1925 Centuries of Sound
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- Music History
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year from 1953 to the present day. Download full mixes, bonus materials and more for just $5 per month at patreon.com/centuriesofsound. Thanks for listening.
MP3 sample download | Patreon | Apple | Mixcloud | Spotify | Castbox | Stitcher | Radiopublic | RSS
Have you see the videos of people hearing for the first time? Seen that look on their faces? Well that’s you, today. We have reached 1925, the year the microphone replaced the recording horn and the sideways electrical impulse replaced the hill-and-dale physical analog. The tinniness has gone, low and high sounds are reproducible, and no longer are we trapped in the narrow boundaries of reproducible sound. In theory, all audible sound can now be captured.
“Electrical recording had manifold consequences that affected a range of musical, engineering and business developments” – Susan Schmidt Horning – Capturing Sound
Of course, it’s not really all like that. For a start, at least half of these recordings are still made on old analogue equipment. Even the electrical recordings are still, let’s say, experimental. Sound engineers, some with decades in the business, had to re-learn the very fundamentals of how recording worked, and instead of hanging things across the room to resonate the sound were now having to shift to muffling and dampening. Nobody seems to have yet realised that you can get right up close to the microphone and make quiet things loud. But they will.
“The development of electrical recording made it possible to reproduce a much larger spectrum of sound; pianists, drummers and bassists could finally be heard without undue modulation. Nevertheless, the microphone had its own quirks, and may have also affected jazz performance.” Mark Katz – Capturing Sound
On this website, I make sound collages. These are not a new invention. Here we are in 1925, and pioneering Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov is putting together audio with remarkable dexterity, in the form of “sound poems,” and “verbal montage structures.” – though his most famous film, Man With A Movie camera, produced at the dawn of the sound film era, is entirely silent.
“I had an idea about the need to enlarge our ability for organized hearing. Not limiting this ability to the boundaries of usual music. I decided to include the entire audible world into the concept of ‘Hearing.’” – Dziga Vertov
The dance known as the ‘Juba’ was originally brought by slaves from the Kongo to Charleston, South Carolina. In 1923 it was adapted for a stage play called Runnin’ Wild, with music by (black) stride piano king James P Johnson. The song, and the dance, were called “The Charleston,” known popularly for being danced by lines of (white) flappers in whitewashed recreations of this still-turbulent decade.
“The sound was somehow harsher, with a brightness that almost sounded like the radio. “The Edison has some air and detail, a little bit more roundness,” Devecka said. “The victor is a little bit more like cardboard cutouts. It’s like a photograph that doesn’t have quite the right contrast range.” …The Victor’s sound was impressive, but there was something ultimately more pleasant about the Edison sound” – Greg Milner – Perfecting Sound Forever
The expanded audio range of electrical recording is not its only benefit. The microphone, even in bulky early varieties, was much more portable than the recording horn. Suddenly it was possible to travel anywhere in the world and record – and let’s not forget the poorer parts of the USA, full of local folk and roots music, all untouched and ready. We are just a little too early to get the full force of this explosion, but can’t you feel it already?
Tracklist
0:00:25 Dziga Vertov – Radio Ear – Radio Pravda (Excerpt 1)
0:00:38 Jose
At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year from 1953 to the present day. Download full mixes, bonus materials and more for just $5 per month at patreon.com/centuriesofsound. Thanks for listening.
MP3 sample download | Patreon | Apple | Mixcloud | Spotify | Castbox | Stitcher | Radiopublic | RSS
Have you see the videos of people hearing for the first time? Seen that look on their faces? Well that’s you, today. We have reached 1925, the year the microphone replaced the recording horn and the sideways electrical impulse replaced the hill-and-dale physical analog. The tinniness has gone, low and high sounds are reproducible, and no longer are we trapped in the narrow boundaries of reproducible sound. In theory, all audible sound can now be captured.
“Electrical recording had manifold consequences that affected a range of musical, engineering and business developments” – Susan Schmidt Horning – Capturing Sound
Of course, it’s not really all like that. For a start, at least half of these recordings are still made on old analogue equipment. Even the electrical recordings are still, let’s say, experimental. Sound engineers, some with decades in the business, had to re-learn the very fundamentals of how recording worked, and instead of hanging things across the room to resonate the sound were now having to shift to muffling and dampening. Nobody seems to have yet realised that you can get right up close to the microphone and make quiet things loud. But they will.
“The development of electrical recording made it possible to reproduce a much larger spectrum of sound; pianists, drummers and bassists could finally be heard without undue modulation. Nevertheless, the microphone had its own quirks, and may have also affected jazz performance.” Mark Katz – Capturing Sound
On this website, I make sound collages. These are not a new invention. Here we are in 1925, and pioneering Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov is putting together audio with remarkable dexterity, in the form of “sound poems,” and “verbal montage structures.” – though his most famous film, Man With A Movie camera, produced at the dawn of the sound film era, is entirely silent.
“I had an idea about the need to enlarge our ability for organized hearing. Not limiting this ability to the boundaries of usual music. I decided to include the entire audible world into the concept of ‘Hearing.’” – Dziga Vertov
The dance known as the ‘Juba’ was originally brought by slaves from the Kongo to Charleston, South Carolina. In 1923 it was adapted for a stage play called Runnin’ Wild, with music by (black) stride piano king James P Johnson. The song, and the dance, were called “The Charleston,” known popularly for being danced by lines of (white) flappers in whitewashed recreations of this still-turbulent decade.
“The sound was somehow harsher, with a brightness that almost sounded like the radio. “The Edison has some air and detail, a little bit more roundness,” Devecka said. “The victor is a little bit more like cardboard cutouts. It’s like a photograph that doesn’t have quite the right contrast range.” …The Victor’s sound was impressive, but there was something ultimately more pleasant about the Edison sound” – Greg Milner – Perfecting Sound Forever
The expanded audio range of electrical recording is not its only benefit. The microphone, even in bulky early varieties, was much more portable than the recording horn. Suddenly it was possible to travel anywhere in the world and record – and let’s not forget the poorer parts of the USA, full of local folk and roots music, all untouched and ready. We are just a little too early to get the full force of this explosion, but can’t you feel it already?
Tracklist
0:00:25 Dziga Vertov – Radio Ear – Radio Pravda (Excerpt 1)
0:00:38 Jose