Chapter 12, The History of Audio Recording Technology

Episode 151

Chapter 12, The History of Audio Recording Technology. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music 

Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes.

This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text.

The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings.

There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast.

 

Playlist: THE HISTORY OF AUDIO RECORDING TECHNOLOGY

 

Time

Track Time

Start

Introduction –Thom Holmes

01:30

00:00

1.     Leon Scott “Au Clair de la Lune” (1860). Phonautograph. One of about 50 recordings made around 1860 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's on his invention, the Phonautograph that were digitally restored in 2008 by the First Sounds collaborative. These were created using the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's virtual stylus technology, which sought to track the wavy lines scratched on soot-covered paper as though they were standard record grooves.

00:20

01:38

2.     Alice J. Shaw, an improvised whistling performance (1888) from an Edison Records cylinder recording.

02:13

01:58

3.     George J. Gaskin, “Drill Ye Terriers Drill” (1896) from an E. Berliner's Gramophone shellac disc.

01:24

04:10

4.     Sousa's Band, “Happy Days In Dixie” (1897) from an E. Berliner's Gramophone shellac disc.

01:43

05:36

5.     Emperor Franz Joseph, short message recorded on Valdemar Poulsen’s Telegraphone (1900). Early magnetic wire recording. Recording made without microphone.

00:09

07:18

6.     Sousa's Band, “The Mosquito Parade” (1904) from Columbia Records shellac disc. Note the higher fidelity of the instruments compared to earlier recordings on disc, recorded without electrical microphones but optimizing the use of acoustic horns for sound intake.

02:54

07:28

7.     Noble Sissle (vocals) and Eubie Blake (piano), medley of popular songs (1923). Recording using onto an early sound film using the Phonofilm process invented by Lee de Forest.

06:51

10:22

8.     Paul Whiteman And His Concert Orchestra, “Rhapsody In Blue” (1924) from an RCA Victor shellac disc. This is an acoustically recorded version of this piece, without the benefit of vacuum tube amplification or electrical microphones. Compare to the 1927 version (next), also by Whiteman, produced using electrical recording.

09:06

17:12

9.     Paul Whiteman And His Concert Orchestra, “Rhapsody In Blue” (1927) from RCA Victor, His Master's Voice shellac disc. An electrical recording using vacuum tube amplification and electrical microphones.

08:59

26:30

10.   Paul Hindemith, “Trickaufnahme” (excerpt) (1930), an experiment in turntablism using turntable discs to both record, mix, and playback the result.

00:58

35:28

11.   BBC, “Pieces of Tape” excerpt of a program (1933) produced by editing together segments recorded previously using the Blattnerphonesteel tape recorded that used a magnetic process. This was the first audio recording assembled using tape editing. A dozen years prior to the available of magnetic tape, edits made to steel tape had to be made by spot welding.

05:29

36:28

12.   Sidney Bechet, “Blues of Bechet” (1941) from an RCA Victor shellac disc. An early example of overdubbing/multitracking. Bechet played every instrument on this track, including the piano, clarinet and soprano saxophone. Each instrument was recorded onto a new master disc and mixed on another disc to create the final recording.

01:57

41:56

 

Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes.

My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022.

See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation.

For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.

Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.