The cultural politics of using technology to support the aesthetic in jazz record production.

Woolley, Jason (2019) The cultural politics of using technology to support the aesthetic in jazz record production. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Art of Record Production Conference. Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production and Royal College of Music Stockholm. ISBN 978-91-983869-9-8 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper discusses the attitudes some contemporary jazz musicians have toward the use of technology and the thresholds of studio ‘intervention’ they are willing to cross in order to achieve their preferred studio recording aesthetic. The discussion draws upon personal experiences of mainly free jazz production, and also the returns of a pilot survey of jazz musicians, who were polled on the subject of the use of technology in the production of jazz recordings. Grounded theory was utilised as a methodology to code the survey responses into two main categories of ‘idealistic’ and ‘pragmatic’ responses. This coding enabled a discussion of the themes which were evident in the responses. This limited study found that clear consensus on the extent to which studio techniques should be used in the production of jazz recordings was not apparent in the data. There were instances where some studio techniques were considered acceptable, whilst other which were as similarly technically invasive as the acceptable, were not acceptable. It also appeared that it was generally acceptable to edit pre-composed elements of the musical performances, but not acceptable to edit improvisations. This perhaps reinforces the notion that for the jazz performer the ephemeral ‘moment’, which many studio productions aim to represent, occurs when they are improvising. Finally, it appears for these participants, whether a studio intervention such as an edit is audible in the final recording is irrelevant. The fact that a studio intervention was required or occurred due to perceived deficiencies in the recorded performance, crosses the boundary of acceptability in terms of their own interpretation of ‘authenticity’ in jazz recordings.