Making musical magic live : inventing modern production technology for human-centric music performance

Fifty-two years ago, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band redefined what it meant to make a record album. The Beatles revolutionized the recording process using technology to achieve completely unprecedented sounds and arrangements. Until then, popular music recordings were simply faithful reproductions of a live performance. Over the past fifty years, recording and production techniques have advanced so far that another challenge has arisen: it is now very difficult for performing artists to give a live performance that has the same impact, complexity and nuance as a produced studio recording. Live performance production technology is now used almost exclusively to recreate studio albums exactly as they were recorded. Recently, this approach has dominated the entertainment industry. In an attempt to reach superhuman levels of perfection and complexity, many elements that make live performances emotionally meaningful for audiences have been given less priority --

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Bloomberg, Benjamin Arthur Philips.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tod Machover.

• Program in Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129893

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129893