Abstract
ABSTRACTVia a longitudinal case study of a studio project (Middlewood Sessions, 2004–12), this research explores processes of music-making in the increasingly prevalent context of the project studio to give an insight into contemporary music-making practices. Predicated upon technologies of decreasing size but increasing processing power, project studios represent a diversification of musical creativity in terms of the persons and locations of music production. Increasingly mobile technologies lead to increasingly mobile practices of music production, which presents a challenge to the seemingly simple question: where is the project studio? In response, I propose an ontology of project-studio music-making that sets out what conditions have to be met for location, as an active proposition, to take place.
Highlights
Mobilizing technologiesTHE yellow arch of Yellow Arch Studios is located precisely at 53.391884N 1.474074W
This article is derived from a longitudinal research project, starting in 2006, which grafted onto the Middlewood Sessions studio project that had begun tentatively in the summer of 2004.12 Culminating in February 2012 with the release of a full-scale album,[13] the Middlewood Sessions case study provided a rich resource for gaining insight into the workings of a studio-based music project that produced a kind of popular music infusing the timbral aesthetics of jazz and orchestral music with the driving rhythms of dance music
16 In this case study, Auralex panels and bass traps were installed to treat the domestic rooms that constituted the base of the project studio and, later on, spaces used for on-location recording
Summary
THE yellow arch of Yellow Arch Studios is located precisely at 53.391884N 1.474074W. If I triangulate my geographical position to match these coordinates I will be standing under the keystone of the arch that leads through to a cobbled courtyard. The exact spatial arrangement of these items is crucial for their function: the architectural separation of live and control rooms ensures a degree of control over the sounds that are captured, later to be recombined; and the musician must be within the variable bubble of the microphone’s polar pattern, an invisible shaping of acoustic (geographical) space, to register the sounds of creative impulse The weight of this place – derived from the sum total of its bricks and mortar, the hefty 39-channel Amek Angela mixing desk and its related musical and economic successes1 – means that if I set out to find it, it will, ceteris paribus, still be there. I gather together several emergent themes in a further discussion that addresses the question of how music-making practices are stabilized and enduring, as may be necessary for them to be locatable
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
