Abstract
Engineers are almost forgotten in the story of record-making and, where they are mentioned, they are rarely credited with having artistic or creative status. These views are problematically linked to inspirationalist and romantic conceptions of creativity and, although they have now been dismissed as myths (Boden 2004), these romantic distinctions between art and craft and consequently what is considered to be creative continue to pervade the recording industry, the media and the popular imagination. Because of this, engineers’ contributions in the recording studio continue to be seen as overtly technical rather than creative. This chapter offers an alternative take on sound engineering by presenting it as a creative system in action. Side A begins with a contextualization of the elements of the creative system so they apply to the creative task of engineering, and the Side B presents examples of the creative practices of engineering in commercial record production including Ken Scott’s kick drum mic’ing method and Marta Salogni’s process of mixing Björk’s ninth studio album Utopia (2017).
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Notes
- 1.
A stem is another term for a sub-mix in which two or more elements are mixed together within a larger mix.
- 2.
A board mix is typically a rough balance that is captured at the end of a session so the artist, producer or label representative can listen to it after the session has ended.
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Recordings Cited
Björk. (2017). Utopia. One Little Indian.
Jackson, Michael. (1979). Rock With You. Epic: Off The Wall.
Interviews
Ken Scott interviewed at Leeds Beckett University UK—November 2017.
Marta Salogni interviewed at Leeds Beckett University UK—March 2018.
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Thompson, P. (2019). The Creative System of Engineering. In: Creativity in the Recording Studio. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01650-0_8
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