The First Music Video, 1895 The Dickson Experimental Sound Film.

This film, known as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, is the first known film with live-recorded sound. The film features William Dicksonplaying the melody “Song of the Cabin Boy” from the light opera “The Chimes of Normandy“, composed by Robert Planquette in 1877.

The two men dancing are likely to be employees at Edison’s studio – the Black Maria. The lyric of the song they are dancing to describes life at sea without women.

This short film was a test for Edison’s “Kinetophone” project, the first attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization. This was an experiment by William Dickson to put sound and film together either in 1894 or 1895. Unfortunately, this experiment failed because they didn’t understand synchronization of sound and film. The large cone on the left hand side of the frame is the “microphone” for the wax cylinder recorder (off-camera). The Library of Congress had the film. The wax cylinder soundtrack, however, was believed lost for many years. Tantalizingly, a broken cylinder labeled “Violin by WKL Dickson with Kineto” was catalogued in the 1964 inventory at the Edison National Historic Site. In 1998, Patrick Loughney, curator of Film and Television at the Library of Congress, retrieved the cylinder and had it repaired and re-recorded at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, Lincoln Center, New York. Since the Library did not possess the necessary synchronizing technology, Loughney – at the suggestion of producer Rick Schmidlin – sent multi-Oscar winner Walter Murch a videotape of the 17 seconds of film and an audiocassette of 3 minutes and 20 seconds of sound with a request to marry the two. By digitizing the media and using digital editing software, Murch was able to synchronize them and complete the failed experiment 105 years later

May 17 1965, Moog introduces the first analog synthesizer.

The Moog synthesizer, though Robert Moog preferred the former) may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for older-generation analog music synthesizers. The Moog Company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems in the early 1950s. The technological development that led to the creation of the Moog synthesizer was the invention of the transistor, which enabled researchers like Moog to build electronic music systems that were considerably smaller, cheaper and far more reliable than earlier vacuum tube-based systems.

The Moog synthesizer gained wider attention in the music industry after it was demonstrated at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967. The commercial breakthrough of a Moog recording was made by Wendy Carlos in the 1968 record Switched-On Bach, which became one of the highest-selling classical music recordings of its era. The success of Switched-On Bach sparked a slew of other synthesizer records in the late 1960s to mid 1970s. In 1974 the German electronic group Kraftwerk further popularized the sound of the synthesizer with their landmark album Autobahn, which used several types of synthesizer including a Minimoog. German-based Italian producer-composer Giorgio Moroder helped to shape the development of disco music.

Later Moog modular systems featured various improvements, such as a scaled-down, simplified, self-contained musical instrument designed for use in live performance. The Minimoog became the most popular monophonic synthesizer of the 1970s, and it was quickly taken up by leading rock and electronic music groups such as Yes and Tangerine Dream.

 Early history

The Moog Company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems. Company founder Dr. Robert Arthur Moog had begun manufacturing and selling vacuum-tube theremins in kit form while he was a student in the early 1950s and marketed his first transistorized theremin kits in 1961. Moog became interested in the design and construction of complex electronic music systems in the mid 1960s and the burgeoning interest in his designs enabled him to establish a small company (R. A. Moog Co., which became Moog Music and later, Moog Electronics) to manufacture and market the new devices.

Pioneering electronic music experimenters like Leon Theremin, Louis and Bebe Barron, Christopher R. Morgan, and Raymond Scott had built sound-generating devices and systems of varying complexity, and several large electronic synthesizers (e.g. the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer) had been built prior to the advent of the Moog, but these were essentially unique, custom-built devices or systems. Electronic music studios typically had many different oscillators, filters and other devices to generate and manipulate electronic sound. In the case of the famous electronic score for the 1955 science fiction film Forbidden Planet, for example, the Barrons had to design and build many different circuits to produce particular sounds, and each could only perform a limited range of functions.

Early electronic music performance devices like the Theremin were also relatively limited in function. The classic Theremin, for example, produces only a simple sine wave tone, and the antennae which control the pitch and volume respond to small changes in the proximity of the operator’s hands to the device, making it difficult to play accurately.

In the period from 1950 to the mid-1960s, studio musicians and composers were also heavily dependent on magnetic tape to realize their works. The limitations of existing electronic music components meant that in many cases each note or tone had to be recorded separately, with changes in pitch often achieved by speeding up or slowing down the tape, and then splicing or overdubbing the result into the master tape. These tape-recorded electronic works could be extremely laborious and time-consuming to create—according to the 1967 Moog 900 Series demonstration record, such recordings could have as many as eight edits per inch of tape. The key technological development that led to the creation of the Moog synthesizer was the invention of the transistor, which enabled researchers like Moog to build electronic music systems that were considerably smaller, cheaper and far more reliable than earlier systems, which depended on the older vacuum tube technology.

Moog began to develop his synthesizer systems after he met educator and composer Herbert Deutsch at a conference in late 1963. Over the next year, with encouragement from Myron Hoffman of the University of Toronto, Moog and Deutsch developed the first modular voltage-controlled subtractive synthesizer. Through Hoffman, Moog was invited to demonstrate these prototype devices at the Audio Engineering Society convention in October 1964, where composer Alwin Nikolais saw them and immediately placed an order.

Moog’s innovations were set out in his 1964 paper Voltage-Controlled Electronic Music Modules, presented at the AES conference in October 1964, where he also demonstrated his prototype synthesizer modules. There were two key features in Moog’s new system: he analyzed and systematized the production of electronically generated sounds, breaking down the process into a number of basic functional “blocks”, which could be carried out by standardized modules. He proposed the use of a standardized scale of voltages for the electrical signals that controlled the various functions of these modules—the Moog oscillators and keyboard, for example, used a standard progression of 1 volt per octave for pitch control.

At a time when digital circuits were still relatively costly and in an early stage of development, voltage control was a practical design choice. In the Moog topology, each voltage-controllable module has one or more inputs that accept a voltage of typically 10 V or less. The magnitude of this voltage controls one or more key parameters of the module’s circuits, such as the frequency of an audio (or sub-audio—”low frequency”) oscillator, the attenuation or gain of an amplifier, or the cutoff frequency of a wide-frequency-range filter. Thus, frequency determines pitch, attenuation determines instantaneous loudness (as well as silence between notes), and cutoff frequency determines relative timbre.

Voltage control in analog music synthesizers is similar in principle to how voltage is used in electronic analog computers, in which voltage is a scaled analog of a quantity that is part of the computation. For instance, control voltages can be added or subtracted in a circuit almost identical to an adder in such a computer. Inside a synthesizer VCO, an analog exponential function provides the 1 volt per octave control of an oscillator that basically runs on a volts/kHz basis. Positive voltage polarity raises pitch, and negative lowers it. The result is that, for example, a standard keyboard can have its output scaled to that of a quarter-tone keyboard by changing its output to one-half volt per octave, with no other technical changes.

