Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (1997), a series of multifaceted, interrelated and co-dependent technical, economic, social, cultural and musical changes have contributed to the emergence of a distinct role of music-maker that could be termed ‘the Bedroom Producer’ (although as long as Bedroom Producers have the correct equipment, then the location of their music production activity is immaterial). This article explores the creative context of the Bedroom Producer and analyses the co-current, interactive spheres of music-making that they engage with. These analyses show that are important implications for educators working within popular music education (PME) and the article introduces some of the ways in which educators can use contemporary educational approaches to take account of the creative process in teaching and learning.

This is the first resource to provide a wide ranging, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation and analysis of the ways in which researchers use a broad range of methodologies in order to pursue their sonic investigations.

The ‘tracker’ production process is a modern form of music production agency where top-line songwriters work with music programmers called ‘trackers’, primarily within the confines of the digital audio workstation. In this case, production, songwriting and performance often happen concurrently, and collaboration involves the synthesis of ideas, musical negotiations and expertise in using digital and online technologies. In providing popular music production learning activities that translate to professional contexts, higher education institutions face a number of challenges, particularly where much of the collaboration is undertaken online. This article reports on a cohort of Bachelor of Popular Music students who undertook a tracker process module. Students’ perceptions of ‘engagement’ and ‘learning’ were captured via an assessment item and survey, and a themed analysis indicated that the pedagogy promoted the use of diverse social skills, was highly collaborative, relied both on specialist and non-specialist knowledge, and involved the use of digital and online communications.

This workshop, ideal for students, new engineers, and more experienced engineers looking to speed up their workflow and productivity in studio mixing, live sound and event production, will discuss topics including: • Starting a mix, and the key elements of a mix. • General approaches to mixing music. • Improving the workflow of mixing, and whether there are best practice workflows or procedures that can be followed in order to make the process of mixing together a large number of audio tracks or channels into a cohesive mix an easier, faster, and more predictable experience, and less of a mysterious black-art. • Common mistakes to avoid. • What do you really need, and how do you select different tools and techniques for use in your mix? • Getting the job done and finishing the mix given real-world time and budget constraints and limitations.

Paul Thompson offers an alternative take on the romanticized and mythologized process of record-making. This book is an indispensable addition to the record production bookshelf.” – Albin Zak, Professor of Music, University at Albany, USA and author of The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records.

“Hello from the Mooseland” was a salutation that the late Dean Cameron, head of A&R for Capitol-EMI Canada, used on communications to international offices where he was seeking support for Canadian talent in 1990. In this paper we use it symbolically, to show how one such Canadian band, The Grapes of Wrath, attempted to break into the American market in the early 1990s. By drawing on a range of archival materials collected from the EMI Music Canada Archive at the University of Calgary – including A&R memos, management communications, budget documents, promotional materials, press and album reviews – we explore the creative, commercial, and strategic decisions that were taken during the production of the band’s 1989 album, Now and Again, and how this ultimately affected the creative product and its reception. These archival materials helped to show how a range of contributors were assembled and leveraged in order to appeal to the commercial US music market and, through the lens of the systems model of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), we investigate why the band was ultimately unsuccessful in their bid to break into the US market. We use the materials to argue that this failure was a result of misguided and forced musical collaboration, misuse of power in the studio, and techno-commercial decisions made by the record company. Importantly, both the methods of investigation and our conclusions from the study, help to add to our understanding of collective creativity within the context of commercial record production both inside and outside the recording studio.

Despite the primacy of recordings within the sphere of rock music, little critical discourse exists about how rock records are actually made. The mystery of record-making, moreover, has been further propagated by the portrayal of the rock musician as the sole creator in the recording process, whose artistic expressions are assumed to be free from any constraint. This chapter addresses critical questions of agency and structure in rock recording practice by drawing on an ethnographic study of a Liverpool-based rock band. This empirical study challenges some of the broader myths of rock record-making and sheds new light on the ways in which agency is intertwined with structure. By critically observing the rock musicians’ discourse and praxis, and through analysis of their conversations and interactions, some of the intricacies of this agency-structure interrelation are elucidated. As explored in this chapter, the creative process in the recording studio happens within a collaborative network, and the rock musician is both constrained and enabled by the social structures of the studio.

