IASA 2017 Annual Conference

Multitrack media, specifically as it relates to music production, is fraught with complex decisions related to digitization and processing. Multitrack media is not a priority for many repositories since multitrack media is less accessible to most patrons in addition to rarely representing the finished recorded product. However, with potentially new revenue streams for record labels and the burgeoning ethnomusicological field of record production research, multitrack media has the potential of gaining importance in the audiovisual archive.

This presentation will describe the myriad considerations involved in processing multitrack media. The author will balance the rich descriptive desires with the concept of More Product, Less Process (Greene, Meissner – 2005) by using examples from the Drexel University Audio Archives. Processing priorities, meaningful descriptions, non-audiovisual materials, born-digital implications, along with audio examples will be included in this presentation.