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This article analyzes the album El computador virtuoso (1973), which resulted from a project headed by José Vicente Asuar in collaboration with the University of Chile's Sound Technology Research Group during the administration of socialist president Salvador Allende (1970–1973). We adopt here a historical perspective, aiming to identify the circumstances that enabled the production and circulation of this work. We argue that its emergence is the result of both Asuar's aesthetic preferences and of policies designed to encourage public institutions, national technological development, and the democratization of culture—which experienced their peak in the months before the military coup of September 11, 1973. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that problematic gender norms in electronic music contexts – namely, their association with masculinity and overrepresentation by cis men – can be subverted through alternative education methods. We use the case study of the Electronic Music Accelerator (EMA) program, run by youth organization The Push in Melbourne, Australia, to illustrate this. Specifically, we evaluate strategies used in the EMA program to teach Ableton and related skills on building electronic music production careers. The EMA s program was designed to increase the numbers of women and gender non-conforming or gender diverse people involved in electronic music production, in response to evidence that these groups continue to be underrepresented in this area. We focus on how so-called soft skills, as opposed to the strictly technical skills normally the main focus in an Ableton course, were taught in this program. In the EMA, rather than insisting that the participants take up a 'masculine' attitude to adapt to the existing electronic music scene that is dominated by men, the course presented ways of working with, and even reclaiming, traits perceived as feminine, such as humility and community-mindedness. This approach offers possibilities for reconfiguring expectations in electronic music spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ASMR, an online phenomenon comprising videos in which a performer employs technologically processed sounds to evoke a pleasurable, tingling sensation in the viewer and foster a sense of intimacy has been rapidly gaining popularity in recent years, with its aesthetic increasingly adopted in popular music. The paper investigates one example of such imbrication, Zaumne's album, Emo Dub (2018), which samples voices from ASMR videos, transforming them into disembodied intensities, detached from their original context. As such, Zaumne's music goes beyond either merely incorporating aspects of ASMR, or deconstructing it in a critical fashion; instead, it modulates its affective potential for affording mediated intimacy. Consequently, drawing on the concepts of networked affect and assemblages, the paper argues that Zaumne's music exhibits a form of posthuman intimacy that does not pertain to relations between subjects, but rather to attunement with the impersonal dynamic of digital networks: the constant circulation of content, and the random and contingent affective encounters that produce transpersonal identities and subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music technology courses are increasingly common offerings in university and secondary music programmes. Curriculum standards, subject matter and classroom practices of these courses are still very much in flux. The music education field therefore has a unique opportunity to shape and define music technology as a subject before it becomes fully standardized. Teaching this subject in the context of European-descended 'art' music traditions will perpetuate the white racial frame of school music. The author argues that educators should critically examine the racialized split between 'art' and 'popular' forms of electronic music, and should consciously centre 'the Black Electronic' in their curricula. This includes the techniques of beatmaking and sampling, as well as their cultural and political contexts and meanings. An example project drawing on hip hop methods and values is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the wake of the ›material turn‹, the study of (popular) music is increasingly developing an interest for questions of materiality. Yet, the perspectives on what materiality denotes in music-related contexts remain fairly heterogeneous. In some instances, the term is introduced to study the (raw) material components of instruments or the buttons and reels of electronic music devices and the ways these material configurations shape musical practices and cultures. Elsewhere, materiality figures as a concept for grasping the vibrational character of bodies, particles and molecules as they are moved by sound, and scholars examine how these material configurations, in turn, shape our subjectivities, identities, affects, etc. To elucidate these and other uses of the term, this chapter on sonic materialities gathers the voices of several researchers whose projects deal with sound and materiality in various ways. The forum-like format allows for different proposals and positions and covers a smaller range of scholarly interests brought together not for the sake of developing a monolithic definition, but to emphasize the productive heterogeneity of the different uses and meanings of sonic materiality. The chapter thus explores a spectrum of approaches through which music-related sound phenomena can be conceptualized as sonic materiality in popular music studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

They begin with a note, a chord, the tap of a button, or the triggering of a loop: through progressively layered textures, samples, and extended performance techniques, many solo performers on YouTube construct their cover songs piece by piece before the viewer's eyes and ears. Combining virtuosity and novelty in a package ready-made for viral online popularity, this recent and rapidly growing internet phenomenon draws together traditions old and new, from the "one man band" of the nineteenth century, to the experimental live looping of 1980s performance art, to contemporary electronic music. Building on a number of recent studies that examine the affordances and restrictions of writing and performing music on various instruments, this article argues that these YouTube performers use both music-theoretical and instrumental expertise to convey complex textures through a minimal collection of musical materials. Through their sparse, economic construction, these intricate arrangements are each the end product of a careful analysis of each song, and they have much to teach us about the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic structures of popular music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singing Voice Detection (SVD) is a classification task that determines whether there is a singing voice in a given audio segment. While current systems produce high-quality results on this task, the reported experiments are usually limited to popular music. A Long-Term Recurrent Convolutional Network (LRCN) was adapted to detect vocals in a new dataset of electronic music to evaluate its performance in a different music genre and compare its results against those in other state-of-the-art experiments in pop music to prove its effectiveness across a different genre. Experiments on two datasets studied the impacts of different audio features and block size on LRCN temporal relationship learning, and the benefits of preprocessing on performance, and the results generate a benchmark to evaluate electronic music and its intricacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IC: Revista Científica de Información y Comunicación is the property of Universidad de Sevilla, Departamento de Periodismo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Bakalas were a youth culture that showed up in some Spanish cities, Madrid among them. After disappearing, this culture has been recreated by neobakalas. This article, based on ethnography and in-depth interviews, explores how neobakalas from Madrid have transformed the bakala culture into a music scene that ritualizes some of the features of the bakalas, especially its songs, giving birth to a music genre. Furthermore, the case of bakalas and neobakalas will allow us to question the way Bennet (2012, 2013) has approached music scenes formed by adults. This work therefore interrogates the applicability of the concepts of ageing cultures (Bennet y Hodkinson 2012; Bennet, 2013) and cultural memory for the neobakala scene. The case of neobakalas will also allow us to problematize how St John (1999, 2011, 2014) analyses the ritual practices of the music scenes related to electronic music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including popular music; post-punk group Cabaret Voltaire; and video DJ.

