THE HISTORY OF RECORDING – PART ONE *This episode of Spectre Sound Studios is
brought to you by Lewitt Audio* Greetings fellow recording nerds!
Today, I want to start a new series on this channel.
I love doing the »can you play metal on« videos.
Not only do I get to check out and record some really cool gear, I also learn a lot
about the history of that gear.
And seeing as the main topic of SMG has always been recording, I thought »Hey, why not look
into how all of it started?«
So, let’s take a look at, »The History Of Recording«
During the 18th and 19th century, Europe and North America were going through the Industrial
Revolution.
This time period saw a massive change in how goods were produced, going from making everything
by hand to mostly machine assisted production.
Now, I can already hear you asking “BUT GLEEEEEEEEN, WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH
RECORDING?
GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!”
Well, this time period saw a great deal of innovation, which would eventually lead people
to try and invent devices that could reproduce what the human senses do – namely sight
in the form of cameras, and hearing in the form of recording devices.
Humans have been tinkering with the pinhole camera for ages, but it was in 1825 that the
first permanent photograph had been taken.
Our sight was now capable of being reproduced by a machine.
On the other hand, capturing sound would come about around 1854, when French inventor Edouard-Leon
Scott de Martinville invented the phonoautograph.
It initially served as a laboratory instrument for studying acoustics, but Edouardo did something
with it that would change history forever – he recorded himself singing.
That my friends was the man himself singing the French folk song »Au Clair De La Lune«
in to his own invention!
The quality might be crappy, but it's still more listenable than most of Britney Spears'
catalog!
Later on in 1877, another inventor and alleged thief of ideas, Thomas Edison, invented the
phonograph.
How did it work?
It had a big horn that was attached to a diaphragm and when sound travelled down the horn, it
made that diaphragm vibrate.
The diaphragm was also connected to a stylus, or needle, which carved a groove into a thin
piece of tin foil wrapped around a cylinder.
To do this, the user would have to turn a handle that would spin the cylinder and push
it into the needle.
Then, the vibrations of sound, caused by whatever was being recorded, were engraved on to the
foil.
The phonograph was also capable of playing back the recordings that were made on it!
By turning the handle all the way back and then forward again, it produced the sound
that was on the cylinder with a needle, kind of like how a vinyl player does.
However, these were all-mechanical devices, and they were very primitive by today's standards.
The fidelity and volume of the recording were very low, and only captured a narrow segment
of the audible sound spectrum – from around 250hz up to 2500hz.
Plus they also had a distinct »scratchy« and »distorted« quality to them.
Can you imagine listening to all your favorite tracks like this?
It might not be particularly pleasant, but at least it doesn't sound like the sterile,
overproduced pablum that is modern metal.
Now, that’s just some eq and distortion thrown onto an existing track.
If you want to hear how metal would sound recorded on a phonograph, I’d definitely
recommend checking out Rob Scallon’s video where he tracked his whole band through one.
Seriously amazing stuff.
*LEWITT SHOUTOUT*
Hey everybody, just wanna break in and give a shout out to the sponsors of today's video
- Lewitt Audio!
Now, I absolutely LOVE Lewitt microphones!
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Their drum mic package lives on my drums and I especially love the DTP 340 tom mics.
They’re about 80 bucks, come with their own clips and are a great choice as the sound
rivals the competition for about a quarter the price..
But recently, I’ve found a new favorite in the LCT140 AIR.
They’re small diaphragm condensers with a couple of great features.
There's a high pass filter, a 12DB pad, and the awesome AIR setting that gives your sources
some of that much needed presence and brilliance.
And the best part?
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So if you’re looking to record some stereo sources like drum overheads or acoustic guitar,
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LCT140 AIR, Matched pair!
Follow the link in the description below, now back to the show!
As I mentioned, the volume coming out of these was pretty low.
Because of this, musicians that were recording on them favored louder instruments, particularly
brass instruments like the trumpet, the trombone and the tuba for the lower registers.
