Pop music gets an academic treatment
A dissertation on pop music is being written for the first time at the Bern Graduate School of the Arts as part of a National Fund project: "Kultklänge - Zur Entstehung und Entwicklung dominierender Einzelsounds in populärer Musik von 1960 bis 2013".
In his doctoral thesis as part of the project led by Thomas Burkhalter, Immanuel Brockhaus reconstructs the emergence of "cult sounds" (for example the electric piano sound of the DX7 synthesizer) and traces their formative influence on the history of popular music.
Methods of ethnomusicology and sound analysis are used. Case studies are used to examine the meanings that a cult sound can take on in different geographical and cultural contexts.
Previous studies have not yet addressed the topic of sound at the molecular level. This research project is the first to explore the question of which individual sounds have shaped popular music from its beginnings to the present day. How do such cult sounds develop, how do they evolve and how do they relate to technological developments? How do cult sounds behave in multi-local contexts?
The Graduate School of the Arts (GSA) is a cooperation between the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Bern and the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Department of Bern University of the Arts. It is an interdisciplinary doctoral program aimed at both researching artists and academics who are interested in artistic practice.
Project homepage: www.cult-sounds.com
