The Gravity Soundtrack


Book Description

In her debut collection of poetry, The Gravity Soundtrack, Erin Keane explores subjects ranging from classic myth, philosophy and religion, to rock 'n roll, pop culture and children's book characters. With a "confident and alert use of language" (Greg Pape), each poem shows keen insight into the nature of what it means to be human.




Harmonic Experience


Book Description

An exploration of musical harmony from its ancient fundamentals to its most complex modern progressions, addressing how and why it resonates emotionally and spiritually in the individual. W. A. Mathieu, an accomplished author and recording artist, presents a way of learning music that reconnects modern-day musicians with the source from which music was originally generated. As the author states, "The rules of music--including counterpoint and harmony--were not formed in our brains but in the resonance chambers of our bodies." His theory of music reconciles the ancient harmonic system of just intonation with the modern system of twelve-tone temperament. Saying that the way we think music is far from the way we do music, Mathieu explains why certain combinations of sounds are experienced by the listener as harmonious. His prose often resembles the rhythms and cadences of music itself, and his many musical examples allow readers to discover their own musical responses.




The Soundtrack Album


Book Description

The Soundtrack Album: Listening to Media offers the first sustained exploration of the soundtrack album as a distinctive form of media. Soundtrack albums have been part of our media and musical landscape for decades, enduring across formats from vinyl and 8-tracks to streaming playlists. This book makes the case that soundtrack albums are more than promotional tools for films, television shows, or video games— they are complex media texts that reward a detailed analysis. The collection’s contributors explore a diverse range of soundtrack albums, from Super Fly to Stranger Things, revealing how these albums change our understanding of the music and film industries and the audio-visual relationships that drive them. An excellent resource for students of Music, Media Studies, and Film/Screen Media courses, The Soundtrack Album offers interdisciplinary perspectives and opens new areas for exploration in music and media studies.




Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space


Book Description

The authoritative story of the headline-making discovery of gravitational waves—by an eminent theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer. From the author of How the Universe Got Its Spots and A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, the epic story of the scientific campaign to record the soundtrack of our universe. Black holes are dark. That is their essence. When black holes collide, they will do so unilluminated. Yet the black hole collision is an event more powerful than any since the origin of the universe. The profusion of energy will emanate as waves in the shape of spacetime: gravitational waves. No telescope will ever record the event; instead, the only evidence would be the sound of spacetime ringing. In 1916, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, his top priority after he proposed his theory of curved spacetime. One century later, we are recording the first sounds from space, the soundtrack to accompany astronomy’s silent movie. In Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, Janna Levin recounts the fascinating story of the obsessions, the aspirations, and the trials of the scientists who embarked on an arduous, fifty-year endeavor to capture these elusive waves. An experimental ambition that began as an amusing thought experiment, a mad idea, became the object of fixation for the original architects—Rai Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ron Drever. Striving to make the ambition a reality, the original three gradually accumulated an international team of hundreds. As this book was written, two massive instruments of remarkably delicate sensitivity were brought to advanced capability. As the book draws to a close, five decades after the experimental ambition began, the team races to intercept a wisp of a sound with two colossal machines, hoping to succeed in time for the centenary of Einstein’s most radical idea. Janna Levin’s absorbing account of the surprises, disappointments, achievements, and risks in this unfolding story offers a portrait of modern science that is unlike anything we’ve seen before.




Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory


Book Description

Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory breaks new ground by redirecting the arguments of foundational texts within film theory to film sound tracks. Walker includes sustained analyses of particular films according to a range of theoretical approaches: psychoanalysis, feminism, genre studies, post-colonialism, and queer theory. The films come from disparate temporal and industrial contexts: from Classical Hollywood Gothic melodrama (Rebecca) to contemporary, critically-acclaimed science fiction (Gravity). Along with sound tracks from canonical American films including The Searchers and To Have and Have Not, Walker analyzes independent Australasian films: examples include Heavenly Creatures, a New Zealand film that uses music to empower its queer female protagonists; and Ten Canoes, the first Australian feature film with a script entirely in Aboriginal languages. Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory thus not only calls new attention to the significance of sound tracks, but also focuses on the sonic power of characters representing those whose voices have all too often been drowned out. Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory is both rigorous and accessible to all students and scholars with a grasp of cinematic and musical structures. Moreover, the book brings together film studies, musicology, history, politics, and culture and therefore resonates across the liberal arts.




