Metaphors and multimodal mental imagery in immersive and stereo record production

This article explores how the use of metaphors and multimodal mental imagery opens diverse creative pathways in the collaborative process of record production. The dual functionality of metaphors in record production informs this function. On the one hand, they are sound descriptors; on the other hand, they are tools for verbally articulating the experiential facets of multimodal mental imagery. The article addresses a practice-based study of the recording and mixing of the song ‘Noen ganger’, mixed for playback in Dolby Atmos and stereo. It demonstrates how a single articulated metaphor triggered several artistic consequences via a creative loop of imagery, metaphors, sound production and processing, leading to the recording’s final soundscape and aesthetic output. The article argues that metaphors may bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete, helping us to both understand and interpret elusive artistic ideas involving mental imagery and transition those ideas into recordings. It also explores how methods such as log writing can bring otherwise tacit aspects of mental imagery and metaphorical understandings out into the open.