Recording TechnologyRecording Technology

History and Impact

Acknowledgements

Many of the images and sound files used in this Powerpoint Presentation are from The Sound Recording Technology History Site housed at Rutgers University. The contents of this site are all copyright 1998-2003 by David Morton

http://www.recording-history.org/HTML/start.htm

The Cultural Impact of Recorded Music

“The real significance of the early phonograph was that it transformed the way people listened to music. Where once music was a unique, live performance, experienced in a public place with a group, now it was heard privately in the home and it was possible to hear the same "performance" over and over. According to this argument, the listening experience was cheapened.”

David Morton The Sound Recording Technology History Site

Early History

Making and listening to music has always been a fundamental human need. Before the invention of recording you could only hear music if someone was prepared to play or sing it.

Vermeer’s The Music Lesson

Early History

Breughal’sPeasantWedding

Early History

In the Middle Ages, the wheel was the first mechanism used to record sound, with pegs positioned to strike chimes, certain keys, or bells when rotated.

A famous automata with sound was a mechanical duck developed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1745. The duck flapped its wings, raised up on its legs, stretched its neck, and quacked. Oh, and digested food!

Early Recording Devices

Being able to record sounds was always a dream of inventors. Although musical boxes and barrel organs allowed people to hear music without anyone having to play, the sound was very limited..

Early Recording Devices

Scott’s Phonoautograph, 1857, traced sound waves on a carbonized cylinder with a stylus attached to a diaphragm that vibrated from spoken sounds--did not record the sound itself, only a graphical image of sound.

Barrel Orchestrion by Klepetar in Prague about 1860-- an early computer.

“Mary Had a Little Lamb”

Acoustical Recording Technology

Edison Phonograph-- late 1880's

Not originally intended for music

Phonograph used tin foil or wax cylinders recorded by speaking into a megaphone

”Mixing" was done by placement of musicians

Thomas Alva Edison

1878-- Edison was granted patent 200,521 for a phonograph he developed in 1877 which used cylinders wrapped with tin foil. It had 2-3 min. capacity.

Early Phonograph

Early Phonograph

A sheet of thick tinfoil, wrapped around cylinder "C" is indented by a stylus attached to diaphragm "A." This hand-cranked machine was of the type used to demonstrate the principle. Production models had provisions for keeping the speed constant and other improvements.

Early Phonograph

AC

Close Up of Grooves

Phonograph recording on tinfoil.

Edison, The Man starring Spencer Tracy

“Mary Had a Little Lamb”

Two-minute wax cylinders

Edison’s Music Room 1890-93

Early Recording

“Liberty March” by Edison Concert Band, recorded in 1897 with a 13 horn system.

Tonight’s Top Ten

In 1878, shortly after inventing his phonograph, Thomas Edison created a "top ten list" of uses of the phonograph. Number ten read:

"Connection with the telephone, so as make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication."

Consumerism Wins Out

Wax and shellac discs

The first phonographs had one disadvantage - the recordings could not be duplicated. In 1894, Emile Berliner modified the phonograph to use a disc rather than a cylinder.

Emile Berliner about 1890

Wax and shellac discs

This allowed mass production of records by stamping them out into a hard rubber material.

Berliner’s disc recorder

Wax and shellac discs

Cylinder records competed with the flat discs for a number of years, but by the time of the First World War, the disc record had become the standard.

Electromagnetic Recording

Until 1925, all records were made by performing into a horn, which limited the range and type of music, so the idea of using an electrical signal from a microphone to drive an electromagnetic disc recording device was developed.

