To Know Beyond Listening

Abstract

In music production, "monitoring" refers traditionally to audile strategies intended to reveal the "true" sound of mediated audio. Here, it is expanded to include new, digital technologies intended to better know and control the record-object beyond what listening and listening technologies allow. Surveying traditional, contemporary, and emerging tools of record production and distribution, this essay addresses three types of monitoring: audio, visual, and data.In sum, monitoring entails the supplementation and subversion of the ear through protocols promising to surmount the biases and distortions of audio media.