My essay examines Bob Dylan’s relation to sound recording, still a neglected topic even with the recent explosion of scholarship on the legendary singer-songwriter. Drawing on historical accounts of Dylan and his career, as well as recent histories of studio recording, I trace the artist’s mercurial relation to record making as evidenced in his turbulent encounters with various record producers. My chief focus is on Dylan’s account of his late 1980s creative crisis in his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume 1, which I argue also provides a condensed account of the songwriter’s philosophy of sound recording.

Music plays a significant role in both the establishment of and immersion in virtual worlds. This chapter theorises various forms of musical virtual reality, arguing that the virtual worlds of music challenge existing understandings of virtual reality and immersion. Analysing recording technology, mobile music, video games and the phenomenology of listening, the chapter argues that musical virtual reality can be theorised as an omnipresent, perpetually moving and embodied circulation of musical energy. Musical virtual reality invites a ‘drastic’ musicology that engages with the immediate, immersive and affectively powerful aspects of the listening event.