Abstract Orchestra, a Leeds-based ensemble, has gained international acclaim for their innovative interpretations of hip hop tracks by legends like J Dilla, Madlib, and MF DOOM. This chapter focuses on their rendition of Madvillain’s “Meat Grinder,” addressing the complexities of a predominantly white ensemble performing music created by Black artists. Through the lens of Signifyin(g), our analysis highlights their respectful dialogue with the original track and argues that their rendition can be positioned as a tribute and respectful homage that enriches the hip hop legacy.

This article explores the dynamic interplay between human musicianship and machine music through the concept of ‘machine aesthetics.’ Drawing on Barry Brummett’s framework, which categorizes machine aesthetics into ‘mectech,’ ‘electrotech,’ and ‘chaotech,’ we clarify often-conflated concepts. By examining live performances that mimic machine-generated sounds, we demonstrate how a nuanced understanding of machine aesthetics can enrich our insight into the relationships between musical expression and technology.

This article provides an overview of current AI-assisted tools used in music composition and production and demonstrate their application through research-based music production. By highlighting the diverse range of applications and levels of automation offered by AI tools, we nuance the discourse focused on AI-generated tracks and challenge the assumption that using AI necessarily equates to cheating. We demonstrate how musicians can harness AI to support their artistry without overshadowing human expression, ensuring that creativity and integrity remain at the forefront.

This article explores glitch aesthetics in telematic music performances (playing music together over the internet). Focusing on the "Love Your Latency" music project, it highlights how low-speed, consumer-friendly communication tools connect musicians across cities, enabling them to creatively engage with the challenges and aesthetic possibilities of temporal latency and other technological glitches. Ultimately, the chapter examines how spatiotemporal glitches provide a critical lens on the post-digital experience of navigating overlapping spaces and temporalities in everyday life.

This article (which can be translated to "Women's First Meeting with DAW: A Feeling of Being in the Shadow of the Boys' Club") explores women's first encounters with Digital Audio Workstations to shed light on why fewer women than men produce music. Interviews with female participants in introductory music production courses reveal that mastering this technology is seen as essential for gaining control and recognition of their work. However, they also encounter male dominance that hinders their creative expression and believe that women-focused introductory courses in production technology can help improve gender representation in the music industry.

While terms like "theft" and "piracy" have often been used to describe sampling, equating it with criminal behavior overlooks the complexities of copyright law and the ethical perspectives of remix artists. Drawing on interviews with mashup producers, this chapter reveals their perspectives and ethical guidelines regarding sampling, emphasizing the distinction between plagiarism and acknowledged appropriation, where the latter serves as a form of artistic commentary rather than a mere exploitation of others' work. This chapter draws on material elaborated on in my book Parody in the Age of Remix: Mashup Creativity vs. the Takedown (2023, MIT Press).

Vocal chops have surged in popularity over the past decade, becoming a staple in the music scene and dominating hit charts. Defined as fragments of vocal samples that are processed, repitched, and rearranged rhythmically to create hooks and effects, these chops have evolved from earlier forms of vocal manipulation into a unique sound that has gained mainstream acceptance. This article explores their historical development and various artistic approaches to creating them through examining various tracks. It argues that despite their transition from innovative to cliché, and ultimately to just a useful tool in the producer’s toolkit, vocal chops continue to engage listeners due to the tension they create between the human and the synthetic.

This article summarizes the key findings of the TIME research project (2017–2022), which explored microrhythm, focusing on how factors like dynamic envelope, timbre, frequency, and microtiming affect the perceived rhythmic properties of sounds. By combining theoretical and musical analysis, experimental perception studies, and ethnography, we found that (a) altering the microstructure of a sound changes its perceived temporal location, (b) there are systematic effects of core acoustic factors (duration and attack) on microrhythmic perception, (c) microrhythmic features in longer and more complex sounds can give rise to different perceptions of the same sound, and (d) musicians are highly aware of microrhythms and have developed vocabularies for describing them.

Shaping sound events at the microlevel of rhythm is significant in many groove-based musics. This study examines how parameters such as timing, attack shape, timbre, and relative intensity contribute to groove through interviews with musicians and producers across five genres: jazz, samba, electronic dance music, hip-hop, and traditional Scandinavian fiddle music. Our findings highlight genre-specificity as well as cross-generic focus areas, the multiparameter nature of music, and the intrinsic interaction between temporal and sonic features. This focus on genre-specificity and sound broadens the scholarly discourse on groove, which has often adopted a more general and time-oriented perspective on rhythm.

This article examines how content moderation systems on internet platforms impact mashup music—a form of remix music that exists in the legal grey zone. Our empirical study reveals that these systems influence producers' creative decisions, distribution strategies, and motivation to create. We argue that the content moderation practices used by various platforms inadequately accommodate copyright exceptions. Ultimately, the political-economic power of these platforms enables them to control the grey zone of copyright, substantially diminishing the practical effectiveness of copyright law's exceptions.

