Tagung | Hands On Sonic Skills

Across the intersection of musicology, media studies, sound studies, and other disciplines, new disciplinary branches such as Music Production Research (Bennett & Bates 2019; Bourbon & Zagorski 2020) have emerged, which have developed their own theoretical approaches and methods for researching recorded and technically mediated music. Today, knowledge of audio-technical processes and a sensory sensitivity for the design of sound are no longer regarded merely as engineering expertise, but as part of cultural practices that shape musical activity from the ground up and must therefore also be part of musicological questions and knowledge.

Such knowledge is often implicit, ‚tacit knowledge‘ and therefore observable as practice or musical action. Therefore, ethnographic, praxeological, and artistic research methods are particularly frequently applied in this field, for example in the form of field research (Bürkner 2013; Bates 2017; Huschner 2016), reenactments (Fickers/van den Oever 2022; Meynell 2017, Dörfling 2022), and media experiments in artistic research (Badura et al 2015, van der Heijden/Kolkowski 2023). These approaches suggest that in many cases observations informed by one’s own experiential practical approaches aid in gaining a deeper understanding of media-cultural-musicological phenomena.

This shift is also taking root in musicological teaching, for instance in new chairs, module regulations, and degree programs. At locations such as Bonn, Oldenburg, Berlin (HU), Lüneburg, Hildesheim, and Halle (Saale), as well as in London, Agder, Huddersfield, or Concordia, recording studio technology, synthesizers, DIY electronics, and Digital Audio Workstations are becoming essential elements of musicological education. The practical engagement with sound and its production contexts ranges from the history of the tape recorder to introductory courses in miking and mixing techniques to listening sessions that focus on the sonic design of ›produced music.‹ This engagement often takes place in university-owned recording studios. These ›toolscapes‹ of music production prove to be particularly suitable places for practice-oriented learning. (King & Hemonides 2016).

The conference brings together a cross-section of materially and practically oriented research and teaching and offers space for discussions on how current scientific and didactic approaches can benefit from each other.