A blaze of light in every word : analyzing the popular singing voice / Victoria Malawey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Malawey, Victoria, 1977- author.

Series:

Oxford studies in music theory

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular music--Analysis, appreciation.

Popular music.

Singing.

Physical Description:

ix, 199 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]

Summary:

"Singing Voice presents a conceptual model for analyzing vocal delivery in popular song recordings focused on three overlapping areas of inquiry: pitch, prosody, and quality. The domain of pitch, which refers to listeners' perceptions of frequency, considers range, tessitura, intonation, and registration. Prosody, the pacing and flow of delivery, comprises phrasing, metric placement, motility, embellishment, and consonantal articulation. Qualitative elements include timbre, phonation, onset, resonance, clarity, paralinguistic effects, and loudness. Intersecting all three domains is the area of technological mediation, which considers how external technologies, such as layering, overdubbing, pitch modification, recording transmission, compression, reverb, spatial placement, delay, and other electronic effects, impact voice in recorded music. Though the book focuses primarily on the sonic and material aspects of vocal delivery, it situates these aspects among broader cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approaches to voice with the goal to better understand the relationship between sonic content and its signification. Drawing upon transcription and spectrographic analysis as the primary means of representation, as well as modes of analysis, this book features in-depth analyses of a wide array of popular song recordings spanning genres from indie rock to hip hop to death metal, develops analytical tools for understanding how individual dimensions make singing voices both complex and unique, and synthesizes how multiple aspects interact to better understand the multi-dimensionality of singing voices"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction. Why Voice? Why Voice Analysis?

Pitch

Prosody

Quality

The Area in Between : Mediation with Technology

Synthesis, or Why Covers of Elliott Smith Songs Don't Work.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Malawey, Victoria, 1977- A blaze of light in every word

ISBN:

9780190052218

9780190052201

0190052201

019005221X

OCLC:

1131776988

Publisher Number:

99984967432