A cultural semantics of string arrangement for recorded Popular music: A model for analysis and practice

This thesis contributes new knowledge about writing and analyzing string arrangements for recorded Popular music. I show how string arrangements can be categorized under one of seven distinct styles that are made coherent and meaningful through their identification with specific social and cultural institutions. The string styles are derived from and situated in a cultural and historical corpus of 500 albums released between 1952 and 2011. The thesis offers a new way for arrangers to analyze examples of practice, inform new creative work, and communicate with other musical professionals about string arranging.