MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This presentation will explore the purposeful (mis)editing in popular music to leave in otherwise undesirable, unprofessional, and/or accidental audio. While it seems contrary to a “professional approach” to audio production to leave false starts, count ins, or other errors in final edits of popular music, a surprisingly large number of successful songs do just that.

For example, “Taxman” launches The Beatles’s Revolver with a 1-2-3-4-1-2 count-in complete with a cough and various instrumental fiddlings. Davy Jones’s biggest hit as a lead vocalist with The Monkees, “Daydream Believer” begins with a seemingly authentic announcement from an engineer: “7-A.” When Jones asks for the number again, a disgruntled crowd of studio dwellers repeats, “7-A!” Jones’s reply, with no organic connection to the familiar piano line that will introduce the song in a moment, makes it clear that this is likely neither authentic nor organic to the studio recording process. Beyond songs’ introductions, Cat Stevens’s “The Wind” appears to include a purposeful guitar flub after he sings “I’ll never make the same mistake.”

Countless songs fail to edit out drummers’ stick clicks, vocalists’ count-ins, and guitarists’ muted strums used to sync up band members when beginning a song; audio that is “supposed” to be edited out after a recording session. While it makes the most sense to see this as an aesthetic-based decision (“it just sounds cool”), it could also be seen as a narrative-based decision. It can tell a story of purported authenticity even when entirely fabricated.

As a part of a larger project on the interconnectivity of professionalism and amateurism in media production as a technical, aesthetic, and narrative approach, this presentation will focus on building a theory of understanding desired and/or perceived effect.