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Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures.

Article Excerpt
Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures. Edited by Paul D. Greene and Thomas Porcello. (Music/Culture.) Middle-town, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. [viii, 228 p. ISBN 0-8195-6517-2. $29.95.] Index, bibliographical references, illustrations.

The role sound engineering plays in determining meaning in recorded music has until recently received little scholarly attention. Possibly due to the ambiguous nature of "engineering" sound itself, this neglect interferes with even the most basic understanding of the way cultures mediate their recorded musical output. This largely excellent collection of essays attempts to offer several new approaches to understanding this oft-thought-invisible layer of meaning embedded in technologically mediated artwork. In his afterward (which serves as something of a key for the essays contained within, and functions better as an introduction than the introduction proper), Thomas Porcello acknowledges the two ways one can interpret the term "sound engineering," both of which are highlighted in this collection. The first, more obvious, way occurs at the level of musical details; the specific choices behind the twiddling of knobs, amplification, and attenuation, as well as micro-level studio...

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