Sonic Writing - by Thor Magnusson (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Sonic Writing explores how contemporary music technologies trace their ancestry to previous forms of instruments and media. Studying the domains of instrument design, musical notation, and sound recording under the rubrics of material, symbolic, and signal inscriptions of sound, the book describes how these historical techniques of sonic writing are implemented in new digital music technologies. With a scope ranging from ancient Greek music theory, medieval notation, early modern scientific instrumentation to contemporary multimedia and artificial intelligence, it provides a theoretical grounding for further study and development of technologies of musical expression. The book draws a bespoke affinity and similarity between current musical practices and those from before the advent of notation and recording, stressing the importance of instrument design in the study of new music and projecting how new computational technologies, including machine learning, will transform our musical practices.

Sonic Writing offers a richly illustrated study of contemporary musical media, where interactivity, artificial intelligence, and networked devices disclose new possibilities for musical expression. Thor Magnusson provides a conceptual framework for the creation and analysis of this new musical work, arguing that contemporary sonic writing becomes a new form of material and symbolic design--one that is bound to be ephemeral, a system of fluid objects where technologies are continually redesigned in a fast cycle of innovation.

Review Quotes

"Thor Magnusson, with his insights based on a profound knowledge of both theory and practice, provides us with as good a map as we are likely to get." - Technology and Culture

"Thor Magnusson's Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions is one of those rare reads that manages to connect, to clarify, and to serve as a great starting point for conceptualizing what we're up to even as we're doing it. What Thor's up to is something which is different and thought-provoking - he's interested in looking at some of the ways in which technology has always conditioned our musical expression, even as it modifies and redefines it." - Interference Journal

"In this kaleidoscopic synthesis of history, theory, and organology, Thor Magnusson offers not only a groundbreaking interpretation of digital musical instruments but also bracing new perspectives on instrumentality as such." --Thomas Patteson, Professor of Music History, Curtis Institute of Music, USA, and author of Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology, and Modernism (2015)

"This is a fascinating and giddy sprint through the long history of our digital present. Magnusson tells the history of 20th- and 21st-century music through the lens of inscription--capaciously understood to encompass musical instruments, controllers, interfaces, notation, and recording. By turns breathlessly ambitious in his broad historical sweep and revelatory in his detailed attention to individual technologies, Magnusson gives his readers a host of critical tools to think through the challenges and affordances of our musical tools." --Emily I. Dolan, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of Music, Harvard University, USA, and author of The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the Technologies of Timbre (2013)

"There are books on new digital instruments and technologies, or on electronic music practice and sound design, but Magnusson's book is unique in its exploration of how technology conditions our musical expression. By focusing on the conditions on which current digital technologies are redefining musical practices, and through a rigorous analysis in the three domains of musical instruments, notation, and recording, Magnusson has authored an essential book for understanding the musical paradigm shifts that are emerging in our early 21st century." --Sergi Jordà, digital luthier, music technology researcher and Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain; creator of the Reactable music instrument and founder of Reactable Systems

About the Author