Film Music in the Sound Era


Book Description

Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the industry. A complete index is included in each volume.




The Music of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings


Book Description

The Music of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings provides an in-depth study of the music of two of the biggest fantasy franchises, focussing on music’s worldbuilding roles within the film-watching experience and elsewhere in videogames, trailers, plays, theme parks and other attractions, and the world of fandom. Daniel White takes a range of approaches and techniques of motivic and thematic musical analysis, and pairs this with transformational harmonic analysis to theorise music’s worldbuilding roles in film. Chapters focus in turn on the opening sequences of the case study franchise films, their closing sequences, and on their depiction of houses, homes and homelands. Extra-filmic areas of these fantasy worlds are also explored, including theme parks and other tourist attractions of the Harry Potter franchise, videogames and the immersive power of their music, and the world of fandom with a focus on soundtrack consumption and other musical fan practices. Through this multifaceted approach, readers gain a deeper understanding not only of the music of these franchises, but also of music’s power in the multimedia franchise both within and without film to build a home that attracts inhabitants. This book will be valuable for academics and students as well as fans of fantasy franchises.




Shadowlands and Songs of Light


Book Description

The Bible tells Christians not to grieve as the world grieves and to rejoice in their sufferings. Yet when author Kevin Ott lost his mother unexpectedly in 2010, he sank into a wintry depression. When life seemed the darkest, something surprising happened. While exploring eighteen C. S. Lewis books and thirteen U2 albums, he experienced tremendous “stabs of joy”—the unusual heaven-birthed joy that Lewis wrote about—in the midst of grief. This revelation not only pulled Kevin out of depression, it forever changed the way he experienced the love and joy of Christ. In Shadowlands and Songs of Light, you will:Learn fascinating details about C. S. Lewis, discover his unique definition of joy, understand how to apply his revelations about joy to suffering, and learn to recognize and cooperate with God’s strategic use of joy.Enjoy a grand tour of U2’s discography, with a special emphasis on their exploration of joy and suffering.Clearly understand, from the perspective of music theory explained in common terms, why the music of U2 is so emotionally powerful and how it serves as a perfect analogy for Lewis’s concepts of joy and the Christian ability to rejoice in suffering.Find inspiration from the personal stories of U2, especially the tragedies that engulfed their youth in Dublin, and see how they worked through that grief and discovered a joy that has kept the band together for over thirty-five years.When the out-of-control nature of the world and your weaknesses throw you off-balance, you can experience God’s grandeur and joy— discovering heaven’s perspective until it becomes your instinctive, default vantage point every day.




Johnny Cash


Book Description

To millions, Johnny Cash was the rebellious Man in Black, the unabashed patriot, the redeemed Christian-the king of country music. But Johnny Cash was also an uncertain country boy whose dreams were born in the cotton fields of Arkansas and who struggled his entire life with a guilt-ridden childhood, addictions, and self-doubt. A sensitive songwriter with profound powers of musical expression, Cash told America and the world the stories of a nation's heroes and outcasts.Johnny Cash: The Biography explores in depth many often-overlooked aspects of the legend's life and career. It examines the powerful artistic influence of his older brother, Roy, and chronicles Cash's air force career in the early 1950s, when his songwriting took form...and when he purchased his first guitar. It uncovers the origins of his trademark boom-chicka-boom rhythm and traces his courtship of Bob Dylan in the folk revival era of the 1960s.Johnny Cash also delves into the details of Cash's personal life, including his drug dependency, which dogged him long after many thought he had beaten it. It unflinchingly recounts his relationships with his first wife, Vivian Liberto, his second wife, June Carter Cash, and his children. And it follows Cash as man and musician from his early years of success through the commercially desolate years of the 1980s to his reemergence under the influence of producer Rick Rubin-and association that revitalized his career yet raised contradictions about Cash's values and craft.Scrupulously researched, passionately told, Johnny Cash: The Biography is the unforgettable portrait of an enduring American icon.




Introduction to the Study of Video Game Music


Book Description

This text is intended to serve as an introduction to the study of video game music. It was initially conceived as a companion to an introductory video game music course that takes a multi-faceted survey approach to the material. Therefore, this text can be used in accompaniment with an academic setting. It can also be useful for anyone that is generally interested in learning about video game music, but does not have a very solid musical or technical foundation. As it was intended to accompany a course in which non-music majors could freely enrol, the text is accessible to nearly everyone, and covers the topic of video game music very generally.