Using this approach, Moog built a range of signal-generating, signal-modifying and controller modules, each of which could be easily inter-connected to control or modify the functions and outputs of any other. The central component was the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), which generated the primary sound signal, capable of producing a variety of waveforms including sawtooth, square and sine waves. The output from the VCO could then be modified and shaped by feeding the signal into other modules such as voltage-controlled amplifiers (VCA), voltage-controlled filters (VCF), envelope generators, and ring modulators. Another customization as part of the Moog Modular Synthesizer is the sequencer, which provided a source of timed step control voltages that were programmed to create repetitive note patterns, without using the keyboard.  The inputs and outputs of any module could be cross-linked with patch cords (using tip-sleeve (“mono”) ¼-inch plugs) and, together with the module control knobs and switches, could create a nearly infinite variety of sounds and effects.

The final output could be controlled by an organ-style keyboard as the primary user interface, but the notes—individual sounds—could also be triggered and/or modulated by a ribbon controller or by other modules such as white noise generators or low-frequency oscillators. The Moog modular systems were not designed as a performance instrument, but rather a sophisticated, studio-based professional audio system which could be used as a musical instrument for creating and recording electronic music in the studio

Moog’s first customized modular systems were built during 1965 and demonstrated at a summer workshop at Moog’s Trumansburg, New York, factory in August 1965, culminating with an afternoon concert of electronic music and musique concrète on August 28. Although far more compact than previous tube-based systems (e.g. the RCA Mark II) the Moog modular systems were quite large by modern standards, since they predated the introduction of integrated circuit (“microchip”) technology; one the biggest of these, the Moog-based “TONTO” system (built by Malcolm Cecil and used by Stevie Wonder in the 1970s) occupies several cubic meters when fully assembled. These early Moogs were also complex to operate—it sometimes took hours to set up the machine for a new sound—and they were prone to pitch instability because the oscillators tended to drift out of tune as the device heated up] As a result, ownership and use was at first mainly limited to clients such as educational institutions and major recording studios and a handful of adventurous audio professionals.

Through contacts at the Columbia-Princeton Center, Moog met Wendy (then Walter) Carlos, a recording engineer at New York’s studio Gotham Recording and a former student of Vladimir Ussachevsky. Carlos was then building an electronic music system and began ordering Moog modules. Moog credits Carlos with making many suggestions and improvements to his systems. During 1967 Moog introduced its first production model, the 900 series, which was promoted with a free demonstration record composed, realised and produced by Carlos.[4] After assembling a Moog system and a custom-built 8-track recorder in early 1968, Carlos and collaborator Rachel Elkind (secretary to CBS Records president Goddard Lieberson) began recording pieces by Bach which were entirely realized on the new Moog. When Moog played one of their pieces at the AES convention in 1968 it received a standing ovation.

The use of flexible cords with plugs at their ends and sockets (jacks) to make temporary connections dates back to cord-type manually operated telephone switchboards (if not even earlier, possibly for telegraph circuits). Cords with plugs at both ends had been used for many decades before the advent of Dr. Moog’s synthesizers to make temporary connections (“patches”) in such places as radio and recording studios. These came to be known as “patch cords”, and that term was also used for Moog modular systems. As familiarity developed, a given setup of the synthesizer (both cord connections and knob settings) came to be referred to as a “patch”, and the term has persisted, applying to systems that do not use patch cords.

Late 1960s

The Moog synthesizer began to gain wider attention in the music industry after it was demonstrated at the epochal Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Electronic music pioneers Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause had bought one of Moog’s first synthesizers in 1966 and had spent a fruitless year trying to interest Hollywood studios in its use for movie soundtracks. In June 1967 they set up a booth at the Monterey festival to demonstrate the Moog, and it attracted the interest of several of the major acts who attended, including The Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel. This quickly built into a steady stream of studio session work in Los Angeles and a recording contract with Warner Brothers.

Some of the first rock recordings to feature the Moog synthesizer included the Diana Ross & the Supremes single, “Reflections” (released July 1967) and prominently throughout albums of the Summer of Love era such as on Strange Days by The Doors (released September 1967 Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd. by The Monkees, Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac, (the latter two both released November 1967), Their Satanic Majesties Request by The Rolling Stones (released December 1967), The Notorious Byrd Brothers by The Byrds (released January 1968), and Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends (released April 1968). Buck Owens made the second purchase of the Moog, his longtime collaborator Jeff Haskell recording Switched On Buck, an album of Owens material recorded entirely on the Moog and released by Capitol Records in 1971. (Carlos purchased the first and Micky Dolenz of the Monkees purchased the third model).

At this early stage the Moog synthesizer was still widely perceived as a novel form of electronic keyboard, not unlike the Mellotron, which had appeared a few years earlier. Most early Moog appearances on popular recordings tended to make limited use of the synthesizer, exploiting the new device for its novel sonic qualities, and it was generally only used to augment or ‘color’ standard rock arrangements, rather than as an alternative to them—as for example in its use by Simon and Garfunkel on their 1968 LP Bookends and The Beatles’ Abbey Road.

According to the American Physical Society, “The first live performance of a music synthesizer was made by pianist Paul Bley at Lincoln Center in New York City on December 26, 1969. Bley developed a proprietary interface that allowed real-time performance on the music synthesizer.” However, according to biographical notes on the Hofstra University website, Herbert Deutsch gave a concert at the New York Town Hall on September 25, 1965 with his New York Improvisation Quartet which included the first live performance with a Moog synthesizer. The Moog was also heard on August 28, 1969 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in a performance which included Moog and Deutsch. Keyboardist/composer Keith Emerson is also pointed as the first musician to play live with a Moog in 1968 with his band The Nice accompanied by orchestra.

Commercial breakthrough

 The commercial breakthrough was made by New York-based recording engineer, musician and composer Wendy Carlos who, with producer and collaborator Rachel Elkind, was primarily responsible for introducing the Moog synthesizer to the general public and demonstrating its extraordinary musical possibilities. Carlos worked closely with Moog during 1967-68, suggesting many improvements and refinements to his modules, and during 1967 Carlos composed, realized and produced electronic sounds and music for a demonstration record for the Moog Company. Carlos purchased a large Moog modular system in 1968 and then constructed a state-of-the-art eight-track multitrack recorder from superseded studio equipment. Carlos and Elkind then began recording a selection of instrumental compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, realized entirely on the Moog synthesizer, with each piece painstakingly assembled one part at a time on the multitrack tape.

The resulting album was released by CBS Records in late 1968 under the title Switched-On Bach. It quickly captured the public imagination, becoming one of the highest-selling classical music recordings ever released up to that time and earning Carlos three Grammy awards. The success of Switched-On Bach led to three more successful albums of electronically realized Baroque music by Carlos, as well as the acclaimed electronic soundtrack music for the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, which featured original music by Carlos along with several Moog versions of classical pieces by Beethoven and Rossini. Still in 1968 Keith Emerson purchased the second Moog modular system in the UK after hearing Switched-On Bach. Having problems with its assembly and tuning, he met and collaborated with Dr. Moog so helping to develop even more stable oscillators and many new features for live and studio performance. This led the way to full commercial production of many types of synthesizers on the next decade and brought new rival manufacturers to the market.

