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'In Their Private Space': Physical Proximity and Sound Mediation in Fundamentalist Christian Music Recordings

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Monday, March 30, 2015
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Sarah Bereza
Graduate Scholars Colloquium

This paper explores the relational possibilities between a listener and recorded musician. In fundamentalist Christian music recordings, vocalists are recorded with a conspicuous acoustic distance from listeners, mimicking the sound of live music events at their churches; in contrast, many recordings of pop music suggest intimacy via close-miking. I show that fundamentalists¿ preference for distance stems from their implicit view that the mediation of recording has no real effect on listeners¿ experiences of recorded versus live music. If a live performance has sexually connotative elements that, fundamentalists believe, should be avoided as sinful, then the recording of that performance must retain those elements because the process of recording does not alter them.presented by Sarah Bereza, Ph.D. candidate in Musicology.