This paper aims to explore, and reframe, the relations between rock ‘n’ roll, leisure, ‘race’ and youth in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950s, utilizing archival research to question the heritagization of the city’s popular music histories. Specifically drawing upon accounts of radio broadcasting and vinyl records, we offer an archival study of Cleveland, Ohio, a city that claims to be the “birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll” and (since 1986) is the site of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. After contextualizing the 1950s, we conceptualize the recent archival (re)turn in socio-cultural research. Through this methodological lens we overview the special collections, documents and artefacts explored in fieldwork at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Library and Archives. Then, three counter-stories are presented toward decentring and demythologizing the canonical history of rock ‘n’ roll in Cleveland. Against this canonization, we “change the record” of histories of local radio broadcasting, record stores and eyewitness accounts from Cleveland’s black teenage audiences often absent from many authorized heritage discourses of early rock ‘n’ roll. In deconstructing myths of Cleveland’s musical past, the paper frames archival research as a critical, if under-utilized resource, in leisure research.

The drum kit is ubiquitous in global popular music and culture, and modern kit drumming profoundly defined the sound of twentieth-century popular music. The Cambridge Companion to the Drum Kit highlights emerging scholarship on the drum kit, drummers and key debates related to the instrument and its players. Interdisciplinary in scope, this volume draws on research from across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences to showcase the drum kit, a relatively recent historical phenomenon, as a site worthy of analysis, critique, and reflection. Providing readers with an array of perspectives on the social, material, and performative dimensions of the instrument, this book will be a valuable resource for students, drum kit studies scholars, and all those who want a deeper understanding of the drum kit, drummers, and drumming.

In this contribution, three authors from three different but broadly cognate disciplines, engage in shadowplay, a conversation about archaeology and music, emphasising how shadows provide a novel conceptual and pragmatic framework for studying both the past and the contemporary world through music. Those shadows might be more literal (sites used after dark, or where fieldwork takes place behind or underneath buildings) or they can be metaphorical or figurative, with people working in the shadows of their disciplines’ conventions, countering the authorised heritage discourse, for example, by focusing on subaltern communities. Taking an archaeological perspective, the conversation centres on the study of music and those who make it. Perhaps counterintuitive for some, music and music-making are, we believe, relevant subjects for a book concerned with archaeological and heritage practice, because they bring into play non-traditional and sometimes marginalised heritage communities; the contemporary and everyday places that those communities use and value and the things (musical instruments, recording equipment) that they use there; the production process (music-making as heritage); and the traditions and everyday practices performed in those places and which typically contribute to or feed off the values that are constructed by participants and audiences. These examples of cultural heritage are central to our conversation around music, alongside the alignment of practices with the things that represent them.

There is increasing evidence to suggest that creativity occurs though a convergence of multiple factors and a dynamic system of interactions (Csikszentmihalyi: 1988, 1997, 1999 & 2004). Record production education, however, often concentrates only on transferring knowledge from the domain to the individual. While acquiring knowledge of a domain has been shown to be an important factor in the process of creativity in popular music production (McIntyre, 2010), the systems model of creativity suggests this by itself is not sufficient for creativity to occur. This paper examines the systems model of creativity within studio recording and record production education, where the field is addressed as a necessary component.

Motivation and inspiration are critical aspects of creative practice in the recording studio, however, this practice is often confused with a romantic process that is considered both mystical and metaphysical. This case study considers Paul McCartney, a figure often viewed romantically as a ‘genius’ in the recording studio. Evidence is presented to show that the process of record production, as exemplified by this performer, can be seen as a more considered judicious set of procedures that stem from a dynamic system of interactions of personnel in the recording studio (artists and engineers) involving the social dynamics and power relationships that function on a larger scale than that of the single individual. This view moves well beyond conceptualising aspects of the creative process in the recording studio as inexplicable. McCartney’s experiences of music listening, collaborative performance and composition and how they all contributed to his outstanding works in the studio, his musical direction and in particular his little recognised role as a record producer are considered through the application of the systems model of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1997 & 1999). Evidence gathered from current literature, case studies, interviews, biographies and autobiographies are used to illustrate how McCartney’s collaborative and creative endeavours in the recording studio can be seen to stand in opposition to the inspirationalist, Romantic view of creativity.

Music Production Pedagogy: Perspectives on Innovation in Music Production Education explores and disseminates innovative educational methods, curriculum designs, and conceptual underpinnings for learning environments that facilitate the delivery of high-quality tuition to an ever-growing pool of students in the field of music production. With chapters from renowned instructors across the globe, this book attends to the significant changes that have occurred over the last century in how music is created, recorded and produced, leading to a need for effective and appropriate educational strategies that bridge traditional and modern professional practices. Readers will gain insights into both conceptual and critical phenomena in this subject area, as well as learn from practically implementable pedagogical innovations in the music production education space, underpinned by various lines of enquiry using methodologically diverse research methods. Music Production Pedagogy is cutting-edge reading for instructors of music production and music technology both at secondary and tertiary levels, as well as researchers considering the area of audio education.

