Sound, music, affect: theorizing sonic experience

Sound, Music, Affect features brand new essays that bring together the burgeoning developments in sound studies and affect studies. The first section sets out key methodological and theoretical concerns, focussing on the relationships between affective models and sound. The second section deals with particular musical case studies, exploring how reference to affect theory might change or reshape some of the ways we are able to make sense of musical materials. The third section examines the politics and practice of sonic disruption: from the notion of noise as 'prophecy', to the appropriation of 'bad vibes' for pleasurable aesthetic and affective experiences. And the final section engages with some of the ways in which affect can help us understand the politics of chill, relaxation and intimacy as sonic encounters. The result is a rich and multifaceted consideration of sound, music and the affective, from scholars with backgrounds in cultural theory, history, literary studies,media studies, architecture, philosophy and musicology.

Introduction : Somewhere between the signifying and the sublime / Marie Thomspon and Ian Biddle -- Affective (re)thinking : sound as affect and affect as sound. Non-cochlear sound : on affect and exteriority / Will Schrimshaw ; Felt as thought, or musical abstraction and the semblance of affect / eldritch Priest ; My mother's scream / Patricia Ticineto Clough -- Hearing, playing, feeling : music and the organizaiton of affect. So transported : Nina Simone, 'My sweet Lord' and the (un)folding of affect / Richard Elliott ; (I can't get no) affect / John Mowitt ; Listening to the talking cure : Sprechstimme, hypnosis, and the sonic organization of affect / Clara Latham -- Affects of turbulence. Spread the virus : affective prophecy in industrial music / Dena Lockwood ; Brace and embrace : masochism in noise performance / Paul Hegarty ; Three screams / Marie Thompson -- Palliative sounds and the marketing of affection. Music for sleeping / Anahid Kassabian ; Relax, feel good, chill out : the affective distribution of classical music / Freya Jarman ; Quiet sounds and intimate listening : the politics of tinyseductions / Ian Biddle