Copyright of Folklore Studies / Tautosakos Darbai is the property of Institute of Lithuanian Literature & Folklore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the way pervasive influences within the built environment shape heritage and identity. With a focus on Sheffield, a northern English city strongly associated with a now largely defunct steel industry, the paper investigates how the city's industrial past, its location and social fabric have shaped music-making, creating a distinctive scene that has become central to the city's cultural identity. Using a combination of in-depth interviews and documentary analysis, Sheffield is presented from the mid-1970s as experiencing what can be referred to as a "sonic cycle" in which the city's musicians refer to the sound of the drop-hammer in the steel forges being a backdrop to their childhood and a clear influence as they began their musical careers, and how the "industrial music" scene which they created has in turn shaped a new heritage identity. The paper concludes by promoting the idea that music created by local musicians forms a vital part of Sheffield's character and is an essential ingredient for shaping alternative urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the construction of "authenticity" and related identity-competencies in popular electronic music through an investigation of the music group Ladytron during their formative first decade: 2001-2011. Textual analysis is used to examine the Ladytron narrative; the story that discursively emerges in/between industry and popular articles, music reviews, and band interviews. In developing the Ladytron narrative, the band's identity depends on negotiations between a "roots" concept of electronic music authenticity, performing artistic integrity, and interaction with audiences who participated in the perpetuation and maintenance of this alternative/indie identity. The Ladytron narrative shows how music artists might maintain an identity alternative to mass culture, while creating their own space within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Rogério Duprat's original score (1932 - 2006) and recent publications on Brazilian cinema of the 1960s, this text seeks to investigate the technical and artistic procedures adopted by the composer in recording the soundtrack of the films Noite vazia (1964) and As amorosas (1968). Based on the testimonies of the professionals involved in the recording and editing of the works, we also seek to reveal some aspects of the political and artistic issues evidenced in a period of censorship and repression of individual freedoms in which Brazilian composers linked to concrete music, electronic music, and popular music collaborated effectively in the transformations of Brazilian cinematography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject for analysis were works for voice and piano by selected Polish composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, e.g. Grażyna Bacewicz, Tadeusz Baird, Henryk Czyż, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Henryk Hubertus Jabłoński, Wojciech Kilar, Zygmunt Krauze, Szymon Laks, Witold Lutosławski, Juliusz Mieczysław Łuciuk, Wojciech Łukaszewski, Paweł Łukaszewski, Maciej Małecki, Paweł Mykietyn, Edward Pałłasz, Konrad Pałubicki, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Rudziński, Marian Sawa, Kazimierz Serocki, Tadeusz Szeligowski and Romuald Twardowski. An important matter for the author was to determine whether there are common features for this creative genre. She also attempted to find an answer to the question if the trends from the second half of the 20th century were reflected in songs. The scope of analysis covered the repertoire the author knew from her performance practice from the standpoint of a pianist. To the general characteristics of selected songs she added a review of famous trends, techniques and styles of composition, such as impressionism, neoromanticism, expressionism, dodecaphony, serialism, punctualism, minimalism, sonorism, spectralism, neoclassicism, vitalism, postmodernism, aleatoricism, bruitism, microtonality, electronic music, musique concrète, stochastic music, references to previous periods, to folklore and to popular music. She compared musical notation of the analysed works. She also confronted forms of songs with contemporary composition techniques. Interesting was the approach of composers to chamber relations in a duo and the way they made texts musical. Most composers distanced themselves from the avant-garde in works for voice and piano which had a specific poetic text because of the clarity of narration. Matching composers unequivocally to just one trend turned out impossible. Various techniques and phenomena may co-exist in one piece and in the same way one creator may search for different means of expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Italy, the counterculture of the Sixties lasted until 1979, when it perished in the clash between two paranoias: the Italian state's fear of terrorism and the radical social movements from which it arose, and the terrorists' fear of the state's authoritarianism. Popular musicians were trapped between these paranoias, and their music searches to escape from both while chronicling the closing of the space between them, the only space in which countercultural social and artistic experimentation could take place. This essay focuses on the Italian "international POPular group" Area, which acted, in opposition to the generalized paranoia of the period, as a switching station linking progressive rock, electronic music, free jazz, global indigenous music, Fluxus sound experiments and postmodernist poetics with anti-militarist, anti-racist, socialist-feminist politics independent of the existing political party system. To create those links, the band was compelled to subvert the conventions of pop music from within and to move beyond pop's traditional boundaries into unstructured improvisation and avant-garde formal exploration. Area singer Demetrio Stratos's death in 1979 coincided with the Italian state's final crackdown on terrorism and the counterculture and marked the end of the richest countercultural experiment on earth, which still has much to teach us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay considers the changes in the production and consumption of western musics (classical, popular, jazz and world music) during the last 30 years and the role both media and new technologies played in that process. The development and reciprocal contamination of the different repertoires of western musics are discussed in relation with three epoch-making turning points – the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001 and the Financial crisis of 2008 – together with the influence music itself could have in preparing and anticipating them.