Capturing Sound

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. In this award-winning text, Mark Katz provides 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. Fully revised and updated, this new edition adds coverage of mashups and Auto-Tune, explores recent developments in file-sharing, and includes an expanded conclusion and bibliography. A new companion Web site features illustrative sound and film clips.

"In Capturing Sound, Mark Katz focuses on the overwhelming technological transformation that changed music from a medium of elite and canonical performances to a mass-consumed fashion-object experienced privately. Underneath a wealth of scholarship and insight about how new recording techniques continue to change our experience of music, Katz wonders how we ourselves have been changed by the successive recording technologies that emerged since Edison. This is a one-of-a-kind book. It will change your mind about why and how we listen to music." Giles Slade, author of Made to Break, www.huffingtonpost.com/giles-slade

"Of a number of recent books on the history of recording...Katz's book is the most approachable...In lucid, evanhanded prose, it ranges all over the map, from classical to hip-hop." New Yorker

"A creative and highly original examination of the countless ways in which recordings...have transformed our understanding of what we listen to and for. Katz is at home in every musical genre." Washington Post Book World

"A unique, fascinating, and quirky look at the catalyzing effect recording technology and culture has had upon music and music making. This is an important book [and] a good read." ARSC Journal