Formal popular music education (PME) faces a number of challenges; not least how to sufficiently engage learners in creative tasks that help to develop their skills and knowledge, whilst at the same time preparing them for employment in the: ‘ever-changing dynamic of the industries they hope to work in’ (McIntyre et al, 2016, p. 2). The following study draws upon data gathered during a Practice Based Enquiry (PBE) and the specific context of teaching pop music songwriting and production is explored through the application of the ‘Service Model’ for Pop Music, Creativity and Commerce by an experienced pop music producer undertaking the role of researcher and ‘ETL’ (ETL).  Importantly, it it illustrates how to engage learners within an industry-style creative task and shows how the team leader’s role can help to give students important access to the social interactions of the field throughout the process.

This chapter explores drummers’ experiences inside recording studios from social, spatial, and technological viewpoints to highlight the drummer’s place in the creative processes of making popular music recordings. Through our ongoing ethnographic research in studios, this chapter draws from observational fieldnotes when both authors were acting as ethnographers and drummers (‘drummer-as-ethnographer’) and a series of semi-structured interviews with eight drummers of varied backgrounds and experiences. Our analyses critique widely-accepted beliefs about drummers (or in Bourdieu’s terms “Doxa”) by spotlighting three key areas: (1) the social spaces of drummers in studios (i.e. where drummers ‘belong’, or not); (2) the production of social identities in studios (i.e. who drummers are in relation to power hierarchies within the recording process); and (3) the knowledge and involvement of drummers within the creative process of record-making (i.e. what drummers ‘know’ and are able to do with their knowledge in studios). We conclude the chapter by highlighting that although they are often overlooked, drummers are vital actors within the social, spatial, and technological worlds of the recording studio.

This paper describes preliminary research into pedagogical approaches to teach and train sound recording students using multitrack multitrack audio recordings. Two recording sessions are described and used to illustrate where there is evidence of technical, musical and socio-cultural knowledge in multitrack audio holdings. Approaches for identifying, analyzing and integrating this into audio education are outlined. This work responds to the recent AESTD 1002.2.15-02 recommendation for delivery of recorded music projects, and calls from within the field to address the advantages, challenges and opportunities of including multitrack recordings in higher education teaching and research programs.

A groundbreaking study of music and musical history in Leeds. This is the first scholarly volume to focus on popular music in Leeds. This first academic collection dedicated to popular music in Leeds - developed from the work of interdisciplinary scholars, drawn from a major public museum exhibition “Sounds of Our City” and built upon contemporary research. Leeds has rich musical histories and heritage, a long tradition of vibrant music venues, nightclubs, dance halls, pubs and other sites of musical entertainment. The city has spawned crooners, folk singers, punks, post- punks, Goths, DJs, popstars, rappers and indie rockers, yet – with a few exceptions - Leeds has not been studied for its scenes in ways that other UK cities have. In ways that the chapters explore, Leeds’ popular music exemplifies and informs understandings of broader cultural and urban changes – both in Britain and across wider global contexts – of the social and historical significance of music as mass media; music and migration; music, racialisation and social equity; industrial decline, de-industrialisation, neoliberalism and the rise of the 24-hour city. Charting moments of stark musical politicisation and de-politicisation, while concomitantly tracing arguments about “heritagising” popular music within discussions about music’s “place” in museums and in the urban economy, this book contributes to debates about why music matters, has mattered, and continues to matter in Leeds, and beyond.

This practice-led thesis presents insights drawn from my creative practice as an improvising solo bass guitarist regarding the formation and composition of my subscriber community and its impact on my work. It includes a historical unfolding of its formation, from email digests in the late 1990s to the current manifestation on bandcamp.com, detailing the developments in technology and the decisions made regarding the desired relational affordances at each stage. The impact upon my practice is demonstrated through a practice submission that comprises four album releases, three live in concert and one live in the studio, recorded and released to subscribers in 2019 and 2020. Their value in demonstrating the consequential nature of the subscriber community is illuminated by a commentary that describes the impact on my improvisational choices of the live audience and the creative consequences of inviting them into an artist-audience discussion before the show, comparing it to a more orthodox festival crowd devoid of the relational characteristics of the subscriber community. This impact on the work is explored in parallel to the creative considerations afforded by the online subscriber community manifesting as an ever-present secondary audience for the anticipated recording of the performance, resulting in music created in, for and with the community. What emerges is a model of artist-audience community that iteratively accumulates meaning and insight around an expanding body of recorded work, within a framework informed by David Dark’s poetic invocation of ‘The Space of the Talkaboutable’ (Dark, 2009, p. 78). The impact of the live audience community is theorised regarding their caring, generous presence affording a substantially higher degree of creative risk-taking, and the subscriber community affording an integrated, holistic artistic selfhood in contrast to the fragmented, algorithmically mediated self of the contemporary social media landscape.

