Open AccessMichael Jackson's Sound Stages
Author(s) -
Morten Michelsen
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
soundeffects
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1904-500X
DOI - 10.7146/se.v2i1.5163
Subject(s) - sound (geography) , timbre , illusion , space (punctuation) , sound recording and reproduction , art , acoustics , history , visual arts , philosophy , psychology , linguistics , musical , cognitive psychology , physics
In order to discuss analytically spatial aspects of recorded sound William Moylan’s concept of ‘sound stage’ is developed within a musicological framework as part of a sound paradigm which includes timbre, texture and sound stage. Two Michael Jackson songs (‘The Lady in My Life’ from 1982 and ‘Scream’ from 1995) are used to: a) demonstrate the value of such a conceptualisation, and b) demonstrate that the model has its limits, as record producers in the 1990s began ignoring the conventions of stereo recording’s illusion of three dimensions and reached for a severing of the intimate relations between sound and Euclidic space.