In a musical context, the word ‘sound’ implies a set of sonic characteristics. Within popular music, this notion of sound sometimes supplies the very identity of a tune, a band or a musician. Sound is often conceptualised as a virtual space and in turn compared to actual spatial environments, such as a stage or an enclosed room. One possible consequence of this tendency is that this virtual space can become utterly surreal, displaying sonic features that could never occur in actual physical environments. This article concerns the ways in which the increased possibilities for creating a spatially surreal sound, thanks to new technological tools, have been explored within the field of popular music over the past few decades. We also look at the ways in which the effect of such features may have changed over time as a consequence of what we call processes of naturalisation. As a particularly interesting example of the complexity of such processes, we explore ‘the music sound stage’. In addition, we analyse three songs by Prince, Suede and Portishead to reveal the possibly surreal aspects of these productions.

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S026114301100047XHow to cite this article: Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Paul Harkins (2012). Contextual incongruity and musical congruity: the aesthetics and humour of mash-ups. AbstractThe academic literature on mash-ups has been dominated by discussions about issues relating to their illegal nature and infringement of copyright. We aim to appraise this musical style with a socio-musicological approach to focus on its aesthetics. We argue that mash-ups are characterised by two underlying principles, namely contextual incongruity of recognisable samples and musical congruity between the mashed tracks. Through our close analyses of The Evolution Control Committee's 'The Whipped Cream Mixes' and Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, we describe how contextual incongruity often creates a humorous effect, which explains why many listeners react with smiles and laughter when hearing a new mash-up. In successful mash-ups, the combination of musical congruity and contextual incongruity results in the paradoxical response: 'these two songs should definitely not work together . . . but they do!'

Researchers have argued that temporal microdeviations from the metric grid, such as those produced by musicians in performance, are crucial to making a musical rhythm groovy and danceable. It is curious, then, that the music currently dominating the dance floor, “electronic dance music” or EDM, is typically characterized by grid-based rhythms. But is such a “mechanistic,” grid-based aesthetic necessarily devoid of microrhythmic nuance? In this article, we aim to show that the microrhythmic component of an engaging groove involves the manipulation of more than simply the onset locations of rhythmic events—the sonic features fundamentally contribute to shaping the groove as well. In particular, we seek to demonstrate that EDM producers, with their preference for a grid-based microtiming aesthetic, are very sensitive to and adept at manipulating such sonic features for expressive effect. Drawing on interviews with EDM producers, we show that producers are often concerned with both sonic and temporal features, as well as their interactions. We argue that sonic features are crucial to shaping groove and feel at the micro level of rhythm. Moreover, such features also tend to introduce an indirect microtiming aspect to the grid-based aesthetic of EDM through the ways in which they shape timing at the perceptual level.

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How sonically distinctive digital “signatures”—including reverb, glitches, and autotuning—affect the aesthetics of popular music, analyzed in works by Prince, Lady Gaga, and others. Is digital production killing the soul of music? Is Auto-Tune the nadir of creative expression? Digital technology has changed not only how music is produced, distributed, and consumed but also—equally important but not often considered—how music sounds. In this book, Ragnhild Brøvig and Anne Danielsen examine the impact of digitization on the aesthetics of popular music. They investigate sonically distinctive “digital signatures”—musical moments when the use of digital technology is revealed to the listener. The particular signatures of digital mediation they examine include digital reverb and delay, MIDI and sampling, digital silence, the virtual cut-and-paste tool, digital glitches, microrhythmic manipulation, and autotuning—all of which they analyze in specific works by popular artists. Combining technical and historical knowledge of music production with musical analyses, aesthetic interpretations, and theoretical discussions, Brøvig and Danielsen offer unique insights into how digitization has changed the sound of popular music and the listener's experience of it. For example, they show how digital reverb and delay have allowed experimentation with spatiality by analyzing Kate Bush's “Get Out of My House”; they examine the contrast between digital silence and the low-tech noises of tape hiss or vinyl crackle in Portishead's “Stranger”; and they describe the development of Auto-Tune—at first a tool for pitch correction—into an artistic effect, citing work by various hip-hop artists, Bon Iver, and Lady Gaga.