Sounding Human: Music and Machines, 1740/2020

Deirdre Loughridge's book Sounding Human explores the relationship between human and machine in music, challenging the "human or machine" logic and seeking out other conjunctions such as and or with. It traces the debate from the invention of the first musical android to the creation of a "sound wave instrument" and the chopped and pitched vocals produced by sampling singers' voices in modern pop music. Loughridge shows how machines have actively shaped the act of music composition and how musical artifacts can be used to explain and contest what it is to be human.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 05 December 2023
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

The relationship between humans and machines in music has been a complex and evolving discourse since the mid-eighteenth century. This discourse has established an absolute boundary between the two, with a recurring practice of parsing "human" musicality from its "merely mechanical" simulations. In her book, Sounding Human, Deirdre Loughridge challenges and dismantles this binary logic, seeking out alternative frameworks that better capture the nuanced interplay between human and machine.

Sounding Human delves into the debate on posthumanism and human-machine relationships in music, exploring how categories of human and machine have been continually renegotiated over centuries. Loughridge expertly traces this debate from the invention of the first musical android in 1737 to the creation of a "sound wave instrument" by a British electronic music composer in the 1960s and the use of chopped and pitched vocals produced by sampling singers' voices in modern pop music. Through a comprehensive analysis of various musical artifacts, including music-generating computer programs, older musical instruments, and music notation, Loughridge demonstrates how machines have always actively shaped the act of music composition.

One of the key insights of Sounding Human is that musical artifacts can be used to help explain and contest what it means to be human. By examining the ways in which machines have been employed to create and manipulate music, Loughridge reveals how musical technologies have the potential to challenge our assumptions about what it means to be a human performer or listener. For example, music-generating computer programs allow for the creation of music that is entirely synthetic, without the involvement of human musicians. This raises questions about the nature of creativity and the role of human agency in the production of music. Similarly, the use of chopped and pitched vocals in pop music highlights the ways in which machines can be used to manipulate and transform human voices, blurring the boundaries between natural and artificial sound.

In addition to its insights into the relationship between humans and machines in music, Sounding Human offers a rich and nuanced analysis of the historical and cultural contexts in which these relationships have developed. Loughridge explores how the development of musical technologies has been shaped by social, political, and economic factors, and how these technologies have in turn influenced the ways in which music is produced, consumed, and understood. For example, the rise of digital music technologies in the late twentieth century has transformed the way in which music is distributed, consumed, and created, and has led to the emergence of new genres and styles that are impossible to produce using traditional musical instruments.

Overall, Sounding Human is a groundbreaking work that offers a fresh and insightful perspective on the relationship between humans and machines in music. By challenging the binary logic that has dominated the discourse on this topic, Loughridge opens up new possibilities for understanding and exploring the complex and multifaceted ways in which music is shaped by human and machine. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in musicology.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226830094