The Art of Record Production

Creative Practice in the Studio

Simon Zagorski-Thomas, Katia Isakoff, Serge Lacasse, Sophie Stévance, Simon Zagorski-Thomas, Katia Isakoff, Serge Lacasse, Sophie Stévance

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781315467634
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation

The playback of recordings is the primary means of experiencing music in contemporary society, and in recent years 'classical' musicologists and popular music theorists have begun to examine the ways in which the production of recordings affects not just the sound of the final product but also musical aesthetics more generally. Record production can, indeed, be treated as part of the creative process of composition. At the same time, training in the use of these forms of technology has moved from an apprentice-based system into university education. Musical education and music research are thus intersecting to produce a new academic field: the history and analysis of the production of recorded music. This book is designed as a general introductory reader, a text book for undergraduate degree courses studying the creative processes involved in the production of recorded music. The aim is to introduce students to the variety of approaches and methodologies that are currently being employed by scholars in this field. The book is divided into three sections covering historical approaches, theoretical approaches and case studies and practice. There are also three interludes of commentary on the academic contributions from leading record producers and other industry professionals. This collection gives students and scholars a broad overview of the way in which academics from the analytical and practice-based areas of the university system can be brought together with industry professionals to explore the ways in which this new academic field should progress.

Part I

The creative use of technology

1 Tanya Tagaq

A cosmopolitan artist in the studio

Sophie Stévance and Serge Lacasse

Context

Tagaq’s knowledge of throat singing has been facilitated by technology from the start: her mother sent her recordings of Inuit throat singing games when she was studying in Halifax in the 1990s. Even though the listener may distinguish certain details that are impossible to perceive in the context of the katajjaq tradition when Tagaq performs with a microphone on stage, these details are even more discernible and likewise exploited in the studio, including the texture and timbre of her voice, both inhalation and exhalation, and sounds placed in the chest, throat, mouth or nose. Moreover, in the recording studio, Tagaq sings alone using overdubbing techniques, while in a traditional context two female players sing together in such an intricate way that listeners are not able to distinguish between the two voices. Tagaq thus creates a new game in which she interacts with, and responds to herself with the help of recording technology. In the context of this chapter, we will look at some techniques used in the recordings of two traditional Inuit songs (“Qimiruluapik” and “Qiujavitt”) featured on her 2005 Sinaa album, notably to highlight the complementary rhythmic, melodic and timbral features of the two vocal tracks; we will also analyze vocal configurations in excerpts from Animism (2014). The objective is to examine her use of overdubbing and other recording techniques, which will allow us to better understand her creative process. Not only will these analyses demonstrate the dialogue between tradition and contemporary popular music as Tagaq performs a vocal game with herself in the recording studio (particularly in the context of the Sinaa album), but they also characterize the artistic practice of a new Aboriginal generation that is able to present, through the logic of cultural reconciliation and strategies of hybridization, its artistic production in the process of an international cultural movement. As we will suggest, this posture is characteristic of “aesthetic cosmopolitanism” (Regev 2013).

In this chapter we seek to answer the following question: how does the musical and theatrical art of the Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq—who practices a form of throat singing called katajjaq in a pop-electro-experimental musical context—situate itself in relation to the discourses of cultural identity of the emergent generation of Aboriginal youth? This young generation is both tied to the preservation of its heritage and influenced by new transcultural productions. To better understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to examine the approach of a new Aboriginal artist who willingly goes beyond her Inuit cultural heritage in order to feed diverse influences and integrate her creations into a transnational artistic production.

