The Logic of Filtering: How Noise Shapes the Sound of Recorded Music

The Logic of Filtering traces the profound impact of technical media on the sound of music, asking: how do media technologies shape sound? How does this affect music? And how did it change what we listen for in music? Since the invention of sound recording in the second half of the nineteenth century, media that transmit, record, store, and reproduce physical sound inspired dreams of perfect reproduction, but were also confronted with the inevitable introduction of noise. Based on a wide range of historical, technical and theoretical sources, author Melle Jan Kromhout explores this one hundred and forty-year history of sound media and shows why noise should not be understood as unwanted by-effect, but instead plays a foundational role in shaping the sonic contours of recorded music. The Logic of Filtering develops an extensive media archaeological analysis of the 'noise of sound media,' encompassing all the disturbances, distortions, and interferences that these media add to the sounds they reproduce. It thereby stands to enrich our understanding of the way in which sound media changed and continue to change the sonorous qualities of music, and offers new perspectives on the interaction between music, media and listeners.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction: The Noise of Sound Media Chapter 1: The Myth of Perfect Fidelity Chapter 2: The Logic of Noise Reduction Chapter 3: Ideal and Technical Filters Chapter 4: Time and Transience Chapter 5: The Logic of Filtering Conclusion: The 'Other Music' Bibliography

About the Author :
Melle Jan Kromhout is an independent scholar working on the intersection of musicology, sound studies, and media studies. After completing his PhD at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Music and Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.

Review :
Melle Kromhout is one of a new wave of scholars who are acutely attentive to the forces at work within the sound reproduction chain. In The Logic of Filtering, he first invites us to listen to so-called 'silence' anew, then unveils it as teeming with sonic life, historiography, and meaning. Could there be a philosophy of dithering? A sonic guide to living with transience? A political critique of the sine wave? Yes and yes and yes. In this elegant book, Kromhout explains the logic of filtering—our cultural logic, in an era of technical mediation.