Musicians would also have to be positioned strategically around the horn to create a
good balance of all the sounds and then play as loud as they could.
This was miles apart from how we do things today.
The technological limitations of that time forced people to adapt and it pushed them
outside their comfort zones.
Oh, if only some prog bands would try that these days!
However, the Phonogram was not without competition!
Around the time it came into the public eye, Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratories
started developing the graphophone, in an attempt to improve on Edison's design.
Alexander Graham Bell was also the guy who patented the first microphone in 1876!
Unlike the phonograph, the grapohophone's needle moved from side to side in a zigzag
pattern across a wax-coated cardboard cylinder.
This was done because Edison's original tin foil recording was very impractical and hard
to work with.
Even when used properly, the reproduction of sound was way too distorted and couldn't
be played back more than a few times without being completely ruined.
In fact, it wasn't until the late 1880s, when Edison finished work on New York's electric
light and power system, that his phonograms started using hollow wax cylinders.
Now brace yourselves for this one cause it’s freaking HILARIOUS!
This next clip was accidentally recorded in 1885 during the development of the graphophone.
One of the technicians at Volta Labs was testing it out and during the process, there was a
technical failure.
Fortunately for us, we get to hear his reaction.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I PRESENT TO YOU THE FIRST EVER RECORDING OF THE WORD “FUCK”
Oh man, that’s too good!
It’s even funnier when you realize that the official endorsed transcription changed
that particular word to “oh no”.
I can only imagine how outraged some of the religious fanatics would’ve been back then,
considering the fact that they weren’t allowed to burn people at the stake anymore.
Anyway, back to the history!
In the 1890s, a man named Emile Berliner developed an alternative to wax cylinder recording with
his gramophone.
He initiated the transition towards flat discs with a spiral groove that ran from the edge
of the disc towards the center.
It was, for all intents and purposes, the grandfather of the vinyl record.
At the time, the fidelity of disc recordings wasn't as good as cylinder recordings, but
there was something that gave it the edge.
Since discs were a lot easier to mass produce by molding and stamping, not to mention being
much easier to store in mass, Berliner's gramophone and the records that it played were the first
disc media viable for mass consumption.
Another thing that made the disc more appealing was how much could actually be recorded onto
it.
Due to it's design, the disc could have sound and music recorded on both sides, giving it
around 7 minutes of total playing time, as opposed to the cylinders 2 minutes.
Further down the line, Berliner teamed up with a man named Eldridge R. Johnson.
Together, they improved the sound fidelity of the discs until they were on par with cylinders.
With all this development, cylinder sales began to rapidly decline.
Edison felt the pressure of the discs commercial viability, and though he was stubborn, he
launched his own disc record production in 1912.
Over time, the cylinder would be phased out entirely, and the design of the gramophone
and the disc record would continue to improve, eventually spawning the much larger 10 & 12
inch »long play« (or LP for short) record.
Now, what's really cool is that I was able to borrow my father in law’s Edison Amberola
wax cylinder player.
It was made somewhere around 1915, and unfortunately, the spring mechanism no longer works, so I
won’t be able to play anything back.
What’s most impressive is just how well the cylinders have held up to this date.
Apparently the blue ones can hold four minutes of music.
But the fact that they’re not full of scratches is pretty impressive.
The cylinder would be placed on the metal shaft, and the stylus mechanism would be placed
directly onto the cylinder.
Crank up the spring,, and you’re in business.
This is a completely mechanical unit, with no amplifier circuit, so the volume it’s
capable of producing is quite soft But, I can certainly see the appeal of it
to those who had grown up with nothing but live music in their experience.
This would have been absolutely spellbinding to someone who’d never heard a recording
before.
Truth be told, the history of recording is quite vast, and we've barely scratched the
surface of everything we can cover.
I'm looking to make this into a several part series, where we will explore the development
of microphones, radio, tape machines, mixing consoles, multitrack recording, DAW’s and
how these developments impacted music and culture.. alright, show’s over, go do some
work you lazy bastards!