Studying Digital Music: Coloring, Sculpting and Playing in Sound
Summary
This thesis explores ways in media and performance studies to analyze digital music,
particularly hip-hop music, through its production practice. Although the formal elements
of popular music such as hip-hop include simplistic structures of lyricism, rhythm,
harmony and melody are simple and repetitive, a robust study of the interplay between
human and nonhuman actors shows the dynamic nature of sonic emergence. As
contemporary hip-hop creation is based in the digital music studio, this thesis first
explores contemporary music production as a new musical ontology. Then it will explore
digital culture as a set of anxieties and also provide opportunities with which to
conceptualize digitally-produced music as dynamic performance. Zooming in on the
Digital Audio Workstation, this thesis will also explore how the DAW as a specific digitalmaterial
object transforms musical engagement and sensation. Finally, a ludomusical
perspective considers the dynamic play between bodies, materiality and sound,
augmenting the perceived simplicity of hip-hop sonorities into a vast landscape of
complex interactions and agencies.
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