The Guitar in Popular Music

A three day conference from the 10^th - 12^th July

Venues
10 and 11 July: Anselm Studios, North Holmes Road, Canterbury
12 July: Academy of Contemporary Music, The Rodboro Buildings, Bridge St, Guildford GU1 4SB

Tickets are free and booking is now open.

The Guitar in Popular Music conference will be co-hosted by Canterbury Christ Church University (10th and 11^th July) and the Academy of Contemporary Music (12th July), in collaboration with the International Guitar Research Centre (University of Surrey). Presentations have been collected around the following themes:

• Guitar Soloing and Tonal Improvisation
• Guitar as Rhythm and Texture
• Guitar Design and Technology
• Guitar Culture
• Guitar Technique
• Case studies of the guitar technique of established players in popular music.

We are delighted that Professor Steve Waksman (Leverhulme International Professor of Popular Music at the University of Huddersfield) will be presenting the keynote lecture on Friday 11th July at Canterbury Christ Church University: ‘Everything Louder Than Everything Else: Amplification and the Aesthetics of Volume'

Volume, or loudness, is readily acknowledged as a core dimension of rock music and its various offshoots. Yet how do we hear volume? Especially in a recorded work, what are the features that signal that a given piece of music is loud and how are those features realized? In this presentation, I will examine the material and aesthetic dimensions of volume from two intersecting perspectives. First, I will offer a brief capsule survey of the development of guitar amplification, highlighting some key milestones where the power available to guitarists increased significantly. Second, I will examine a select range of recordings to examine what I call the aesthetics of volume. Doing so, I want to reflect on a paradox of recorded music: that certain tracks sound “loud” regardless of the volume at which they are played. This raises the possibility that loudness is not just a byproduct of volume per se as measured in decibels but is generated by an array of sonic and timbral signifiers that are, in turn, shaped by the creative decisions made by musicians, producers, and recording engineers. Central to my analysis is the example of a rather obscure album recorded in 1970, Randy Holden’s Population II, that I would argue typifies the aesthetics of volume in terms of both the method of production and the resulting sound. Foregrounding volume in this way, I make a case for the need within academic studies of the electric guitar to think more about the central importance of the amplifier, which has too often been treated as an afterthought; and to refine our grasp of the distinctive characteristics of amplified sound.

Steve Waksman is Leverhulme International Professor of Popular Music at the University of Huddersfield, UK. His publications include the books Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Harvard University Press, 1999), This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (University of California Press, 2009), and Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé (Oxford University Press, 2022). His books have won multiple awards including the Woody Guthrie Prize given by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. Chapter, and the Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society.

With Reebee Garofalo, Waksman is the co-author of the sixth edition of the rock history textbook, Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A. (2014), and with Andy Bennett, he co-edited the SAGE Handbook of Popular Music (2015). His essays have appeared in such collections as the Cambridge Companion to the Guitar, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop, Metal Rules the Globe, and The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre and Popular Music. On WRSI radio, The River in Western Massachusetts, he has long been featured as the “Doctor of Rock,” offering bits of popular music history in support of Black History Month and Women’s History Month. His latest book is The Cambridge Companion to the Electric Guitar, co-edited with Jan-Peter Herbst.

In 2008, Waksman was the keynote speaker at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s American Music Masters event honoring the legacy of musician and inventor Les Paul. His dissertation on the electric guitar won the 1998 Ralph Henry Gabriel prize awarded by the American Studies Association. Currently he is beginning a new project devoted to the study of amplification technologies and amplified sound, funded by a £5 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust.

Enquiries: guitarconference@canterbury.ac.uk

Conference Panel:

• Dr James Dean (Chair, Canterbury Christ Church University)
• Professor Rich Perks (Academy of Contemporary Music)
• Professor Milton Mermikides (University of Surrey/Gresham College)
• Professor Murray Smith (University of Kent)
• Dr Kate Lewis (Brunel University London)

Programme

Day 1 - CCCU - Thursday 10th July

 Day 2 - CCCU - Friday 11th July

Day 3 - ACM - Saturday 12th July

(Schedule is subject to change)