In July, 1969 Dick Hyman’s recording of his jazz composition “The Minotaur” became the first Moog-based Billboard Top 40 hit single. Other early modular Moog users were Bread on ‘London Bridge’ released in 1969, Leon Russell on “Stranger In A Strange Land” (programmed by Terry Manning), recorded in 1970, and Terry Manning’s Home Sweet Home, (programmed by Dr. Robert Moog himself) recorded in 1968, but released in 1970. The Beatles have also experimented with the use of the Moog synthesizer during the recording of their album, Abbey Road, used prominently in the songs “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”, “Because”, “Here Comes the Sun”, and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”.

The success of Switched-On Bach sparked a slew of other synthesizer records in the late 1960s to mid 1970s. Most of these albums featured covers of songs arranged for Moog synthesizer in the most dramatic and flamboyant way possible, covering rock, country and other genres of music. The albums often had “Moog” in their titles (i.e. Country Moog Classics, Martin Denny’s Exotic Moog, Gershon Kingsley’s Music To Moog By etc.) although many used a variety of other brands of synthesizers and even organs as well. The kitsch appeal of these albums continue to have a small fanbase and the 1990s band The Moog Cookbook is a tribute to this style of music. Indeed, considering it was the first practical and widely used analog synthesizer, many people came to use “moog” to refer to music synthesizers.

1970s

One of the most important and successful uses of the Moog in popular music in the early-to-mid 1970s was the extended collaboration between Stevie Wonder and electronic musicians Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff on the series of albums Wonder released during this period. These recordings made extensive use of the duo’s large synthesiser system, which they dubbed TONTO (an acronym for “The Original New Timbral Orchestra”), reputedly the world’s first and largest multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer. Designed and constructed by Cecil, it was based on Moog Series III components, together with additional modules made by other manufacturers including ARP.

The duo’s 1971 album Zero Time — released under the pseudonym “Tonto’s Expanding Head Band” — gained critical acclaim and attracted the attention of many musicians including Wonder. He first worked with Cecil, Margouleff and TONTO on his 1972 album Music of My Mind and the collaboration continued and expanded over his subsequent albums, Talking Book (1972), which won several Grammy awards, Innervisions (1973), which won the ‘Album of the Year’ Grammy, Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974) and Songs In The Key Of Life (1976).

A more portable version was created and the “Minimoog” was played by a number of musicians, most notably by Jan Hammer in the Mahavishnu Orchestra beginning in 1971. The Minimoog proved versatile enough to allow Hammer to solo with equal musicality/facility to that of his colleagues John McLaughlin on guitar and Jerry Goodman on violin. Avant garde jazz musician Sun Ra often used the Moog as his instrument of choice to achieve his unique sound. A custom Moog Modular System was also featured prominently on Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s song “Lucky Man”, Keith Emerson’s Moog solo at the end making it arguably the group’s most popular piece. Another famous use of the Moog was in Tangerine Dream’s electronic landmark album Phaedra in 1974, which was a major hit in the UK—it reached #15 on the British album charts and playing a significant role in establishing the fledgling independent label Virgin Records.

Perhaps the most commercially successful, pop-industry recording primarily featuring the Moog was of Popcorn (instrumental) performed by Hot Butter and released in 1972, which made #1 in Australia and in a series of European countries, and made the Top 10 in both the UK #5 and in US #9.

In 1974 the German electronic group Kraftwerk further popularized the sound of the synthesizer with their landmark album Autobahn, which used several types of synthesizer including a Minimoog. A single featuring an edited version of the title track became an international hit in early 1975, reaching #25 in the USA and #11 in the UK. Gary Wright was one of the first musicians to perfect the Moog sound on his album The Dream Weaver.

German-based Italian producer-composer Giorgio Moroder helped to shape the development of disco music by incorporating the Moog synthesizer in the 1975 Donna Summer hit “Love to Love You Baby”. The use of the synthesizer created the sensual feel that is characteristic of disco and paved the way for Donna Summer’s landmark hit “I Feel Love” in 1977. The Moog bassline in this song, combined with the syn-drum created the hi-NRG category of disco music.[25]

In 1976, the Gordon Lightfoot standard The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald would feature a Moog unit that appears on the verse that included the line … “and later that night when its lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

On the 1977 Beach Boys album Love You, Brian Wilson, who composed almost every song on the album, used the Moog on a great number of tracks.

In the late 70s and early 80s, Tejano music groups such as Mazz began using Moogs which would later be used as part of what is called modern Tejano.

Bernard Herrmann also used two Moog synthesizers in his chilling score for Brian de Palma’s Sisters (1973 film).

Contemporary composer Christopher R. Morgan used nearly two dozen Moog synthesizers for his second album, “The Quad: C.”

 Product development

Later Moog modular systems featured improvements to the electronics design, and in the early 1970s Moog introduced new models featuring scaled-down, simplified designs that made them much more stable and well suited to real-time musical performance. In 1970 Moog (R. A. Moog Inc. at that time) began production of the Minimoog Model D, a small, monophonic three-oscillator keyboard synthesizer which—alongside the British-made EMS VCS 3 — was one of the first widely available, portable and relatively affordable synthesizers. Unlike the early modular systems, the Minimoog was specifically created as a self-contained musical instrument designed for use in live performance by keyboard players. Although its sonic capabilities were drastically reduced from the large modular systems, the Minimoog combined a user-friendly physical design, pitch stability, portability and the ability to create wide range of sounds and effects.

An extremely important Minimoog innovation was the introduction of its now-famous wheel controllers, with which the musician could easily bend pitch and add modulation effects in real time. The two wheels are mounted to the left of the keyboard, next to the lowest key. The function of the Pitch wheel was assigned solely to control oscillator pitch (either sharp or flat from a default, detented, non spring-loaded center position), whereas its neighboring Mod (Modulation) wheel was assignable to control a mixable amount of oscillator 3 and/or Noise routed to the three oscillators and/or the VCF cutoff frequency. In particular, the intuitive function and feel of the Pitch wheel allowed Minimoog users to create similar expressive pitch-bending effects that musicians such as guitarists achieve by physically ‘bending’ strings and using “whammy” bars.

Although many other types of left hand controllers have been used by various synthesizer manufacturers over the years – including levers, joysticks, ribbon controllers and buttons – the Pitch and Mod wheels introduced on the Minimoog have become de facto standard ‘left-hand controllers’ and have since been used by almost every major synthesizer manufacturer, including Korg, Yamaha, Kawai and (now defunct) Sequential Circuits on their ground-breaking Prophet-5 programmable polyphonic synthesizer (1977). A notable exception is the Japanese manufacturer Roland, who have never included Pitch and Modulation wheels on any synthesizer they have produced, opting instead to include alternative controllers of their own design.

The Minimoog was the first product to really solidify the synthesizer’s popular image as a “keyboard” instrument and it became the most popular monophonic synthesizer of the 1970s, selling approximately 13,180 units between 1970 and 1981,[4] and it was quickly taken up by leading rock and electronic music groups such as the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tangerine Dream and Gary Numan. Although the popularity of analog synthesis faded in the 1980s with the advent of affordable digital synthesizers and sampling keyboards, the Minimoog remained a sought-after instrument for producers and recording artists, and it continued to be used extensively on electronic, techno, dance and disco recordings into the 1980s due to its distinctive tonal qualities, particularly that of its patented Moog “ladder” filter.