Leeds has spawned crooners, folk singers, punks, post-punks, Goths, DJs, popstars, rappers, indie rockers and more. Yet, with a few exceptions, Leeds has not been studied for its musical cultures in ways that other UK cities have, such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield. In many ways, Leeds is a city with a “lost” local musical heritage, hidden even to many of those who live there. The first academic book dedicated to mapping Leeds’ popular music histories, heritage, people and places was published in December 2023. Two of the co-editors, Dr Paul Thompson and Dr Brett Lashua, and Utah Saint Jez Willis, will take walkers on a whistle-stop tour of the city’s often hidden musical heritage.

Despite the increase in prevalence of music technology and related programs industry bodies such as creative and cultural skills council, have continued to highlight the requirement for technically competent graduates to meet the growing demand from the wider audio and creative industries. Drawing upon academic literature, government and educational publications and empirical data gathered during student feedback and focus groups this paper explores the authors’ experiences of developing the curriculum in the sound reproduction subject area on an undergraduate Music Technology BSc (Hons) course. Commencing with an overview of the areas of the sound reproduction curriculum, the paper turns to some of the challenges faced by the authors in delivering this subject area in a formal educational setting. The paper then concludes by summarising some useful pedagogical approaches to deliver sound reproduction themes and points towards further ways in which the required skills and knowledge for industry could be addressed.

With the continued growth of formal courses in audio related subjects, it has become increasingly important to consider the place and purpose of audio education within the sphere of formal education and the wider creative industries. Perspectives on the purpose and place of audio education were collected through a mixture of literature and document analysis, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and email correspondence. Given the varied perspectives on the purpose of audio education, the challenges identified, and the sheer breadth of possible career paths within the creative industries, it is concluded that audio education cannot address all of the needs of its stake holders, beneficiaries and benefactors and that better dialogue is required between industry and higher education institutions.

The recording studio has been somewhat neglected as a site for ethnographic fieldwork in the field of ethno-musicology and, moreover, the majority of published studies tend to overlook the specific concerns faced by the researcher within these contexts. Music recording studios can be places of creativity, artistry, and collaboration, but they often also involve challenging, intimidating, and fractious relations. Given that recording studios are, first and foremost, concerned with documenting musicians’ performances, we discuss the concerns of getting studio interactions “on record” in terms of access, social relations, and methods of data collection. This article reflects on some of the issues we faced when conducting our fieldwork within British music recording facilities and makes suggestions based on strategies that we employed to address these issues.

In his field guide to recording practice Jay Hodgson notes that: ‘well into the 1960s, in fact, long after stereophonic technology came to market, stereo mixing remained a largely neglected craft, especially in British recording studios’ (2010: 159). Despite this, stereo had almost completely replaced mono as the dominant format by the beginning of the 1970s and this markedly rapid transition from one format to another left behind some interesting traces in the cultural matrix of recording practice. From a creative systems view nothing exists in isolation (McIntyre, Fulton & Paton 2016). A system, such as a system of recording, can sometimes appear to operate independently with well-defined boundaries but it still depends upon other systems (Skyttner 2006, p. 38). From this point of view there are multilayered systems within systems in which: ‘a system in one perspective is a subsystem in another. But the system view always treats systems as integrated wholes of their subsidiary components’ (Laszlo 1972, p. 14). This interconnectedness of systems has been illustrated by Arthur Koestler (1975) using the terms holon and holarchy. A holon is an aspect of systems that is both a part of something at one scale and, at the same time and at another scale, is itself a whole system. A holarchy is the multilayered hierachy of these holons. Inside this nested world, system within system, one system is no more or less important than the others operating above or below it. Not only are systems part of these vertically arranged holarchies but they are also often connected horizontally through complex networks of many other similar systems. For example, the system of audio engineering has deep connections horizontally to the system of producing and the system of musicianship. These related holons are linked vertically to the broader system of popular record production and at a different scale again to the system of western music. This paper explores the scalabilty of creative systems by examining the recording and production of the Beatles’ ‘Paperback Writer’ (1966). It examines Paperback Writer’s production at the various scales of creative action, exposing some of the creative processes on an individual level and the sharing of ideas and knowledge between the creative group within Studio Three of EMI’s Abbey Road studio. The flow of ideas back and forth between the various contributing vertically and horizontally interconnected systems is also studied to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the creative systems that contributed to the record’s production.

