The recording studio can be played as an instrument, so tape editing composes music that no performance produced

Multiple figures in Modulations articulate the studio-as-instrument: the studio is not a neutral device for capturing performances but an active compositional medium. Producer Teo Macero describes editing Miles Davis records with tape machines — syncing and splicing two master tapes onto a third — to create music the musicians never played straight through, yet ‘we thought this was the way people played music.’ The radical claim is that much of what we hear on released records is ‘the product of a great deal of analog tape editing,’ no different in kind from later computer manipulation: the edits, not a single take, determine the finished piece. This dissolves the boundary between performing and composing.

Examples

Teo Macero producing Miles Davis’s electric records: tape edits and out-of-sync overlays created the final compositions that listeners assumed were live performances.

Assessment

How does the studio-as-instrument idea change the definition of a musical performance, and give one example from the film where studio editing produced a result no performing musicians achieved.