I Knew You Were Trouble: Digital Production in Pop Music and Its Implications for Performance

The extensive digital production in EDM-influenced pop music introduces difficulties in the translation of a song to live performance. Even professional pop performances featuring live bands often lack the crucial subtleties of produced recordings unless they are supplemented by prerecorded tracks, which in turn convey a less "live" event to an audience. In this thesis, I discuss many common digital production techniques used in pop music and their implications for bringing a song to the stage, specifically the disconnect between sound events heard on pop recordings and those that can be performed with gestures on a traditional instrument.