Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music

I use this book as a central text in music education courses I teach at the University of Illinois (undergraduate through doctoral), and my students overwhelmingly find it fascinating and readable. The author brings a wealth of primary sources that really convey how sound recording and music making co-evolved over the twentieth century.This spring (2012) I had a chance to read the revised edition with a doctoral seminar, and I was very impressed with the number of refinements, extensions, and additional references. The revised edition reads as though Katz spoke with admirers and critics--some sections students found less convincing in the first edition have been greatly improved, and the best parts are untouched or improved. Given that many second editions today are cranked out simply to allow the publisher an opportunity to cut down on book reselling, a revision this extensive is uncommon and very welcome.There are many wonderful books that deal with sound recording today, and having read many this remains the book I recommend most frequently.

Very good overview of the relationship between technology and music. Pretty academic, but well researched and written.(Although Apocalyptica is not Danish but Finnish.)

Musical history is almost always written from an ethnographic point of view. This book adds the very important sound engineering perspective in a manner open to non-musicians. Mostly missing is how music has also been shaped by the venues where it is performed. Love this book!

thumbs up

This is a book written by an academic for academia. Unless that describes you, I would stay away. In general the writing style is very dry but I think the material he chooses is even worse. For example, how much really needs to be said about the increased use of vibrato in classical music? He devotes more than just a few pages to the topic. With such a wide range of topics to choose from, I would have liked to see much broader coverage. Instead we get excruciating detail on a very small number of topics.Before I gave up on the book, I realized the author probably did not set out to write a book on how technology has changed music. He more likely took his prior work and repackaged it into a book.

I recommend!

I greatly enjoy reading books that cover ground that I think I know well, then proceed to reveal insights far deeper than any I'd yet contemplated. Mark Katz has done this with some of my favorite subjects, music, records and recording technology, and then proceeds to add an entirely new dimension to my understanding of how these all relate (and continue to evolve together). To do this, he remixes a great number of insights coming from previous works I have come to know and love, including  Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy , The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century , and a widely eclectic appreciation of recorded music that I also share.And I am not alone in my appreciation for this book. In 2007 it won the Hacker Prize, which provided the following citation:The Hacker Prize rewards exceptional scholarship that reaches a broad audience. The audience so captured by Capturing Sound is primarily an undergraduate one, thus Katz has presented the Committee with a welcome opportunity to reward pedagogical writing. Textbooks are a genre that always challenge, and usually defeat, even the best of writers. Breaking the mold of the seemingly objective, chronologically-impelled narrative, Katz has produced a very different kind of work that succeeds on three different levels, all of which are important to historians of technology.I agree, and I think it will give other readers a new-found appreciation and understanding of their musical tastes and collections. And with the knowledge it imparts, you may find yourself discovering new evidence of the book's primary thesis: the phonograph effect. Even in today's world of CDs and MP3s (which, do not fear, Katz treats thoroughly).

Although being a scholarly work, fully footnoted and with a complete bibliograpy this book, unlike much of academic production, is a great read.I enjoyed it immensly.It is a good companion to Michael Channan's book on the same topic."Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music".If you are interested in the history of recording or just curious about how what we listen to came to be the way it is this book will delight you.

Very useful book for music students, it covers history, present and future of popular music and well written, not boring like other academic books

Un interessante libro sugli aspetti e le conseguenze sociali, culturali e musicali legati alla introduzione della musica "registrata". Un bel libro, che ho trovato molto interessante, e che inoltre si lascia leggere senza difficoltà. Un plauso all'autore.