Vocal tracks : performance and sound media / Jacob Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Jacob, 1970-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Voice culture.

Voice.

Physical Description:

viii, 294 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2008]

Summary:

This entertaining and innovative book focuses on vocal performance styles that developed in tandem with the sound technologies of the phonograph, radio, and film. Writing in a clear and lively manner, Jacob Smith looks at these media and their industries through the lens of performance, bringing to light a fascinating nexus of performer, technology, and audience. Combining film aesthetics, cultural histories of technologies and industries, and theories of performance, Smith convincingly connects disparate and largely neglected niches to explore the development of a modern vocal performance. He analyzes an astonishingly diverse range of media texts-phonographic laughing records, broadcast laugh tracks, acting styles found in radio melodramas, singing styles heard on recordings of popular music, and secret recordings of prank phone calls-to illustrate how performance styles developed in response to technological mediation.

Contents:

Part 1 Flooding Out

1 Recorded Laughter and the Performance of Authenticity 15

2 Erotic Performance on Record 50

Part 2 A Finer Grain of the Voice

3 The Nearness of You; or, The Voice of Melodrama 81

4 Rough Mix 115

Part 3 Bugging the Backstage

5 The Act of Being Yourself 165

6 Phony Performances 200.

Notes:

"An Ahmanson book in the humanities"--P. [4] of cover.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-286) and index.

ISBN:

9780520254930

0520254937

9780520254947

0520254945

OCLC:

173480588