Sound engineering in the recording studio as creative practice
Paul Thompson, Phillip McIntyre · 2019
Sound engineering in the recording studio has historically been viewed as a technical rather than creative endeavor ( Kealy 1979 ). Predominantly it is the artist and, more recently, the record producer who are regarded as creative individuals in the process ( Thompson 2019 ). But from a sociological perspective, creativity is the act of bringing into being an idea or product that is original, valued and implemented ( Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe 2000 , 81) and there is now growing evidence that creativity occurs through the convergence of multiple elements; an agent, a knowledge system (the domain) and a social organization that holds the domain knowledge (the field), through a dynamic system of interaction ( Csikszentmihalyi 1988 , 1997 , 1999 ). Creativity can therefore include technical as well as artistic and musical contributions. Rather than focusing solely on the individual, Csikszentmihalyis creative system emphasizes a view of creativity that integrates all three elements of domain, field, and agent within a collaborative system. The following chapter illustrates the systems model of creativity in operation at various moments of making a record on both an individual and group scale, and the process of sound engineering is identified as a creative practice within the broader creative and collaborative systems of record production.