Electromagnetic Recording

1925 - first electrically-recorded discs and Orthophonic phonographs went on sale, using Western Electric system developed at AT&T's Bell Labs over the previous 10 years. It is now possible to record whole orchestras and symphonies and even sound motion pictures

Amplification--1920's

v Electromagnetic recording became possible because of the development of amplification techniques.

v Circuits were developed for radio industry: Amps and Microphones

v By using the microphone, recordings of public performances became much easier.

v Bing Crosby was first to use the microphone as an "instrument"-he sang INTO the mic: more intimate than "acoustic" singing

But Master recordings still went to disk in the same manner as before

Magnetic Tape

Magnetic recording, which is today used for video and audio tape, was first introduced around 1899-1900 by the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen. In 1900, Poulsen patented the Telegraphone, a device to record sound on a steel wire or tape. He later designed a model to answer the telephone automatically and record a message.

1932 - BASF of I.G. Farben joined with AEG of Telefunken to develop magnetic tape recording using Pfleumer patent; by 1934, BASF is able to manufacture reels of plastic-based tape.

(1940 - David Sarnoff of RCA installed first secret recording devices in the White House.)

Magnetic Tape

Fritz Pfleumer, ca. 1928

Reel to Reel

Effects Devices

Tape recorders led to effects devices--Z Flanging -> whooshing, swirling sound

Developed by John Lennon by alternately pressing the tape flangers on two machines

Z Chorus -> slight detuning of the signal to create a full shimmering sound

Z Reverb-> simulates reverberation of various sizes of rooms

Z Delay -> repeats original sound at regular intervals, gradually fading away

Z Echo -> repeats original sound at irregular intervals

Les Paul

Les Paul ‘s performing career started at the age of 13 and by the early 1950s he was the greatest jazz guitarist of his generation. As an inventor, Mr. Paul's breakthrough creation of the solid-body electric guitar paved the way for electric music and made the sound of rock and roll possible.

Les Paul

In 1953 while performing with Bing Crosby, he perfected the first muli-track recording machine, allowing separate lines of instrumental music and vocals to be blended together. His many recording innovations--including sound-on-sound, overdubbing, reverb effects, and multi-tracking--greatly accelerated the advancement of studio recording.

Cassettes

Digital Recording

Digital audio began in the telephone industry, where it was used to digitize telephone conversations and, in effect, compress them so that more conversations could be handled on existing lines.

Digital Recording

In 1971, Heitaro Nakajima joined Sony. He was struck with the idea of digitizing sound when trying to improve the sound quality of FM broadcasts. Nakajima thought that by using digital technology, which had only been used in computers and long-distance telephone transmission, the quality of recorded sound could be improved.

Digital Tape

1976 - The first 16-bit digital recording in the US was made at the Santa Fe Opera on a handmade Soundstream digital tape recorder developed by Dr. Thomas G. Stockham.

1987--Digital Audio Tape (DAT) recorders and players were introduced.

CDs

1982 - first digital audio 5-inch CD discs marketed, merging the consumer music industry with the computer revolution.

CDs

The compact disc as sold to the public for $15 is made of plastic coated with a layer of aluminum and protected with a final layer of lacquer, costing less than $1 to manufacture. The maximum playing time is 74 minutes.

Labeling SurfaceProtective LayerReflective LayerRecording LayerPolycarbonate Substrate

CDs

The CD was not an immediate hit, and it took nearly a decade for it to displace the audio cassette, but in the 1990s it became the most popular home format.

Other Digital Devices

1997 - MP3.com was founded in November by Michael Robertson with 3,000 songs available for free download. In the next 12 months, it became the #1 music site on the Internet with 3 million hits monthly.

Digital Recording Studio

1998 - Jonell Polansky produced the first 24-bit 48-track digital recording session at Ocean Way on Nashville's Music Row

Portable Digital Recorders

E.G., the Boss BR-8 is an eight track digital recorder. It was one of the first to offer a built in zip disk drive for easy storage and transfer with computers.

Really Portable

Recorders were once the size of an entire room. Now they fit in your hand.

The recording quality was once very poor. Now they are nearly the same quality as professional studios.

Multi-Track Recording withEffects and Processing

• Axigally Animal CrackersX Basic Drum TrackX add: SynthesizerX add: Bass and GuitarsX add: VocalsX Final Mix: All Tracks with “effects”