This chapter analyzes Kid Koala's '1 bit Blues' from his album 12 bit Blues (2012), highlighting his distinctive ability to blend eclectic samples with virtuosic turntable techniques to create a captivating dialogue between blues and hip-hop, as well as between live performance and sampling. By using the E-mu SP-1200 drum machine to deconstruct and recontextualize samples from old blues records, Kid Koala playfully reimagines the genre, simultaneously preserving and challenging its key features.

This article is based on our research from the TIME project and a presentation I gave at the Interacting in and with Music Conference at Rennes 2 University in 2017. The conference focused on sound, gesture, and devices in contemporary electronic and electroacoustic music. This article in French covers much of the same material as the English article "Dynamic Range Processing's Influence on Perceived Timing in Electronic Dance Music" (2020), which, like this article, is co-authored with Bjørnar E. Sandvik and Jon Marius Drecker-Aareskjold.

Subtle deviations from the metrical grid are often seen as crucial for creating groovy, danceable rhythms. Yet, electronic dance music (EDM)—the dominant genre on dance floors–relies heavily on grid-based rhythms, which raises questions about the presence of microrhythmic nuance. In this article, we demonstrate that the elements contributing to a compelling groove extend beyond timing to include vital sonic qualities. Interviews with EDM producers reveal their sensitivity to both sonic and temporal features and how these aspects interact to enhance expressiveness. We argue that sonic characteristics are crucial for shaping groove at the micro level, introducing a nuanced microtiming element to EDM’s otherwise grid-based aesthetic.

In this article, we explore how dynamic range processing—such as compression and sidechain "pumping"—influences our perception of sound positioning in music. While previous research highlights the unique rhythmic effects of sidechain compression, we interrogate and expand on this idea by linking these effects to perceptual studies on sound and timing, as well as analyzing DAW project files from selected EDM tracks. This interplay between dynamic range processing and perceived timing emphasizes the importance of considering listeners' experiences alongside technical explanations to fully understand the grooves characteristic of EDM and other genres.

This article, written in Norwegian, builds on the same material and presents the same arguments as the article 'Remix Retreat' (2021), described above.

This proceeding from the AoIR conference draws upon the same material and offers similar arguments to those found in 'Remix Retreat' (2021) mentioned earlier.

While I have introduced the concepts of opaque and transparent mediation in previous publications, this article provides the most thorough account. It explores these concepts as both perceptual categories and aesthetic paradigms, emphasizing that our perception of technological mediation in music depends more on how it is presented and perceived than on the amount of technology involved. Opaque mediation occurs when technology is perceived as leaving audible marks on the music and actively contributing to its expression, while transparent mediation directs the listener’s focus toward the mediated content rather than the technology itself. The article outlines three moments when technological mediation is likely to be perceived as opaque: when it disrupts the spatiotemporal coherence of the music; when it challenges our familiar way of hearing a sound; and when it operates at the border between what is considered part of the music's interior and exterior. These categories are thus flexible and will vary depending on the listener.

The article examines the role of humor in user-generated remixes, including songifications, lip-sync videos, and mashups, often shared on platforms like YouTube. While much scholarly attention has focused on the social implications of these remixes, their humorous elements remain less explored. By applying humor theories from philosophy, linguistics, and psychology, the chapter argues that the structure of many remixes resembles jokes in subverting audience expectations while making sense in the new context. The chapter concludes that humor serves diverse functions in remixes, providing entertainment and escapism to facilitating critical commentary on social norms and stereotypes. By examining the adaptability of humor theories to remix culture, the article underscores the importance of humor in understanding the virality and popularity of user-generated content.

This article examines user-generated music remix videos throughout the 2016 election cycle. It aims to discover not just whether remix was used as a vehicle of critique or support, but how remix affordances have been adapted into a rhetorical language for these purposes. Above and beyond the remixes’ unique qualitative characteristics, we identify four specific rhetorical tactics that appear consistently, which we call "witnessing," “pwning," “incongruity," and “noisification." Ultimately, we argue that these tactics yield a complex, nuanced, and yet widely understood and broadly accessible language of critique and commentary through remix.

Recorded sound is acousmatic, meaning it conceals its visual sources, leading listeners to draw on their past experiences with sound. When these auditory expectations are challenged, it may lead to experiences of the music as unnatural, uncanny, hyperreal, or surreal, expanding listeners' perception of reality. Additionally, the adaptability of our hearing plays a crucial role: as listeners encounter new sonic environments, they quickly adjust, allowing innovative musical expressions enabled by recording technology to become familiar and integrated into their listening experience. This chapter explores these perceptual mechanisms in relation to acousmatic sound and examines the broader connection between live performances and recorded music, offering insights into how our understanding of sound evolves with technology.

