First Advisor

Robert Shotola

Term of Graduation

Winter 2000

Date of Publication

3-16-2000

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Sociology

Department

Sociology

Language

English

Subjects

Alternative rock musicians -- Oregon -- Portland, Sound -- Recording and producing -- Digital techniques -- Oregon -- Portland, Music and technology -- Oregon -- Portland

Physical Description

1 online resource (116 pages)

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether differences exist between those steeped in the practice of the use of the computer in music production and those reared in a mostly analog environment. In addition, this study aimed to develop theory concerning who may be in or out of the technology revolution in music. The areas of inquiry included the artists' situated perceptions of the quality, production aesthetic, and community role of the computer.

Subjects were selected using a snowball sample of those producers with an interest in the topic area. As the research developed, subjects were chosen to balance the distribution amongst those twenty-two to twenty-seven and those twenty-eight to thirty-nine years of age.

Life-historical accounts of the musicians' relationship to recording and distributive conventions were solicited and grouped according to their position in an age cohort. A relationship developed between one's membership in the younger age group and a proclivity for computer resource use. Especially significant was the relationship between the scientific progress of technology and the relative expansion of the music scene in general; as tools for production became democratized and isolated to one machine, a proliferation of a variety of taste subgroups emerged, freed from the necessity of utilizing established networks of distribution and promotion. Alongside this perceived freedom was the dissolution of a central identity of the Portland rock community, which can be attributed in part to the explosion of the independent rock scene.

However, there is still ambivalence towards the potential of Internet "community;" situated actors are still clinging to physical notions of space and performance, even in the younger age group. This represents what I've termed a post-grunge, pre-MP3 generation, halfway between the promise of live rock and the potential of Internet distribution/communication community.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44703

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