Examining Secrets and Revelation in Music and Audio Technology Cultures (Elements in Twenty-first Century Music Practice)

Dirty little secrets. Secret weapons. Trade secrets. Phrases so ubiquitous in music and audio technology culture that, in the twenty-first century, they serve as powerful mechanisms in the production and consumption of music and audio technologies and skillsets. Secrets and revelatory discourse serves to historicize, imagine and commodify skillsets whilst amplifying technological fetishisation. Grounded in historical and psychology scholarship, this book examines secrets and revelation as part of a continuum of the protection of tacit knowledge. Packed with examples and qualitative data drawn from trade shows, online fora, industry associations, retail, textbooks, and education, this large-scale study elucidates the mechanism of secret holders, secrets, revelation and listeners as being intrinsic to music and audio technology cultures. The results of this research illustrate how, in the potent distillation of music and audio technology knowledge and skillsets into commodified secrets, little to nothing is revealed.