This chapter argues that the contested definitions of educational categories provide a useful starting point in acknowledging the complexities of musical learning both inside and outside educational institutions. It focuses on data gathered from an electronically distributed questionnaire and a series of semi-structured interviews, with the specific aim of focusing on popular electronic musicians' musical practices, processes and experiences within Higher Education (HE) in the United States. The chapter also focuses on Papageorgi et al.'s approach to capturing students perceptions of the pervading philosophy within their respective educational institutions. Music education is often grouped into three broad forms: formal, non-formal and informal, which are characterized by their methods of learning. In order to contextualize the popular electronic musicians' perceptions and experiences of formal education, the interviews began by exploring their experiences of music education prior to their HE studies.

This paper presents research on the power of myth (Barthes 1972) and commonly accepted beliefs, or “doxa” (Bourdieu 1977), in shaping creative practices inside recording studios. Drawing from two ethnographic case studies of rock and hip-hop artists in recording studios, this paper addresses the (re)production of myths during studio sessions. Through critical incident analyses, we challenge romanticized representations of studios as individualistic spaces and highlight how mythic representations of creativity influence musicians’ technical expectations of recording processes. Additionally, we illustrate the circulation of, and moments of resistance to, myths from cultural domains outside of the studio that pervade practices within studios. In sum, we show that studios—sites involving the intense scrutiny of music-making—offer insightful contexts in which to examine how myth can shape recording processes and studio practices.

Although formal educational institutions in the UK, and particularly in Higher Education (HE), have begun to include aspects of dance music and hip-hop styles of music in their curricula, there is still a notable lack of research into the relationship between popular electronic music-making practices, such as performance, and formal education. This study explores some of the experiences, perceptions and reflections of popular electronic musicians in formal educational institutions in the UK with a specific focus on the performance of popular electronic music. Our findings show that formal education has had some impact on the development of popular electronic musicians' practice and, in some cases, acted as an introduction to popular electronic styles of music. However, the study's findings also highlight the need to develop more comprehensive musical curricula that include popular electronic styles of music as well as the more established popular musical styles such as rock.

This chapter discusses a range of strategies and initiatives that have been employed across the city of Leeds (UK) with a critical introduction of the ways in which models from other European cities, feedback and opinion from music professionals, consultation from government officials in Leeds and guidance documents from professional bodies and global consultancy agencies have been implemented in the development of the city’s dedicated and independent organisation Music:Leeds. The chapter discusses the strategies that have been implemented to stimulate music activity around Music:Leeds’ three core areas of activity: Creative Development & Business Growth; Placemaking & Tourism; Access to Music and concludes with an assessment of these strategic developments so far.

Bringing together insights from a roster of international contributors, this book presents perspectives from researchers, practitioners, educators and historians.

Popular accounts of creativity inside recording studios often mythologise and romanticise the record production process (Williams, 2010). Myths have been described as partial truths, or fictions, that privilege particular versions of a shared social reality (Barthes, 1972[1957]). As they are told and retold, myths develop into critically unquestioned aspects of dominant cultural practices. In popular music-making, these myths typically depict the artist as the sole creative force inside the recording studio, consequently diminishing the contributions of others (e.g., engineers, producers, and other musicians) and the necessary interaction with recording technologies (Williams, 2010). The recording artist is often romantically portrayed as a quasi-mystical performer whose artistic expressions are free from any constraint (Sawyer, 2006). However, record production is always, to some degree, collaborative (Hennion, 1989; Zak, 2001). Research has also shown that the production of art, such as a recording, involves structures and constraints within which artists negotiate their agency (Becker, 1982; Wolff, 1981) and that creativity is the result of a convergence of multiple elements in which the artist is only one part (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Kerrigan, 2013). Drawing upon data gathered from two ethnographic case studies of rock and hip-hop artists in recording studios, this paper spotlights the complex relations in our studio work and decentres myths of studios as spaces of solitary creative artists. Sawyer’s (2003) model of group creativity provides a framework for exploring participants’ shared understandings of how particular studio structures related to the generation of creative ideas. Our analyses reveal studio practices that were highly collaborative, iterative and interactive. Analyses also highlighted how mythic representations of studios influenced some of the musicians’ technical expectations of recording studio processes. In sum, this paper attends to the relations between studio personnel, agency and structure by juxtaposing creative record production with the (re)production – and disruption – of studio myths.

