Product Description

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #906840 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 303 pages

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 )

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

About the Author
PAUL THEBERGE is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal as well as a composer. He has published widely on music, technology, and culture and has created sound works for various media, including radio and film.

Customer Reviews

chock full of intelligent insights
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.

Excellent Evaluation of Modern Music
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.