pheno-song = representation, expression; smothering of the signifier under the signified
geno-song = the ‘diction’ of language; culmination of production where music actually works on language;
The grain is the body in the singing voice, in the writing hand, in the performing limb.
The grain of the voice is not – or not only – its’ timbre; the signifying it affords cannot be better defined than by the friction between the music and something else, which is the language (which is not the message at all)
‘under the pressure of long-playing records and their mass scales, a flattening out of the technique, which is paradoxical: all playing is flattened out into perfection: there is nothing left but pheno-text’
This ‘grain’ is also mentioned in an 2020 interview by Kim Cascone.
‘A major difference for me was the ‘point-of-origin’ of musical sound. In laptop music the point-of-origin was the circuitry and code working in tandem to generate musical sound. With traditional instruments the point-of-origin was bone, flesh, breath, and physical vibration working in tandem.’
Sources:
Barthes, R. (1981). The Grain of the Voice. Northwestern University Press.
Cascone, Kim & Jandric, Petar. (2021). The Failure of Failure: Postdigital Aesthetics Against Techno-mystification. Postdigital Science and Education. 3. 10.1007/s42438-020-00209. Available online at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348561456_The_Failure_of_Failure_Postdigital_Aesthetics_Against_Techno-mystification