Like other First Nations and Inuit artists and writers, Tagaq claims a “right to modernity” through a process of cultural blending, by mixing local tradition and borrowed elements. The artist defends, as do other Inuit artists, “her right NOT to sound Inuit” (cited in Diamond 2007, 181), all the while alluding to the history of her community. The methods of integrating elements of local (for example, throat singing) and Western music (for example, technology) in Tagaq’s musical practice are indicative of the tensions that exist between the global and the local, the collective and the singular, and we believe that it is at the intersection of these polarities that Tagaq constructs her “signature style” (a term borrowed from Desroches 2008). How does this cultural dialogue manifest itself in her musical performances? Which aspects of Tagaq’s practice reveal, on the one hand, a traditional practice and, on the other hand, a contemporary practice? More specifically, in her studio recordings, which aspects of Tagaq’s artistic practice demonstrate elements of katajjaq tradition and which elements reveal contemporary practice? In the end, how do these traditional and contemporary elements develop into a dialogue in the work of Tagaq? This chapter will present some results showing how Tagaq draws on aspects of the katajjaq tradition in her first studio album entitled Sinaa (Tagaq 2005) to Animism (Tagaq 2014). We will describe some aspects of traditional katajjaq and analyze Inuit songs featured on this album.

In previous studies, Sophie Stévance (2011, 2013a, 2015) has primarily focused on melodic and rhythmic structures, showing that Tagaq’s material was contributing to a “comprovisational” formal development (Dale 2008), that is, a structure consisting of localized improvised or varied segments integrated within a larger formal structure adopting a traditional frame (e.g., ABAA) leaning toward composition. Stévance has also examined gender aspects of Tagaq’s practice notably in terms of her agency (Stévance 2017). In this chapter, we will concentrate instead on Tagaq’s vocal performance and the way in which it has been phonographically staged (Lacasse 2000).

This analysis will show a unique approach to throat singing, in which Tanya Tagaq interacts with and responds to herself with the help of recording technology. Thus, the objective of this contribution is to examine her use of multitrack recording and overdubbing, which will eventually allow us to better understand her creative process in the studio, in the context of this emergent dialogue between traditional and contemporary practices. This dialogue could be interpreted through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of deterritorialization (1972/1977). According to these philosophers, this concept describes the displacement of an object (language, script, culture, etc.) into another context. From the perspective of non-Aboriginal culture, the term deterritorialization allows us to illustrate how Tagaq’s katajjaq practice is detached from her surrounding environment. But all deterritorializing acts give rise to a reciprocal process of reterritorialization: how do we characterize the process of reterritorialization generated by Tagaq’s practice, which removes the katajjaq from its traditional context? From our perspective, the term aesthetic cosmopolitanism (Regev 2007a; 2007b; 2011; 2013), to which we shall turn later, illustrates that the art of Aboriginal youth gives rise to the emergence of new artistic scenes and practices, but participates, above all, on an equal footing with world-famous artists (e.g., Björk, with whom Tagaq collaborates) within a global cultural production: “The result is an electric ‘ethno-rock,’ often received with much enthusiasm by critics and audiences for its perceived seamless hybridity of indigenous tradition and state of the art modernity” (Regev 2007b, 325). As we will see, Tanya Tagaq’s art seems particularly representative of this tendency.

Elements of Tagaq’s biography

Tanya Tagaq was born in 1975 and raised in the remote Inuit community of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where she had only superficial exposure to throat singing. At the age of 15 she left home for the city to study visual arts but, during her final year of art school, she became increasingly homesick and, as a way of re-connecting with the Inuit culture she had left behind, she began teaching herself throat singing from tapes sent to her by her mother. Coming south in the 1990s to study visual arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, she was heading, she believed, for a career as an artist and art teacher. While living in Halifax, Tagaq was exposed to a whole new world of music, including electronic, dance music, and rave.

Tagaq both writes and performs most of her songs: she has several albums to her credit, such as Sinaa, released in 2005 (almost completely a cappella in which she sings a duet with Björk) and another album, from 2008, called Auk/Blood, in which electronic sounds dominate. Her third studio album, Animism (2014), was mixed (and some of it produced) in September 2013 in the new Laboratoire audionumérique de recherche et de création (LARC) at the Faculty of Music, Université Laval (Mix Magazine, June 2013).¹ Her most recent album, Retribution (2016), was also mixed at the LARC in January 2016.²