The article underscores the significance of virtual studios and distribution platforms in the proliferation of remixes, highlighting how this new landscape blurs the boundaries between consumers and producers, enabling individuals to transition from mere consumption to active music creation. In this context, the act of sampling and remixing existing tracks is redefined as a legitimate form of artistic production, challenging traditional notions of authorship and creativity. Through a detailed analysis of Isosine's mashup "Psychosocial Baby," which combines Slipknot’s "Psychosocial" and Justin Bieber’s "Baby," the article demonstrates how mashups and remixes invite audiences to engage with music as well as virtual bands and events in unique ways through intertextual play. Ultimately, the article asserts that while remixes challenge conventional conceptions of music-making, they also highlight the transformative power of virtuality in fostering imaginative artistic collaboration and reinforcing the artist's role and creativity within this dynamic digital landscape.

This paper examines the emergence of participatory culture, emphasizing the role of user-generated content—especially remixes and mashups—as vital forms of cultural expression and commentary. Through the analysis of specific mashups, the paper highlights how these musical blends challenge societal norms, stimulate discussions on identity and power dynamics, and enrich our understanding of music, aesthetics, and authorship in the digital age.

The article details the development of the magnetic tape recorder from Oberlin Smith's ideas to its widespread acceptance in the late 1940s. Drawing on R. Murray Schafer's concept of "schizophonia," which highlights the splitting of sound from its source, I argue that the magnetic tape recorder ushered in a new era of schizophonia, allowing for greater manipulation of sound and thus redefining how music is created and experienced. I illustrates how these new recording and editing capabilities were realized in various ways during this creative period, positing that the shift to magnetic tape and multitrack recording led to the emergence of three recording paradigms that remain relevant today. The first is the “documentary event,” which aims to represent performances in a manner that convinces listeners that what they hear once existed in “real life.” The second, the “ideal event” paradigm, presents performances that may be entirely imagined, without any pretense otherwise, but still sound spatiotemporally coherent, sacrificing veracity for perfection. The last paradigm, which I here call the “surrealistic event,” foregrounds temporal and spatial fragmentation, presenting a musical event that could not be realized in an acoustic environment without the aid of studio technology.

In a musical context, the term 'sound' refers to a set of sonic characteristics that often define the identity of a tune, a band, or a musician. Sound is typically conceptualized as a virtual space, drawing comparisons to actual environments like a stage or an enclosed room. This tendency can lead to a surreal auditory experience, presenting sonic features that would be impossible in physical settings. This article explores how the expanded possibilities for creating spatially surreal sounds—enabled by new technological tools—have been explored in popular music over the past few decades. We also examine how the perception of these features may have changed over time due to processes of naturalization.

While the academic literature on mashup music has largely focused on issues related to their legality, we aim to focus on it from a socio-musicological perspective, emphasizing its aesthetics. We argue that mashups are characterized by two underlying principles: contextual incongruity of recognizable samples and musical congruity between the mashed tracks. Through close analyses of The Evolution Control Committee’s "The Whipped Cream Mixes" and Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, we illustrate how the interplay of musical congruity and contextual incongruity leads to a paradoxical response: "These two songs should definitely not work together... but they do!"

This chapter explores a mode of studio production that embraces the act of working within set constraints and that explores the potential of contextual transformability. By introducing the concept of “contextual transformation,” I highlight the interpretative art of discovering and weaving together musical fragments to breathe new life into existing works. Using mashup music as a case study, I examine the subtle technological manipulation that emphasizes the samples' virtual "quotation marks," allowing them to be clearly recognized and appreciated, alongside the process of contextual transformation, where familiar content is significantly reimagined through recontextualization.

This chapter examines how the exposure of technology—which I call "opaque mediation"—in digital music production significantly shapes the groove and creates distinctive rhythmic effects. Through an analysis of DJ Food's track "Break," I demonstrate how the use of the cut-and-paste tool, rhythmic dropouts, and staccato effects contribute to a unique groove that feels both fragmented and coherent at once. In the track, opaque mediation is intermingled with "transparent mediation," where deliberate interruptions and manipulations blend with what is perceived as underlying spatiotemporal coherent sound events. This combination creates a tension that contributes to the track's meaning and allure.

This thesis explores how the digitization of technology has transformed the aesthetics of popular music by means of its unique qualities and its revitalisation of preexisting musical tools and techniques. Of particular interest is how digitization has facilitated and encouraged music makers to conceptualize music as consisting of bits and fragments that can be easily shuffled within or between mixes.

This thesis (written in Norwegian) explores how groove and sound are shaped by processes of mediation, focusing on "trip-hop"/Bristol artists like Portishead and Massive Attack. It proposes differentiating between "opaque" and "transparent" mediation as distinct modes of perception and aesthetics, and it also addresses the complexities of concepts such as "music," "musical instrument," "musician," and "musical competence."