Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (Music Culture) [Hardcover]

Paul Theberge (Author)

Book Description

Series: Music Culture | Publication Date: June 23, 1997

Describes digital musical instruments, industries that supply and promote them, and the meanings they have for musicians.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A fine and timely study. There is no other text offering a sustained analysis of the social conditions of technological innovation in the design of music technologies. Astute and remarkably pleasurable to read." (Andrew Goodwin ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

6 x 9 trim. 11 illus. Table. LC 97-5418

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (June 23, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819553077
• ISBN-13: 978-0819553072
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,531,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars chock full of intelligent insights, July 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (Music Culture) (Paperback)

Amidst all the inflated rhetoric that either denounces technology for making music "inauthentic" or celebrates it for creating new postmodern forms of community, Paul Theberge's "Any Sound You Can Imagine" is a welcome oasis of intelligence. Rather than choosing sides in what often becomes a simplistic debate, Theberge provides a balanced account that, uniquely, puts digital instruments in a broad social and historical perspective. This book has much to recommend it, but the high points for me are the last several chapters, in which Theberge formulates a theory of how instruments work not only practically but symbolically, that goes beyond almost any other book on the subject. As such, "Any Sound You Can Imagine" is heady stuff, but it's also accessibly written. Anyone who thinks they know something about electronic music, whether it be techno or the electronic avant garde, should read this book and see how many of their assumptions are left standing at the end.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Evaluation of Modern Music, December 7, 2004

By 

Charles T. Hardy (Foster City, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (Music Culture) (Paperback)

An exceedingly well researched and elegantly written text explaining the social and cultural impact of electronic music and especially synthesizer technology on musicians of all levels. This is a most important piece of work, and while written at an almost "academic" and scholarly level, is a book every modern musician will find valuable.