Tagaq’s work is inspired by katajjaq techniques. In a traditional context, during a katajjaq, two women stand face to face holding each other’s arms or shoulders. They use the opponent’s mouth as a resonator, most notably in order to accentuate the impression that the two performances fuse into a single sonic entity. With a fast and continuous rhythm, each of them will produce a sound that will be imitated, completed or modified by the other, giving rise to a highly interactive process. The sounds and formulas used are generally low and throaty, and can be the imitation of animal cries, laughs, rattles, sighs, or grunts. They can also be produced on a precise pitch. The general effect is a melody against which the rhythm evolves following the slight movement of the women’s bodies. This vivacious alternation will be broken when one of the women makes a mistake or can no longer follow the beat. Thus, the mounting pressure is suddenly broken by the woman who loses the game, bursting into laughter. The game comes to an end for various reasons: physical (loss of breath), emotional (laughter) or creative (incapacity to follow the pattern suggested by the opponent, or inability to create another one). This throat game is, first and foremost, a playful experience, involving winners and losers. The “game” aspect is therefore the most important. However the players are nevertheless appreciated for their endurance and the sounds that they produce. So the goal is to win, but with dignity: certain sounds are considered to be more difficult to perform than others. It is the variety of sounds that determines the complexity and, therefore, the value of the game.

Tagaq’s knowledge of throat singing has been mediated by technology from the start: as we already mentioned, her mother sent her recordings of Inuit throat singing when she was studying in Halifax in the 1990s. Even though the listener may distinguish certain details that are impossible to perceive in the context of the katajjaq tradition when Tagaq performs with a microphone on stage, these details are even more discernible and are likewise exploited in the studio, including the texture and timbre of her voice, inhalation and exhalation, and sounds placed in the chest, throat, mouth or nose. Tagaq’s phonostyle is composed of a wide range of vocal techniques and sounds borrowed from traditional katajjaq, but also from other sources, including more pop-oriented approaches.³ For example, in “Sila” (Tagaq 2005), we can identify many of these phonostylistic elements, including pitched grunts, loud inhalation and exhalation, ingressive sounds, non-harmonic grunts, as well as more conventional sung parts performed either in full or head voice.

In traditional katajjaq, one goal is to give

the impression that the two voices are producing two different series of sounds, when in fact both women are creating each of the sounds heard. The stronger the illusion of two different voices with two different lines, the more successful is the game …. What is fundamental … is to maintain the illusion that all sounds are produced by a single source.

(Beaudry 1988, 278)

The search for this sonic “illusion” is supported by a number of techniques. Usually, two women stand very close together, almost singing into one another’s mouths. In the case of Ainu women, each performer puts her hands around her own mouth, then the women bring their hands together, forming a kind of tube through which they sing. It is even possible to use found objects, such as cooking pans, in order to accentuate the illusion. According to Nicole Beaudry: “the players place their heads inside or under some sort of container that acts as a resonator but also, more importantly, further disguises the exact source of each voice” (1988, 278).

Interestingly, in a few tracks, such as “Qimiruluapik” (Tagaq 2005), Tagaq sings all parts of the traditional katajjait. Because of the multitrack recording process, improvisation is, of course, losing ground in favor of a more constructed vision, since tracks are produced in sequence and not in real time as would be the case in a traditional performance; from this perspective, parts should be approached as complementary, and the performance becomes closer to a comprovisational process (Dale 2008, 5). Conversely, this same overdubbing process directly contributes to the impression of the mingling of parts, characteristic of a traditional performance; the re-recording of the same voice is, of course, reinforcing this perception of timbral fusion. Interestingly, the stereophonic treatment of the recording is mitigated. On the one hand, voices are panned left/right so we can distinguish each of the parts; on the other, the panning is subtle (approximately 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock), which still contributes to the merging of the vocal timbre.

Finally, it is clear to our ears that vocal elements are mixed in a “contemporary” way, in that it points toward a sort of functional interpretation of the different vocal sounds. For example, low-frequency sounds are manipulated in isolation, just as we would do with a kick drum: as we can hear on the recording, the low ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors and Editors
• Preface: André Perry: A Quebecer Pioneer of Music Recording
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I The Creative Use of Technology
• Part II The Social Interactions of Production Activity
• Part III Forms of Theoretical Analysis
• Index