The rarest Moog production model was the little Minitmoog (1975–1976), a direct descendant of the rather obscure Moog Satellite preset synthesizer. It is rumored that only a few hundred Minitmoogs were made, although firm numbers are unavailable. While it lacked programmability and memory storage, the Minitmoog did offer some forward features, such as keyboard aftertouch and a sync-sweep feature, thanks to its dual voltage controlled oscillators.

A widely used and extremely popular Moog synthesizer was the Taurus bass pedal synthesizer. Released in 1975, its 13-note pedalboard was similar in design to small spinet organ pedals and triggered bold, penetrating synthesized bass sounds. The Taurus was known for an especially “fat” bass timbre and was used by Genesis, Rush, Electric Light Orchestra, Yes, Pink Floyd, Parliament-Funkadelic, Paul Davis, and many others. Production of the original was discontinued in 1981, when it was replaced by the Taurus II, which never achieved the popularity of its predecessor. In November 2009, Moog Music introduced the limited production Moog Taurus 3 pedal synthesizer, which, the company reports, exactly duplicates the original Taurus I timbre and presets, while adding modern features such as velocity sensitivity, greatly expanded memory for user presets, a backlit LC display, and MIDI and USB interfacing. Still, the original Taurus I units are highly sought after and typically command a high resale value on the used market.

Moog Music was the first company to commercially release a keytar, the Moog Liberation. The last Moog synthesizer released by the original Moog Music, the programmable polyphonic Memorymoog (and subsequent Memorymoog Plus), was manufactured from 1983–85, just before the company declared bankruptcy in 1986.

By the mid-1990s, analog synthesizers were again highly sought after and prized for their classic sound. In 2001, Robert Moog’s company Big Briar was able to acquire the rights to the Moog name and officially became Moog Music. Moog Music has been producing the Minimoog Voyager modeled after the original Minimoog since 2002. As of 2006, more than 15 companies are making Moog-style synthesizer modules.

In March 2006, Moog Music unveiled the Little Phatty Analog Synthesizer, boasting “hand-built quality and that unmatched Moog sound, at a price every musician can afford”. The first limited edition run of 1200 were a Bob Moog Tribute Edition with a Performer edition announced subsequently. In 2011, a number of Moog products can still be purchased, such as Moogerfoogers, Taurus 3 bass pedals and Minimoog Voyagers. The original Minimoog however remains so popular that they regularly sell for over US $3000 on online auction sites.

List of models

• Moog modular synthesizer (1963–80)
• Minimoog (1970–81) ^[4]
• Moog Satellite (1974–79)
• Moog Sonic 6 (1974–79)
• Minitmoog (1975–76)
• Micromoog (1975–79)
• Polymoog (1975–80)
• Moog Taurus (bass pedals) (1976–83)
• Multimoog (1978–81)
• Moog Prodigy (1979–84)
• Moog Liberation (1980)
• Moog Opus-3 (1980)
• Moog Concertmate MG-1 (1981)
• Moog Rogue (1981)
• Moog Source (1981)
• Memorymoog (1982–85)
• Moogerfooger (1998–present)
• Minimoog Voyager (2002–present)
• Moog Little Phatty (2006–present)
• Old School (2008–09)
• Slim Phatty (2010)
• Taurus 3 bass pedal (2011)
• Minitaur (2011)

Via Wikipedia

Pet Sounds:Released May 16, 1966

Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band The Beach Boys, released May 16, 1966, on Capitol Records. It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records in the history of popular music and one of the best albums of the 1960s, including songs such as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows”. Pet Sounds was created several months after Brian Wilson had quit touring with the band in order to focus his attention on writing and recording. In it, he wove elaborate layers of vocal harmonies, coupled with sound effects and unconventional instruments such as bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, Electro-Theremin, dog whistles, trains, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans and barking dogs, along with the more usual keyboards and guitars.

Although Pet Sounds has been credited as one of the most important albums of its time, its initial release failed to reach gold status, where it reached #10 on the American Billboard 200. A heralding album in the emerging psychedelic rock style, Pet Sounds has been championed and emulated for its dramatic and revolutionary baroque instrumentation. It has been ranked at #1 in several music magazines’ lists of greatest albums of all time, including New Musical Express, The Times and Mojo Magazine. It was ranked #2 in Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.

The track “Sloop John B” predated the recording of the rest of the LP by some months, but it proved to be a pivotal point in the album’s development. It was a traditional Caribbean folk song that had been suggested to Wilson by group member Al Jardine. Wilson recorded a backing track on July 12, 1965, but after laying down a rough lead vocal, he set the song aside for some time, concentrating on the recording of what became their next LP, the “live in the studio’ album” Beach Boys’ Party!, which was provided in response to their record company so the Beach Boys could have a new album ready for the Christmas 1965 market. What would become the Pet Sounds record could not be finished in time for Christmas 1965.

The real catalyst for Pet Sounds was the U.S. version of The Beatles’ album Rubber Soul, which was released that December in time for the Christmas market. (The British version of Rubber Soul was edited prior to its release in the U.S.A. to emphasise its folk rock feel that critics attributed to Bob Dylan and The Byrds.)

Wilson later recalled his first impressions of the groundbreaking album:

“I really wasn’t quite ready for the unity. It felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was a collection of songs … that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I said, “That’s it. I really am challenged to do a great album”

Wilson found Rubber Soul was filled with all-original songs and, more importantly, all good ones, none of them filler. Inspired, he rushed to his wife and proclaimed, “Marilyn, I’m gonna make the greatest album! The greatest rock album ever made!”. In early January 1966 Wilson contacted Tony Asher, a young lyricist and copywriter who had been working on advertising jingles, and whom Wilson had met in a Hollywood recording studio months earlier. Within ten days they were writing together. Wilson played him some of the music he had been recording, and gave him a cassette of the finished backing track for a piece with the working title “In My Childhood”; it had lyrics, but Wilson refused to show them to Asher, who took the music away and wrote new lyrics. The result was eventually retitled “You Still Believe in Me” and the success of the piece convinced Wilson that Tony Asher was the collaborator he was looking for.

“The general tenor of the lyrics was always his,” Asher later recalled, “and the actual choice of words was usually mine. I was really just his interpreter.”

Writing and composition

Most of the songs on the album were written during December 1965 and January 1966. While most were composed with Tony Asher, “I Know There’s an Answer” was co-written by another new associate, Terry Sachen.[15]

Mike Love is co-credited on the album’s opening track, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, and on “I Know There’s an Answer” but with the exception of his co-credit on “I’m Waiting for the Day,” (originally copyrighted in February 1964, to Wilson alone) his contributions are thought to have been minimal. The exact degree of Love’s contribution to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is still hazy, but under oath in a court of law, Tony Asher has stated that it consisted of the tag “Good night my baby/Sleep tight, my baby.”

Love, in addition to Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine, was taken aback by Brian’s new sound (and Asher’s lyrics) when they returned from touring in Asia to record their vocals. Love in particular was nonplussed by Brian’s complete abandonment of the “fast cars, cute girls, and sunny beaches” formula that had marked the group’s hit-making career up to that point.

