Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Roth Family Foundation Music in America Book) [Paperback]

Mark Katz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004 | Series: Roth Family Foundation Music in America Book

There is more to sound recording than just recording sound. Far from being simply a tool for the preservation of music, the technology is a catalyst. This is the clear message of Capturing Sound, a wide-ranging, deeply informative, consistently entertaining history of recording's profound impact on the musical life of the past century, from Edison to the Internet.
In a series of case studies, Mark Katz explores how recording technology has encouraged new ways of listening to music, led performers to change their practices, and allowed entirely new musical genres to come into existence. An accompanying CD, featuring thirteen tracks from Chopin to Public Enemy, allows readers to hear what Katz means when he discusses music as varied as King Oliver's "Dippermouth Blues," a Jascha Heifetz recording of a Brahms Hungarian Dance, and Fatboy Slim's "Praise You."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I only wish I had put as much thought into making records as Mark Katz does in appreciating and analyzing them. I've always said that what I do is not rocket science but critiques like this make it sound like it has a place in modern culture." - Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, composer, producer, DJ; "Katz provides a model of how studies of music and technology should be done." - Tim Taylor, author of Global Pop"

From the Inside Flap

"This thoughtful and well-written book goes to the front rank of publications on the phonograph and other sound reproduction technologies. Employing a wide variety of methodologies and sources and covering a broad range of music and practices, Katz provides a model of how studies of music and technology should be done."--Tim Taylor, author of Global Pop: World Music, World Markets and Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture

"I only wish I had put as much thought into making records as Mark Katz does in appreciating and analyzing them. I've always said that what I do is not rocket science but critiques like this make it sound like it has a place in modern culture."--Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, composer, producer, DJ

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520243803
• ISBN-13: 978-0520243804
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #579,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read., September 7, 2005

By 

Hugh Mckee "Jim" (SEQ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Roth Family Foundation Music in America Book) (Paperback)

Although being a scholarly work, fully footnoted and with a complete bibliograpy this book, unlike much of academic production, is a great read.
I enjoyed it immensly.
It is a good companion to Michael Channan's book on the same topic."Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music".
If you are interested in the history of recording or just curious about how what we listen to came to be the way it is this book will delight you.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound insights for record-lovers and music-lovers, June 2, 2010

By 

Michael Tiemann (Chapel Hill, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Roth Family Foundation Music in America Book) (Paperback)

I greatly enjoy reading books that cover ground that I think I know well, then proceed to reveal insights far deeper than any I'd yet contemplated. Mark Katz has done this with some of my favorite subjects, music, records and recording technology, and then proceeds to add an entirely new dimension to my understanding of how these all relate (and continue to evolve together). To do this, he remixes a great number of insights coming from previous works I have come to know and love, including Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, and a widely eclectic appreciation of recorded music that I also share.

And I am not alone in my appreciation for this book. In 2007 it won the Hacker Prize, which provided the following citation:

The Hacker Prize rewards exceptional scholarship that reaches a broad audience. The audience so captured by Capturing Sound is primarily an undergraduate one, thus Katz has presented the Committee with a welcome opportunity to reward pedagogical writing. Textbooks are a genre that always challenge, and usually defeat, even the best of writers. Breaking the mold of the seemingly objective, chronologically-impelled narrative, Katz has produced a very different kind of work that succeeds on three different levels, all of which are important to historians of technology.

I agree, and I think it will give other readers a new-found appreciation and understanding of their musical tastes and collections. And with the knowledge it imparts, you may find yourself discovering new evidence of the book's primary thesis: the phonograph effect. Even in today's world of CDs and MP3s (which, do not fear, Katz treats thoroughly).

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insight, July 4, 2008

By 

D. Hadley - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Roth Family Foundation Music in America Book) (Paperback)

This book gives the reader great insight on the effects of recorded music and the effects on society. A must read for anyone into music.