Secrets and Revelatory Discourse in Music and Audio Technology Culture

Dirty little secrets. Secret weapons. Trade secrets. Secret ingredients. The secrets of recording success. Phrases so ubiquitous in music and audio technology culture that, in the 21st Century, they serve as powerful mechanisms in both the production and consumption of music and audio technologies and skillsets. Whilst notions of secrecy have pervaded electronics discourse and practice since the mid nineteenth-century, secrets and concomitant revelatory discourses pervade to the point of defining 21st Century music and audio culture. Such potent discourse(s) serve to historicize, mythologize, imagine and commodify skillsets whilst amplifying technological fetishization. Secrets discourse is rife in–and cuts across–several music and audio technology milieux, yet so rarely is it interrogated.

This paper draws upon recent research to be published in a Cambridge Element Series
Edition. Grounded in a history and psychology theoretical framework, and focused on concepts including ‘secret weapons’, ‘trade secrets’, ‘secret locations’, ‘secret ingredients’ and ‘secret powers’, this research examines secrets and revelatory discourse as part of a continuum of the protection of tacit knowledge. Packed with examples and qualitative data drawn from manufacturer publications, trade shows, online fora, industry associations, retail, textbooks, scholarship and education, and focusing on both purveyors and receptors of secrets and revelatory discourse, this presentation elucidates the mechanism of secret holders, secrets, revelation and listeners as being intrinsic to music and audio technology culture. In the 21st Century, the largely perceived ‘democratized’ music and audio technology landscape is yet to be matched with a democratization of skillsets. The results of this research illustrate how, in the potent distillation of music and audio technology knowledge and skillsets into commodified secrets, little to nothing is revealed.