Love’s main influence on “I Know There’s an Answer” is reputed to have consisted of his strenuous opposition to the song’s original title, “Hang On to Your Ego”, and his insistence that it be partially rewritten and retitled. The original lyrics created quite a stir within the group. “I was aware that Brian was beginning to experiment with LSD and other psychedelics,” explained Love. “The prevailing drug jargon at the time had it that doses of LSD would shatter your ego, as if that were a positive thing… I wasn’t interested in taking acid or getting rid of my ego.” Jardine recalled that the decision to change the lyrics was ultimately Wilson’s. “Brian was very concerned. He wanted to know what we thought about it. To be honest, I don’t think we even knew what an ego was… Finally Brian decided, ‘Forget it. I’m changing the lyrics. There’s too much controversy.’” Terry Sachen, who co-wrote the revised lyrics to this song, was the Beach Boys’ road manager in 1966.

The album included two sophisticated instrumental tracks, the wistful “Let’s Go Away for Awhile” – with a working parenthetical title of “And Then We’ll have World Peace”[and the brittle brassy surf of the title track, "Pet Sounds" (originally "Run James, Run", the suggestion being that it would be offered for use in a James Bond movie). The subtitle of "Let's Go Away For A While" was a catchphrase from one of Wilson's favorite comedy recordings, John Brent and Del Close's How To Speak Hip (1959) (which Wilson can be heard talking about in a session outtake included on the Pet Sounds boxed set). Both titles had been recorded as backing tracks for existing songs, but by the time the album neared completion Wilson had decided that the tracks worked better without vocals and so left them as such. A third instrumental, called "Trombone Dixie," had been fully recorded, but it remained in the vaults until its inclusion on the album's 1990 remastered CD release.

Recording process

With writing well under way, Wilson worked rapidly through January and early February 1966, recording six backing tracks for the new material. When the other Beach Boys returned from a three-week tour of Japan and Hawaii, they were presented with a substantial portion of a new album, with music that was in many ways a radical departure from their earlier attempts.[19] Both Asher and Wilson state that there was resistance to the project from within the group, but on this occasion, Wilson’s belief in his new work convinced the other members of the group. The backing tracks for Pet Sounds were recorded over a four-month period, using major Los Angeles studios (Gold Star Studios, Western Studios and Sunset Sound) and an ensemble that included some highly regarded session musicians, including jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Carol Kaye, and session drummer Hal Blaine. The tracks were produced and arranged by Brian Wilson. He also wrote or co-wrote every track on the album.

Wilson had developed his production methods over several years, bringing them to their zenith with the recording of Pet Sounds during late 1965 and early 1966. Wilson’s approach was in some respects a refinement and development of the famous “Wall of Sound” technique created by his mentor and rival Phil Spector. With new Ampex 8-track recorders, Wilson produced tracks of great complexity using his regular team of ‘first call’ players, sometimes known collectively as “The Wrecking Crew”.

Wilson’s typical production method on Pet Sounds was to record the instrumental backing tracks for each song as a live ensemble performance direct onto 4-track recorders. His engineer Larry Levine has reported that Wilson also typically mixed these backing tracks live, as they were being taped. Subsequently transferring the sounds onto 8-track machines. Like Spector, Wilson was a pioneer of the ‘studio as instrument’ concept, exploiting novel combinations of sounds that sprang from the use of multiple electric instruments and voices in an ensemble and combining them with echo and reverberation. He often doubled bass, guitar and keyboard parts, blending them with reverberation and adding other unusual instruments.

Although the self-taught Wilson often had entire arrangements worked out in his head (which were usually written in a shorthand form for the other players by one of his session musicians), surviving tapes of his recording sessions show that he was remarkably open to input from his musicians, often taking advice and suggestions from them and even incorporating apparent ‘mistakes’ if they provided a useful or interesting alternative.

In spite of the availability of complex multitrack recording, Wilson always mixed the final version of his recordings in mono, as did Phil Spector. He did this for several reasons; one of which was that he felt that mono mastering provided more sonic control over the final result that the listener heard, regardless of the vagaries of speaker placement and sound system quality.

 ”God Only Knows” (stereo version)

God Only Knows broke new ground in many ways. It was one of the first commercial songs to use the word ‘God’ in its title. The song was also far more technically sophisticated than anything the Beach Boys, or arguably any group, had ever attempted before.

It was also motivated by the knowledge that, back then, radio and TV were broadcast in mono, and most domestic and automotive radios and record players were monophonic. Another and more personal reason for Wilson’s preference of recording in mono was due to his being almost totally deaf in his right ear, rumored to be the result of childhood injury to his eardrum caused by a blow from his violent father Murry Wilson, although Wilson has claimed that he was born deaf in one ear.

These backing tracks were then dubbed down onto one track of an 8-track recorder (at Columbia studio, the only facility in LA with an 8-track), and, although much of the fine detail in the arrangements was often covered by the group’s rich vocal harmonies, they interacted effectively with the vocal tracks. This mono recording meant that a stereo mixdown could not be achieved. Wilson’s partial deafness made him indifferent to stereo and it was not until the advent of digital recording that it was possible to combine the instrumental and vocal session-tapes to achieve a true stereo release. Six of the remaining seven tracks were usually dedicated to each of the Beach Boys’ vocals (the five-piece group was by then being regularly augmented by singer Bruce Johnston, who later became a permanent member). The last track was usually reserved for additional vocals and/or instruments and other ‘sweetening’ elements.

Provisional tracks and Capitol’s insistence

Wilson was back in the studio with his session band, laying down the first takes for a new composition, “Good Vibrations”. Around February 23, Wilson gave Capitol a provisional track listing for the new LP, which included both “Sloop John B” and “Good Vibrations.” This contradicts the long held misconception that “Sloop John B” was a forced inclusion as the hit single at Capitol’s insistence: in late February, the song was weeks away from release.

Wilson worked through February and into March fine-tuning the backing tracks. To the group’s surprise he also dropped “Good Vibrations” from the running order, telling them that he wanted to spend more time on it. Al Jardine remembers:

“At the time, we all had assumed that “Good Vibrations” was going to be on the album, but Brian decided to hold it out. It was a judgment call on his part; we felt otherwise but left the ultimate decision up to him.”

Most of March and early April was devoted to recording the remaining backing tracks and to the crucial recording of vocals, a process which proved to be the most exacting work the group had hitherto undertaken, as Mike Love later recalled:

“We worked and worked on the harmonies and, if there was the slightest little hint of a sharp or a flat, it wouldn’t go on. We would do it over again until it was right. [Brian] was going for every subtle nuance that you could conceivably think of. Every voice had to be right, every voice and its resonance and tonality had to be right. The timing had to be right. The timbre of the voices just had to be correct, according to how he felt. And then he might, the next day, completely throw that out and we might have to do it over again.”

