CFP: Analyzing Popular Music, Univ. of Liverpool, July 2013

Call for Papers: International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music

An International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music will take place at the University of Liverpool, 2-4 July 2013. Recent work in the analysis of popular music has set compelling new agendas which the conference will debate and celebrate. The conference will explore fundamental questions of theory and analytical method relating to popular music. Among those questions, to what extent are analytical techniques borrowed from the Classical instrumental repertoire appropriate for a music which often displays its complexity in timbre, texture, gesture and persona rather than in melody, harmony or form? What tools and technologies can illuminate the musicality of hip-hop and Indie pop, Björk and Dylan; from bluegrass to dubstep, Abba to Zawinul? Casting its net as broadly as possible across all genres and styles of rock and pop, including jazz and folk, the conference invites papers in topics including but not limited to:

• Modal harmony
• Sound design
• Narrative
• Metre and groove
• Voice and vocality
• Timbre and texture
• Ecological perception
• Gesture and embodiment
• Theoretical models of analysis
• Performance and improvisation
• Listening strategies and subject positions
• Value, signification, and pedagogy of analysis
• Analysis within industry and creative practice
• Computational, Neo-Riemannian and spectrum/sonic analysis
• Languages and notations of analysis, from the technical to the metaphorical

We are delighted to welcome three internationally distinguished keynote speakers:

• Anne Danielsen (University of Oslo)
• Walter Everett (University of Michigan)
• Allan Moore (University of Surrey).

Committee members: Michael Spitzer (Chairman), Nicola Dibben, Dai Griffiths, Tim Hughes, Freya Jarman, Nick Reyland, Kenneth Smith, Rob Strachan.

To view the poster advertisement see http://www.sma.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/popmac-advert.pdf.

For more information and to submit your abstract, go to http://www.popmac.org.uk.

Submission deadline: 28th February 2013.

The conference is dedicated to the memory of Adam Krims, who served on the Programming Committee until his recent, untimely death.