Older recordings made with less technologically advanced methods logically make lower quality recordings that capture less sound in lower quality and quantity than current technologies. This shift in technological capability is not just a great advancement from the early days of recording, but it is also a great advancement from the world of media that McLuhan knew in 1964. These technologies have also greatly changed since McLuhan wrote Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in 1964. Today’s recordings are made using the most modern and advanced technologies that can capture sound easily and clearly. This paper will set out to classify today’s modern recordings and older recordings using McLuhan’s classifications of hot and cool media (McLuhan, 1964). By contrast, “cool media” is defined by McLuhan as a medium that creates a circumstance for a listener or viewer where “so little (information) is given and so much has to be filled in by the listener” (McLuhan, 1964, pg. This media is one passes a lot of information to its audience very effectively and in large amounts (McLuhan, 1964). McLuhan defines hot media as media that creates a “state of being well filled with data” and a media that evokes little from the listener (McLuhan, 1964, pg. In “Media Hot and Cold”, McLuhan sets out to define and explain his ideas about two different classifications of media: “hot media” and “cool media” (McLuhan, 1964, pg. Despite this fifty year gap, McLuhan’s ideas have continued to fit into modern musical context through the decades as culture, technology and music itself have changed (1964). Marshall McLuhan published his work “Media Hot and Cold” in 1964, a very different media environment from that of today. This essay will discuss ideas presented in Marshall McLuhan’s chapter “Media Hot and Cold” from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) and relate them to this project. This project centers around how recording has changed our musical climate.

Mcluhan 1964