university of california press vocal tracks performance and sound media aug 2008

[...]... and radio and television broadcasts In other words, my study offers an examination of the styles of vocal performance that developed in tandem with media technologies The voice was the first aspect of performance to be captured 4 Introduction and reproduced in real time by a modern recording instrument, and vocal performance can serve as a gauge for the consideration of performance in the media more... preserved nuances of performance such as the grain of the voice and wordless vocal expressions of intense emotion that would have eluded written scripts or musical scores Since my topic lies at the intersection of the voice, sound media technologies, and performance, I draw on a variety of scholarly work Much of the analysis of sound recording has been centered on motion pictures, and one of the dominant... by film and media historians One of the goals of this book is to use the media of the past century to better understand the performance function of the voice Roland Barthes has written that no analytic science could exhaust the subject of the human voice, and it is easy to understand why The voice can function as an index of the body, a conveyor of language, a social bond, a musical instrument of sublime... phonograph recordings and the broadcast laugh track I present the laugh as an instance of “flooding out” and look closely at its use in a genre of turn -of- the-century phonographic recordings called laughing records I argue that the performance of the laugh has helped bridge the gap between listener and prerecorded media texts, and it has served as an indication of authentic human presence in the media An equally... different media contexts, the laugh has been presented as the ultimate expression of the human—often as the result of its connection to discourses about race, class, and gender and its mechanical reproduction has served as a lightning rod for anxieties concerning the social dimensions of mass media performance and consumption cracking up: the performance of laughter To begin an examination of the relationship... through the performance of spasmodic laughter both Mandy and the women heard on laughing records are offered as a kind of bodily spectacle Compare, for example, the prolonged close-up of Mandy at the end of Laughing Gas with a photograph of the comedian Sallie Stembler in a trade journal promoting laughing records in 1918 (figure 4): in both cases we see a woman with eyes closed, mouth open, and head thrown... structures of visual pleasure to be found in film pornography, this study seeks to provide a close analysis of audible structures of pleasure in a range of sound media genres Both of the chapters in part 2 deal with the ability of sound technologies to represent nuances of vocal performance that would not have been audible to a theater audience The microphone’s ability to capture subtleties of vocal timbre and. .. the possibility of new forms of performance marked by a quiet intensity and subtle shadings of inflection, suggestive of intimacy and emotional density In chapter 3 I investigate styles of vocal acting that developed in tandem with sound media technologies such as radio microphones Twentiethcentury acting has often been discussed in relation to the cinema camera and the development of the close-up Equal... different media, the particularities and protocols of a particular medium can come into sharper focus Thus, my analysis of recorded laughter provides a means to examine links between genres of phonographic recordings and broadcast laugh tracks on radio and television; my consideration of erotic vocal performance allows me to make comparisons among stage burlesque performance, phonograph recordings, and film... cultural and historical specificity and that is centrally concerned with the social effect of form This body of work is of particular importance for an analysis of how vocal performance is shaped by media technologies, since by becoming familiar with the nuances of face-to-face communication, we can better understand the ways in which aspects of it are mobilized or altered in mediated performances Goffman’s . Foundation. Vocal Tracks Performance and Sound Media Jacob Smith UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley . Los Angeles . London University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university. California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2008 by The Regents of the University of California An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as “Filling the Embarrassment of Silence: Erotic Performance. intersection of the voice, sound media tech- nologies, and performance, I draw on a variety of scholarly work. Much of the analysis of sound recording has been centered on motion pictures, and one of the