Making Synthwave

How an Online Music Community Invented a Genre
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-73204-6
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 324 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Making Synthwave: How an Online Music Community Invented a Genre documents the journey of an online community in their formation of the synthwave genre.

Taking an emic perspective that delivers a behind-the-scenes, access-all-areas telling of synthwave’s story from the very beginning to the mid 2020s, this ethnographic account offers a full history and development of the online synthwave community. Through an insightful longitudinal virtual ethnography by a composer, producer and performer, the book observes how artists, audiences, musicians, producers and performers have come together to negotiate the musical and cultural boundaries of 1980s ‘throwback’ style synthwave. The book makes visible tacit knowledge of the synthwave creative process, as well as providing rich and experiential subcultural detail that situates synthwave as an active community of practice which formulated its roots as a music genre exclusively online in the early 2000s.

This book is essential reading for music makers in a variety of genres and scholars of popular music, cultural theory and music production, as well as those interested in the nuances of music-making on the internet, creative processes with synthesizers, and the mechanics of genre theory and community music in the digital age.

Zielgruppe

General, Professional Practice & Development, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Blaise Ward, Jess

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musikalische Akustik, Tontechnik, Musikaufnahme
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Elektronische Musik
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikinstrumente Elektronische Musikinstrumente

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. From Synthetix.FM to Stranger Things (2016-2025) Making Synthwave Subcultural Capital 2. Making Synthwave Music with Music Technology 3. Metalheads in the Synthwave Community – Making Darksynth 4. Making Space for Vocals and Women: The Vocal Synthwave Subgenre 5. Making ‘Live’ Synthwave Performances – Tensions in Live Synthwave Practices 6. Keeping Synthwave ‘Alive’: Key Organisations, Events and Community Practices On/Offline

Über Autor(innen)

Jess Blaise Ward (Leeds Beckett University, UK) is a synth artist and researcher of genre formation, online music communities, subcultural theory and feminist scholarship. Past publications include Who remembers post-punk women? (2019) and her paper on metalheads in the online synthwave community at the Internet Musicking conference (2022).