prize17-9, Exercise 1: The studio as instrument

Model answer (check the details):

"The studio as instrument" means that the recording process itself helps make the music. The producer Teo Macero is reported to have cut, looped and layered pieces of tape from the 1969 sessions so that the finished track was partly assembled afterwards, to the point where some players did not recognise their own contributions.

It changed what a record is. Before, a jazz record was usually a document of a performance that actually happened in one go. After, a record could be a constructed work with no single performance behind it, so the listener hears a version that no audience ever heard live.

Care: "reported to" is deliberate. The account of the editing comes from summaries of producer and musician accounts, and should be checked against a detailed history of the sessions.