Lipsynching

About the Author Merrie Snell has lectured and led undergraduate seminars on popular music history and theory at Newcastle University, UK and fiction writing at University of Iowa, USA. Her fiction has appeared in multiple literary journals and she has exhibited sound/video works in Sweden and the UK, including Youghost, an installation based on Youtube lipsynching videos.Michael Bull is Professor of Sound Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. He is co-founder and editor of the journal Senses and Society, founding editor of Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, andseries editor for the book series The Study of Sound (Bloomsbury). He is author of Sirens (Bloomsbury 2020) and co-editor (with Marcel Cobussen) of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies (Bloomsbury 2020). He is also co-editor of The Auditory Culture Reader (Bloomsbury 2003, 2016) and editor of The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies (2018). Product Description What does it mean when a singing voice is detached from an originating body through recording? And how does this affect consumers of recorded song? This book examines the practice of lipsynching to pre-recorded song in both professional and vernacular contexts, covering over a century of diverse artistic practices from early cinema through to the current popularity of self-produced internet lipsynching videos. It examines the ways in which we listen to, respond to, and use recorded music, not only as a commodity to be consumed but as a culturally-sophisticated and complex means of identification, a site of projection, introjection, and habitation, and, through this, a means of personal and collective creativity. Review “Engages with the phenomenon from a variety of different perspectives ... Snell covers interesting historical and technical material.” ―The Wire“This book is a gripping and wide-ranging study of the issues that arise when a voice inhabits another body and, by doing so, creates a new audio-visual collage. Its insights will come as a revelation to anyone who thinks lipsynching is simply a matter of ensuring that your lips move at the same time as the recorded voice.” ―Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, UK, and editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology (2009)“Spanning from the Kinetograph to viral videos, this is a rich study that situates lipsynching – as a creative, 'readerly' form of listening – in a long history of audio-visual media, culminating in what Snell calls a 'soundtracked life'. It will be a valuable book for sound and media scholars, and for anyone interested in how notions of the cinematic extend into today's vernacular musical practices.” ―Carlo Cenciarelli, Lecturer in Music, Cardiff University, UK, and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening (forthcoming)