Musical Intimacy

Zack Stiegler is Professor of Communications Media at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA, where he teaches courses in communication law, media theory, popular culture, and radio production.Todd Campbell is Assistant Professor of Music and Audio Production at Frederick Community College, USA, where he teaches courses in audio production, studio recording, and MIDI. He is also a performer, producer, and recording engineer whose tenth full-length solo project was released in the fall of 2022.

• List of Figures and TablesIntroductionPART I: Production1. Conjuring Intimate Spaces 2. Intimacy and the Home Recording AestheticPART II: Text3. Textual Dimensions of Musical Intimacy4. Analyzing Musical IntimacyPART III: Additional Contexts5. Marketing Musical Intimacy 6. Intimacy and Live Performance ConclusionAcknowledgmentsReferencesNotesIndex

‘Intimacy’ is one of those terms in popular music scholarship that is used in a dizzying number of contexts, and sometimes deployed in ways that seem downright head-scratching (can a stadium tour really be “intimate?”). Yet the importance of the intimate quality of various musical phenomenon, from studio recordings to live concerts to streaming video, cannot be denied. In Musical Intimacy, Stiegler and Campbell shine much-needed light on this ubiquitous but elusive concept, showing how perceptions of intimacy structure many of our most visceral sonic experiences.