{"title":"William Cheng","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"sound-play-book-william-cheng-9780199969975","title":"Sound Play","description":"Video games open portals into fantastical worlds where imaginative play prevails. The virtual medium seemingly provides us with ample opportunities to behave and act out with relative safety and impunity. Or does it? Sound Play explores the aesthetic, ethical, and sociopolitical stakes of our engagements with gaming's audio phenomena-from sonic violence to synthesized operas, from democratic music-making to vocal sexual harassment. Author William Cheng shows how the simulated environments of games empower designers, composers, players, and scholars to test and tinker with music, noise, speech, and silence in ways that might not be prudent or possible in the real world. In negotiating utopian and alarmist stereotypes of video games, Sound Play synthesizes insights from across musicology, sociology, anthropology, communications, literary theory, and philosophy. With case studies that span Final Fantasy VI, Silent Hill, Fallout 3, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Team Fortress 2, this book insists that what we do in there-in the safe, sound spaces of games-can ultimately teach us a great deal about who we are and what we value (musically, culturally, humanly) out here.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49586875629841,"sku":"GOR009222320","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345749643537,"sku":"CIN0199969973G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097216483601,"sku":"NIN9780199969975","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51134365892881,"sku":"CIN0199969973VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":51717110006033,"sku":"CIN0199969973LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52654837465361,"sku":"NLS9780199969975","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199969973.jpg?v=1776765912"},{"product_id":"loving-music-till-it-hurts-book-william-cheng-9780190620134","title":"Loving Music Till It Hurts","description":"Can music feel pain? Do songs possess dignity? Do symphonies have rights? Of course not, you might say. Yet think of how we anthropomorphize music, not least when we believe it has been somehow mistreated. A singer butchered or mangled the \"Star-Spangled Banner\" at the Super Bowl. An underrehearsed cover band made a mockery of Led Zeppelin's classics. An orchestra didn't quite do justice to Mozart's Requiem. Such lively language upholds music as a sentient companion susceptible to injury and in need of fierce protection.   There's nothing wrong with the human instinct to safeguard beloved music . . . except, perhaps, when this instinct leads us to hurt or neglect fellow human beings in turn: say, by heaping outsized shame upon those who seem to do music wrong; or by rushing to defend a conductor's beautiful recordings while failing to defend the multiple victims who have accused this maestro of sexual assault. Loving Music Till It Hurts is a capacious exploration of how people's head-over-heels attachments to music can variously align or conflict with agendas of social justice. How do we respond when loving music and loving people appear to clash?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50281234989329,"sku":"CIN0190620137VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50490266681617,"sku":"GOR012000423","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50696986722577,"sku":"NGR9780190620134","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50708923449617,"sku":"GOR014043099","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52454517080337,"sku":"NLS9780190620134","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52858121748753,"sku":"NIN9780190620134","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190620137.jpg?v=1750779690"},{"product_id":"just-vibrations-book-william-cheng-9780472053254","title":"Just Vibrations","description":"An urgently needed look at the ethical stakes of contemporary musical life and musical scholarship","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50303665176849,"sku":"CIN0472053256G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50801105338641,"sku":"CIN0472053256VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52765735616785,"sku":"GOR014611272","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0472053256.jpg?v=1750741287"},{"product_id":"queering-the-field-book-william-cheng-9780190458027","title":"Queering the Field","description":"Drawing on ethnographic research and often deeply personal experiences with musical cultures, Queering the Field: Sounding out Ethnomusicology unpacks a history of sentiment that veils the treatment of queer music and identity within the field of ethnomusicology. The thematic structure of the volume reflects a deliberate cartography of queer spaces in the discipline-spaces that are strongly present due to their absence, are marked by direct sonic parameters, or are called into question by virtue of their otherness. As the first large-scale study of ethnomusicology's queer silences and queer identity politics, Queering the Field directly addresses the normativities currently at play in musical ethnography (fieldwork, analysis, performance, transcription) as well as in the practice of musical ethnographers (identification, participation, disclosure, observation, authority). While rooted in strong narrative convictions, the authors frequently adopt radicalized voices with the goal of queering a hierarchical sexual binary.  The essays in the volume present rhetorical and syntactical scenarios that challenge us to read in prescient singular ways for future queer writing and queer thought in ethnomusicology.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52431539241233,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52431539863825,"sku":"NLS9780190458027","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780190458027.jpg?v=1759172806"},{"product_id":"sound-play-book-william-cheng-9780199969968","title":"Sound Play","description":"Video games open portals into fantastical worlds where imaginative play prevails. The virtual medium seemingly provides us with ample opportunities to behave and act out with relative safety and impunity. Or does it? Sound Play explores the aesthetic, ethical, and sociopolitical stakes of our engagements with gaming's audio phenomena-from sonic violence to synthesized operas, from democratic music-making to vocal sexual harassment. Author William Cheng shows how the simulated environments of games empower designers, composers, players, and scholars to test and tinker with music, noise, speech, and silence in ways that might not be prudent or possible in the real world. In negotiating utopian and alarmist stereotypes of video games, Sound Play synthesizes insights from across musicology, sociology, anthropology, communications, literary theory, and philosophy. With case studies that span Final Fantasy VI, Silent Hill, Fallout 3, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Team Fortress 2, this book insists that what we do in there-in the safe, sound spaces of games-can ultimately teach us a great deal about who we are and what we value (musically, culturally, humanly) out here.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52433492345105,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52433493393681,"sku":"NLS9780199969968","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199969968.jpg?v=1759178165"},{"product_id":"cultural-history-of-western-music-in-the-modern-age-book-william-cheng-9781350075610","title":"A Cultural History of Western Music in the Modern Age","description":"A CULTURAL HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC IN THE MODERN AGE  A Cultural History of Western Music in the Modern Age covers the period from 1920 to the present, an era which has seen unprecedented global conflict, transnational diplomacy, intercultural influence, ecological crisis, technological innovation, and collaborative experiments among artists. The extraordinary range of modern Western music – from the disciplinary systems of the Suzuki Method to the esoteric philosophies of Sun Ra, and from the rapid commercialization of audio recordings to the multi-genre soundtracks of Black Lives Matter – offers no single or clear-cut narrative. In order to examine the complex power, scope, and definition of modern music, this volume presents an array of research methods, case studies, and geopolitical snapshots which offer startling insights into the worldwide reach of Western music over the last century.   The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Western Music presents the first comprehensive history from classical antiquity to today, covering all forms and aspects of music and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are society; philosophies; politics; exchange; education; popular culture; performance; and technologies.   The Cultural Histories Series  A Cultural History of Western Music is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available as hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a tangible reference for their shelves or as part of a fully-searchable digital library. The digital product is available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access via www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com . 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