Music recording studios can be mystical places of creativity, artistry, and collaboration but they may also involve challenging, intimidating and fractious relations. This is as true of ethnographers’ fieldwork in studios as musicians’ accounts and experiences. A growing body of research has documented the issues musicians encounter in recording facilities – that of alienation or integration (Porcello, 2004; Williams, 2012), tensions between studio personnel (Williams, 2010; Morrow, 2012) and power relationships between participants (McIntyre, 2008) – however, ethnographic studies within recording studios tend to over-look the specific concerns faced by the researcher. This paper discusses our fieldwork within music recording studio facilities and questions our positionality, logistical procedures, linguistic obstacles, accessibility, and the representations of participants and the studios themselves. Given that recording studios are, first and foremost, concerned with documenting musicians’ performances, how might ethnographers, in terms of methods, best put studio interactions on record? This paper amplifies these issues through our experiences of conducting multi-modal and multi-mediated ethnographic fieldwork in recording studios. Paul’s work has focused on the use of video recording; Brett’s practice primarily involves the use of field notes, still photography and audio interviews. Both of us had to negotiate multiple roles as ethnographers, studio engineers, and musicians ourselves. Although recording technologies and practices are continually changing, recording studios remain distinctive spaces that are produced by, and a product of, unique practices and social relations. For ethnographers,music studios involve specific affordances and constraints that differ from some ethnographic milieu yet also echo other fieldwork situations. References McIntyre, P. (2008). The systems model of creativity: Analyzing the distribution of power in the studio. Proceedings of the 2008 Art of Record Production Conference, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA. Porcello, T. (2004). Speaking of sound: Language and the professionalization of sound recording engineers. Social Studies of Science, 34(5), October, pp. 733-758. Morrow, G. (2011). Creative conflict in a Nashville studio: A case of Boy & Bear. Proceedings of the 2011 Art of Record Production Conference, San Francisco State University, USA. Williams, A. (2010). Celluloid heroes: Fictional truths of recording studio practice on film. Proceedings of the 2010 Art of Record Production Conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. Williams, A. (2011). Putting it on display: The impact of visual information on control room dynamics. Proceedings of the 2011 Art of Record Production Conference, San Francisco State University, USA.

The growth in popularity of Music Technology degree programmes in the United Kingdom has been paralleled by the apparent decline in informal apprenticeship systems that have typically provided a gateway to employment in the recording industry. This article takes a critical approach to the tensions that exist between higher education and the music industries by exploring contemporary and historical approaches of apprenticeship. Drawing on interviews with industry professionals, current students and recent graduates who have achieved some success in the music industries, this article explores some of the perceptions, myths and contradictions of the apprenticeship-training model with changes in the contemporary professional environment. Our findings suggest that training for the music industries is more flexible and open-ended than some of the published narratives on apprenticeship would suggest. In addition, educational frameworks over the past twenty years have often focused on the technical aspects of studio practice at the expense of the social, aesthetic and human skills required by the industry. These formal frameworks often only focus on the transference of knowledge to the individual diminishing or ignoring the important processes of interaction with the participants in the field. Using the metaphor of a professional ‘toolbox’, we argue that there is a need for an approach that reconsiders the industry-education divide and considers the value of the educational process in a much wider, contemporary framework. Some twenty years since the initial development of Music Technology programmes in the United Kingdom, and in the context of the rapidly changing nature of the music industries, it is an appropriate time to reconsider the nature and relevance of Music Technology programmes in higher education.

Drawing upon current literature, qualitative and quantitative data, this paper describes the authors’ experiences of curriculum development and delivery of a dedicated module in ‘Acoustics and Critical Listening'. In addition, it outlines the initial impact this module has had on the development of students’ skills and knowledge in this area and discusses some of the challenges faced through teaching acoustics and critical listening in the classroom.

This app allows you to learn about locations of musical heritage in Leeds. You can either search and explore locations positioned on the Leeds map, or by scrolling throught he A-to-Z of locations in the list view. When you tap on a location, an information pop appears, which includes images and descriptions, as well as links to external websites, video and recorded music examples. It is also possible to open a direct link to each location in the Apple Maps app, allowing you to find live directions from your current location to the heritage location of interest.