Heralding the psychedelic era

Brian Wilson’s response when asked about acid and the song “Hang On To Your Ego”:

“Yeah. I had taken a few drugs, and I had gotten into that kind of thing. I guess it just came up naturally.”—Brian Wilson,

Brian appeared to become interested in Eastern philosophy and the psychedelic experience, in particular; often pointing to ego loss, or ego-death, as the key to a better way of living:

“Studying metaphysics was also crucial, but Koestler’s book really was the big one for me.”—Brian Wilson

Along with Revolver and The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, Pet Sounds is one of the first psychedelic rock masterpieces with its artful experiments, psychedelic lyrics, and new sounds on guitars, organs, pianos and other instruments. Pet Sounds created worlds that only existed on tape and which couldn’t necessarily be duplicated on stage, even with the help of an orchestra. The resulting album is a touching plea for love and understanding. While psychedelic drugs inspired the Beatles to look at the problems in the world around them, they made Brian Wilson turn his attention inward and probe his emotional longings and his deep-seated self-doubts.

Pet Sounds, Revolver and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, relics of the first era of psychedelic rock and shining testaments to what can be accomplished in the recording studio when folks are fueled on the potent drug of rampant imagination.

Concept

In 1966, several rock releases were arguably concept albums in the sense that they presented a set of thematically-linked songs – and they also instigated other rock artists to consider using the album format in a similar fashion: Pet Sounds was a musical portrayal of Brian Wilson’s state of mind at the time (and a major inspiration to Paul McCartney). Although it has a unified theme in its emotional content, the writers (Brian Wilson and Tony Asher) have said continuously that it was not necessarily intended to be a narrative. However, Brian Wilson has stated that the idea of the record being a “concept album” is mainly within the way the album was produced and structured.

 Reception

Although not originally a big seller for the band, Pet Sounds has been influential since the day it was released. Rapturously received in Britain, it was lauded in the music press and championed by many top rock stars. The Beatles, for example, have said that Pet Sounds was a major influence on their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Paul McCartney has repeatedly named it as one of his favorite albums (with “God Only Knows” as his favorite song) – completing a circle begun by The Beatles’ influence on Wilson. McCartney stated that:

“It was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. I love the album so much. I’ve just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life … I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard that album … I love the orchestra, the arrangements … it may be going overboard to say it’s the classic of the century … but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways … I’ve often played Pet Sounds and cried. I played it to John [Lennon] so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence … it was the record of the time. The thing that really made me sit up and take notice was the bass lines … and also, putting melodies in the bass line. That I think was probably the big influence that set me thinking when we recorded Pepper, it set me off on a period I had then for a couple of years of nearly always writing quite melodic bass lines. “God Only Knows” is a big favourite of mine … very emotional, always a bit of a choker for me, that one. On “You Still Believe in Me”, I love that melody – that kills me … that’s my favourite, I think … it’s so beautiful right at the end … comes surging back in these multi-coloured harmonies … sends shivers up my spine.”

Other artists have also cited Pet Sounds as one of the all time classic albums. Eric Clapton stated that “All of us, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and I consider Pet Sounds to be one of the greatest pop LPs to ever be released. It encompasses everything that’s ever knocked me out and rolled it all into one.”

Elton John has said of the album, “For me to say that I was enthralled would be an understatement. I had never heard such magical sounds, so amazingly recorded. It undoubtedly changed the way that I, and countless others, approached recording. It is a timeless and amazing recording of incredible genius and beauty.”

Beatles producer George Martin stated that “Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn’t have happened… Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.”

“It was just so much more than a record; it had such a spiritual quality. It wasn’t going in and doing another top ten. It had so much more meaning than that.”

Bob Dylan has said of Brian Wilson’s talents, “That ear – I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.”

Roger Waters stated that along with Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds “completely changed everything about records for me.”

Elvis Costello stated “Last summer, I heard “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)” played on the cello. It sounded beautiful and sad, just as it does on Pet Sounds.”

In May 1966, Bruce Johnston flew to London with copies of Pet Sounds and recalls Keith Moon loving the album.[38] Keith later stated “Pet Sounds was too far removed from the style he loved”.

Pete Townshend stated “‘God Only Knows’ is simple and elegant and was stunning when it first appeared; it still sounds perfect”.

Tom Petty stated “I think I would put him up there with any composer – especially Pet Sounds. I don’t think there is anything better than that, necessarily. I don’t think you’d be out of line comparing him to Beethoven – to any composer.”

Via Wikipedia

PopMark Media’s Confessions of a Small Working Studio: Bringing the Past Back to Life through Audio Restoration

PopMark Media’s Confessions of a Small Working Studio: Bringing the Past Back to Life through Audio Restoration

By Lisa Horan

Creative Audio Works is featured in Mix Online this month.  The original article can be found at MixOnline.com.

So much of our professional focus involves looking straight into the future, with little time devoted to what lies behind us. It’s good to plan, of course, but sometimes, a trip back in time is exactly what we need.

Keeping that in mind, this month’s “Confessions of a Small Working Studio” features studios that have built their businesses on mixing the old with the new. Specifically, they are using futuristic technology to breathe life into past recordings. Find out how audio restoration facilities are not only helping to restore vintage albums and other music-related media, but also historic audio for museums and libraries, and even forensic audio to help aid in criminal investigations.

Resurrecting the Past
Taking a glimpse at snapshots of people’s lives and restoring them: That’s the way Stewart Adam, the owner of Boston’s Creative Audio Works, characterizes what he does. In fact, his work resurrects memories for his clients that otherwise would have been lost forever. For him, that’s the best part of what he does.

“I’ve had many clients come to me with reels of family members who had passed away, and they just wanted to be able to hear that person’s voice again,” Adam says. “One guy came to my studio with eight reels of his father, who had died when he was 16. The recordings captured snippets of time—from the age of 2 talking into a mic, until he was 15 when he was playing trumpet and piano—and being able to restore these moments was really rewarding. I have to admit, it actually brought a tear to my eye.”

Many of the projects that Adam is hired to do involve taking recordings of family histories, cleaning up the quality, and creating a digital version of the recordings. In addition to families, universities and organizations call on Adam’s expertise when they discover recordings that need to be restored or digitized.

For instance, Harvard Medical School had in its possession an oral history of the famous psychiatrist, Carl Jung, as told over a three-year period through Jung’s work associates and family members. After spending two months digitizing and cleaning up the recordings, when all was said and done, Adam not only provided the client with an audibly superior recording, but he also had uncovered a few secrets about the psychiatrist’s past.

Another project that sticks out in Adam’s mind: a client whose father was a DJ during the 1950s through the early 1970s. He came to Adam with 20 tapes that contained recordings of his father interviewing such musical greats as Buddy Holly, Stan Kenton, Danny and the Juniors, and the Everly Brothers. “While in the Army Radio Corps, his assignments included interviews and commentary that were being recorded with the sounds of atomic bombs exploding in the background,” says Adam. “That’s one of the interesting aspects of my job. Sometimes, there are little treasures of unknown information that are contained within the recordings, and it’s pretty exciting to uncover them.”

Michael Graves, the owner of Atlanta’s Osiris Studio, has uncovered his fair share of hidden treasures—perhaps most notably a project that he worked on a few years ago when he began working with Art Rosenbaum, a retired professor of art at the University of Georgia. For the past 50 years Professor Rosenbaum has had a passion for field recording, capturing non-professional folk, gospel, blues, and bluegrass musicians with his portable reel-to-reel deck. The quality and condition of the recordings varied wildly and it was Graves’ job to make them sound like they belonged together in one cohesive group.

