At the upcoming Experience Music Project Pop conference (mid-April 2010) I’ll be presenting a paper based on the research I’ve been doing for the past few years with boutique guitar effects builders/communities. I’m on a panel titled “Analog-Digital Divides” (chaired by Oliver Wang), and my paper is called “Analog Circuits, Digital Community: Boutique Effects Pedals as Convergence Culture.” The abstract reads like this:
In the world of boutique guitar/music effects pedals, analog circuitry is king. Likely stemming from a confluence of cultural, technological, and economic factors—the dominance of fuzz or “dirt” boxes, the low cost of analog parts, the ease of modification/ design, or the ideological weight “analog” carries in the world of audio technology —builders of small-run, hand-assembled effects pedals overwhelmingly work with capacitors, transistors, potentiometers, and diodes rather than chips, processors, bits, and modeling when constructing signal-modifying devices.However, when it comes to selling, trading, discussing, debating or otherwise engaging in some sort of exchange regarding the pedals, creators (and consumers) turn to the digital domain. From YouTube demo videos to discussion board communities, the analog circuits comprising boutique pedal culture necessarily “go digital” when it comes to commerce, communication, and community.Through this paper, I examine the overarching dynamic between analog and digital domains of technology as related to the culture surrounding boutique effects pedals. Drawing on ethnographic work I’ve done over the past two years, I will discuss the significance that concepts of “analog” and “digital” carry for builders and their constituencies; the ways in which analog and digital technologies offer differential-yet-complementary affordances for musical practice; and approaches to theorizing an analog-digital relationship that avoids the binarization common to debates privileging one domain over the other.
As the paper unfolds in the coming weeks, I’ll be posting bits of it here. Any comments or feedback would be great…