Sensing Sound

"Sensing Sound offers a singular and original perspective on the status of the voice and the theory of music. Nina Sun Eidsheim teaches readers to think about voice as a multisensory phenomenon and, in so doing, turns the tools of sound studies and critical musicology against themselves, demonstrating conclusively that an understanding of sound is not enough for understanding voice, singing, or music."  - Jonathan Sterne, author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format

"Imaginative, bold, theoretically wide-ranging and rooted in readings of contemporary culture, Sensing Sound proposes a radical, genuinely original rethinking of human beings' acoustical behavior and experience."  - Suzanne G. Cusick, Professor of Music, New York University

"Even if we consider 'the voice' as a sound source, in an average personal imaginary ‘sound’ is something external, while 'the voice' is something internal and intimate. If we add to that the extreme power of language, it’s even harder to treat the voice as 'sound.' Eidsheim explores these contradictions in her book with knowledge and vision. Her theory of sound as a 'universal connection of entities,' for example, is simply enrapturing...."  - Aurelio Cianciotta, Neural

"Eidsheim’s formulation of music as vibrational practice engenders new ways of considering communication between singer and audience, environment and body, and animate and inanimate materials. ... Her work generates wide-ranging and pragmatic resonances for those interested in questions surrounding sound and multi-sensory experience." - Amy Skjerseth, Theatre Research International

"Eidsheim’s key achievement, then, is to destabilise the musicological frames through which we perceive music as a sum of its fixed components (such as pitch, duration and aural fidelity) towards a broader understanding based on the shifting interplay of energies and contexts.... Through her particular focus on the voice, Eidsheim also helps us to understand contemporary opera through a much-expanded perspective that relies as much on space, choreography and materiality as on staging, costumes and libretto." - Julian Day, Tempo

"[Eidsheim's] book invites readers to remember that music itself is a complex phenomenon better understood as an experience and practice of 'intermaterial vibration.'" - Cecilia Livingston, Cambridge Opera Journal

“Sensing Sound is a captivating and rewarding book. Eidsheim’s ‘vibrational practice’ provides a liberating take on vocal sound, and one that can be applied not only to singing and listening, but to many dimensions of sensory experience.” - Rebecca Lentjes, Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies

“No doubt [Sensing Sound] will become required reading in many academic disciplines that touch on voice studies.” - Marit MacArthur, Yale Review

“Sensing Sound delivers a provocative theory of musical sonority—one that interrogates the participatory, material, and ex­periential dimensions of music-making in new and exciting ways. . . . Sensing Sound is sure to enliven music and sound studies research for years to come.” - Daniel Akira Stadnicki, Intersections

“Eidsheim’s book is sensitive to bodies, attentive to physics, and mindful of encultured practices of listening and sounding. It is a much-needed meeting point for musicology, sound studies, philosophy of sound, performance studies, vocal pedagogy, and those interested in theorizing difference in music.” - Lucie Vágnerová, Current Musicology