“The project was amazing to work on,” Graves says. “Not only did we get to hear great music and stories about how these recordings were made, along with little anecdotes about the artists, but the work we did actually earned us a 13-page article in The New Yorker magazine, along with other national newspapers.”

Ultimately, the Dust-to-Digital label released a boxed set of four CDs offering a collection of more than 100 songs taken from those tapes. Graves, Rosenbaum, and Dust-to-Digital’s Lance Ledbetter won a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album. “For a self-taught audio restoration engineer, to be standing next to Metallica at the Grammys, and then holding my own Grammy in my hand for my work, was a dream.”

Assisting in Criminal Investigations
Audio restoration is also used to aid in forensic investigations. Both Adam and Graves actually spend a chunk of their time working with police agencies and law firms to assist them in restoring audio that is associated with crimes being investigated.

“Typically, the recordings I work on for forensic purposes are extremely poor, and when you finally do clean them up enough to know what’s going on, the content tends to be pretty disheartening,” Adam says. “I once worked with a client who had received a voicemail from a caller whose cell phone went off in his pocket by accident just before he was attacked. The sound was garbled, but you could make out screaming and slapping.” Adam says that because of the very detailed nature of this work, he can work anywhere from five to 10 hours per minute of recording.

According to Graves, “In many of these recordings, there’s extreme clipping that has to be dealt with. I work with a lot of dash cam videos taken from police cruisers. Sometimes the recording devices are set improperly or the microphone is in a poor location. The result is heavily distorted voices. Additionally, there are often extraneous noises that have been captured, like tractor trailers passing by, and that muddies up the overall quality.” Graves admits that, in many cases, if the microphone wasn’t close enough to capture the targeted audio, there are limitations on the effectiveness of audio restoration techniques to correct that.

Combining Technology with Human Ears
 Of course, uncovering hidden clues in forensic recordings or family histories isn’t as easy as dusting for fingerprints. “The first step I take is to figure out what [tape] format we’re working with, and then I run the tapes through converters for importing,” says Adam, who uses Apple Logic or Bias Peak Pro. Once the tapes have been digitized, he goes back, removes any blank audio at the beginning, adjusts levels appropriately, and then deals with restoration.

“The thing about audio restoration is, there’s no exact formula,” Adam says. “You’ve got to listen for the things that jump out at you first, which are commonly issues like hum, tape hiss, room rumble, distortion, clipping and what is known as sticky tape syndrome, a problem that often occurs with reel-to-reel tapes from the ’70s through the early ’90s that have sat on the shelf for too long and now make a squealing sound when played.”

To deal with these and other issues, Adam’s Mac-based studio includes modified converters and one of his favorite tools: Isotope RX Advanced and an ANR-B external box, which essentially performs noise reduction as it’s digitizing and is usually a good option for projects with tighter budgets.

Graves’ arsenal includes tape decks, de-click and de-crackle software, Steinberg WaveLab, lots of top-grade needles, and a Prism Sound ADA-8XR multichannel AD/DA converter, which is among the best in the world. (Consider this: The ADA-8XR was used to restore The Beatles’ catalog, and is also used by George Lucas and the Library of Congress.) “It may cost more than a car, but I’ve tried just about every tool out there, and nothing gets the noise out without harming the original sound as well as this product,” Graves says.

However, lofty price tags aside, technology alone can take a project only so far. Human ears play a crucial part in every restoration job. Take into consideration a project that involved multiple tapes of sermons that were captured using a handheld cassette recorder. Adam used his ears to figure out that the source of the noise on the recording was actually the recorder’s motor.

Graves says that in some cases, technology can actually be the downfall of a restoration project. “Sometimes people will push technology too hard and compromise the authentic quality of an old recording. You can get really ridiculously minute in terms of clean-up with the technology that’s available. While that can be great in some ways, it also causes you to run the risk of brushing away just a little too much of the natural qualities of a recording, which can ultimately undercut its integrity.

“What’s really satisfying to me is that not only am I turning people on to music that they never would have had access to before, but also, I’m working with recordings that are so rare that there are only one or two copies in existence. That makes me happy.”

Lisa Horan is a writer with more than 19 years of industry experience, and the executive director of PopMark Media, a unique partnership that offers creative and marketing services, custom music and music production, and audio post-production services to music, film, and business clients.

The myths and reality of vinyl records vs.CDs.

Vinyl always sounds better than CD

As described below, despite decades of arguments, there is no technical proof of the sonic superiority of the vinyl medium compared to CD. One vinyl record may sound better than its equivalent CD for extremely specific reasons. That does not mean the medium as a whole is superior.

Many people do prefer listening to music to vinyl rather than on CD or digital formats. Many of those reasons have nothing to do with actual sound quality, and have more to do with the tactile characteristics of vinyl – its “feel” – like larger artwork and its required playback ritual. Others prefer listening to CDs for a different set of reasons. There is nothing wrong with preferring vinyl to CDs, as long as the preference is honestly stated on emotional terms, or is precisely quantified and tied to subjective experience, and not obscured with (fallacious) technical appeals.

Vinyl requires a better-sounding master because it is physically incapable of reproducing the hypercompressed sound mastered to CD

Different masters can substantially improve or reduce sound quality. Some have less background noise. Some alter the dynamic range. There are other mastering techniques that can also affect the sound.

There are documented instances of different masters being used on vinyl releases compared to CD releases. One notable example is The White Stripes’ Icky Thump. However, there are also many documented instances of the same masters being used on vinyl releases compared to CD releases. In fact, if you purchase an album produced in the last two decades on vinyl, it is logical to assume that the master will be no better than on CD unless evidence is found to the contrary. Alternative masters for vinyl cost money, and mastering is a significant cost of producing a record. It is very likely that some producers – believing in the myth that vinyl is an inherently superior medium, as mentioned in other myths described here – will simply use the CD master for the vinyl release, believing that it will automatically yield a superior sound.

The technical details behind this myth are as follows. The cutting heads used for creating the vinyl lacquer (or metal mother) are speaker-like electromechanical devices driven by an extremely powerful amplifier (several hundred watts). At extremely large/fast cutting head excursions, the cutting head coils may physically burn up, much like how a speaker’s voice coils may be destroyed by an excessive current. Also, the diamond cutting head stylus may prematurely wear or break. This places important constraints on the maximum levels that can be recorded to a record.

A very high power output is required to cut grooves with a high acceleration. Acceleration at the same signal amplitude is higher for higher-frequency signals. Heavily clipped and limited CDs in the modern mastering style have more high-frequency content than earlier masters. In general, increasing the perceived volume of a record – whether by increasing the recording level or by limiting/clipping/compression – raises the cutting head average power.

Additionally, during playback, the turntable’s stylus has limits on what grooves it can successfully track. Cartridges can only track grooves of a finite modulation width (measured in microns) that decreases in frequency. For instance, a cartridge may only be able to track a 300 µm-wide groove at 300 Hz, and yet only 50 µm at 20 kHz. This also places limits on the acceleration and velocity limits the record master can take.

The most obvious way to work around these issues is simply to reduce the recording level of the vinyl master. Multiband limiters exist for recording purposes that dynamically reduce the treble content of the master, to limit the cutting head power usage.

