Thursday, September 11, 2008

Hi

Hello - my name is Kaitlin. I don't know very much about audio/radio language or equipment. The mid-week workshop was helpful. Does anybody know of any books that would be good for an introduction (other than the one we have for class)?

2 comments:

Cambra said...

Hi Kaitlin!

Oh man, have I got a reading list for you!

A couple to get you started (all are highly, highly recommended for anyone interested in cultural analysis of sound, audio production, and radio art):

Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction--a very comprehensive (and interesting) history of sound technologies

Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead (eds.), Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde

Douglas Kahn (again--these academic analyses of sound and radio can get pretty incestuous), Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts

Allen Weiss (who writes extensively on radio art specifically), Phantasmic Radio

Allen Weiss (ed.), Experimental Sound and Radio

Again, these are some heavy hitters whose names you'll likely see again as you (or, if you choose to) dive more deeply into this stuff.

Happy reading!

Jim Briggs said...

I've got one other to add to Cambra's sterling selections:

It's on the syllabus as a recommended text, but Stanley Alten's Audio in Media is a great resource for sound knowledge. It really provides the building blocks of sound and is something you can put down and come back to when you need it.

It does not come cheap, but prior editions are suitable as well if you locate something used.

Alten just may help you better understand some of the principles that Sterne, Kahn, Weiss, et al will be discussing in their writings.