The vinyl surface is heated to several hundred degrees on playback, and repeat play of the same track should wait at least several hours until the vinyl has cooled

Professional estimates for the stylus surface temperature during playback are 300-500 °F. Obviously, the temperature of the record is at or close to room temperature except at the stylus contact point – otherwise the record would completely melt. Back-to-back playback will introduce slightly more distortion than a fresh play. This is believed to be a temporary effect and goes away after approx. 10 minutes.

Repeated playback (no matter what the timeframe) carries the risk of permanent damage. Obviously, records are observed to wear out with repeated play. No published evidence exists of back-to-back playback causing any more permanent damage than if repeated plays are separated by any longer period of time.

Proper vinyl playback is click-free

Pops and clicks are often not audible during a song on a well-maintained record and should not distract from the listening experience. No evidence exists of a record that is shown to be played back with absolutely no pops or clicks whatsoever. They are introduced at virtually every stage of production, from cutting the lacquer to the pressing to the playback itself. Some pops and ticks are pressed into the record itself.

Some pops and ticks result from static discharges during playback. However, this may be mitigated by the use of topical treatments on the record.

Because of the lack of evidence for a tick-free record and the engineering factors making such a record extremely rare, it is quite likely that no record exists that is truly free from all pops and ticks.

Vinyl is better than CD because it reproduces higher frequencies than CD and avoids anti-aliasing filter issues at the frequencies CDs can reproduce

The recording/tracking ability of vinyl is easily at least 50 kHz and perhaps as high as 100 kHz. The most notably proof of this is the CD4 quadraphonic system which relied on a 45 kHz bandwidth to be accurately reproduced. That said, the high-frequency response accuracy of vinyl varies tremendously. Frequency deviations of 5-10 dB or greater are not uncommon in the 20 kHz range for many records.

Playback of ultrasound frequencies is still not guaranteed. Many MM cartridges have resonant peaks defined by the preamp loading, or stylus tip resonances defined by the cantilever, that attenuate high-frequency content.

When groove wear does occur, it occurs much faster at high frequencies than at low frequencies. For modern styli this is not as much of a concern, though.

There are rarely, if ever, any ultrasonic frequencies for vinyl to preserve. In audio recordings, such frequencies, when present, are normally low-energy noise imparted by electrical equipment and storage media used during recording, mixing, and mastering. Although some musical instruments can produce low-energy overtones in the ultrasonic range, they could only be on the vinyl if every piece of equipment and storage medium in the recording, mixing, and mastering stages was able to preserve them—which is unlikely even in modern recordings, since the average microphone or mixing console is designed only with audible frequencies in mind. Even if the overtones were preserved all the way to the mastering stage, mono and stereo lacquer cutting equipment typically includes a lowpass filter to avoid overheating the cutting head with ultrasonic frequencies.

Finally, on top of all of these issues, there is simply no scientific evidence that frequencies beyond the 22 kHz limit of CD audio are audible to any known group of people, or that such frequencies affect anyone’s perception of the audible range. There is no evidence that reconstruction and anti-aliasing issues are audible.

Vinyl is better than digital because the analog signal on the vinyl tracks the analog signal exactly, while digital is quantized into steps

PCM encoding (used on CDs and DVD-A) records audio data in a quantized format. Analog formats do not have a measurable time or signal resolution.

PCM is sometimes characterized as producing a jagged, “stair-step” waveform. This is only partially correct; analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) does indeed use a sample-and-hold circuit to measure an approximate, average amplitude across the duration of the sample, and digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) does the same kind of thing, generating a rectangular-ish waveform, but this output is always then subjected to additional filtering to smooth it out. Effectively, the ADC output sample values are interpreted as a series of points intersected by the waveform; the DAC output is a smooth curve, not a stair-step at all. Additionally, modern ADC and DAC chips are engineered to reduce below the threshold of audibility, if not completely eliminate, any other sources of noise in this conversion process, resulting in an extremely high correlation between the input and output signals.

PCM can encode time delays to any arbitrarily small length. Time delays of 1us or less – a tiny fraction of the sample rate – are easily achievable. The theoretical minimum delay is 1ns or less. (Proof here.)

With a correct implementation using dither, signal quantization (ie 16-bit or 24-bit) only adds wideband noise to the signal, not quantization distortion. If this dither noise is well below the already-present noise floor, it is inaudible.

Analog encoding still has many measurable and audible faults, potentially including harmonic distortion, noise and intermodulation distortion. These distortions have invariably measured higher than for digital formats, including CD.

The term “analog”, by definition, means that the signal is not and cannot be a perfect reproduction of the original – it is merely an “analogue” of the existing signal, corrupted in the process of encoding.

In short, by any numerical basis, vinyl is not as accurate as competing digital formats.

Vinyl has greater resolution than CD because its dynamic range is higher than for CD at the most audible frequencies

The dynamic range of vinyl, when evaluated as the ratio of a peak sinusoidal amplitude to the peak noise density at that sine wave frequency, is somewhere around 80 dB. Under theoretically ideal conditions, this could perhaps improve to 120 dB. The dynamic range of CDs, when evaluated on a frequency-dependent basis and performed with proper dithering and oversampling, is somewhere around 150 dB. Under no legitimate circumstances will the dynamic range of vinyl ever exceed the dynamic range of CD, under any frequency, given the wide performance gap and the physical limitations of vinyl playback.

Adding a penny to the headshell improves tracking/sound

The trackability of a cartridge is related to the mechanical parameters of the tonearm and stylus assembly. Adding weight to the headshell (and adjusting the counterweight to compensate) increases the effective mass of the tonearm and reduces its resonant frequency. If the resonant frequency is excessively high – 15-20 Hz as measured by a test record – the weight may improve trackability by moving the resonance out of the audible range. Otherwise, it will generally only reduce trackability.

A cartridge is permanently damaged and should be replaced if the stylus appears even slightly bent

Bent styli cause azimuth and alignment errors which may be audible. In extreme cases they can cause record damage. Cartridges are hand-built and always have some finite tolerance in their construction. No stylus is perfectly straight. That said, if a brand-new cartridge arrives visibly bent, it is probably a good idea to return it.

Belt-driven turntables are better than direct-drive turntables

Belt drives are far easier to implement than direct drives, easier to improve, and arguably easier to repair. Well built direct drives have speed and rumble tolerances as good or better than well built belt drives.

Subjective claims to the improved musicality and audio quality of belt drives are disputed and not well agreed upon by all listeners.

Belt drives hold their value just as poorly in the used market as direct drives.

Direct drive motors tend to last a very long time (some original-model SL1200s may still run without any maintenance). Belt drives need new belts on a semi-regular basis and tend to have noisier motors at the same price ranges as direct drives.

There is a common myth that a direct drive will “hunt” for the correct speed and cause audible speed variations. This has no basis in reality.

It is believed that direct drives are better at handling dynamic stylus friction than belt drives, except in cases of very poor direct drives or very good belt drives.

Some examples do exist of direct drives of inferior quality.

Stock tonearms on direct drives tend to be much less expensive than the tonearms that come with belt drives at similar price points.

via: Hydrogenaudio

The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show Feb. 9, 1964

On this day in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, as teenage girls screamed hysterically in the audience and 73 million people watched from home — a record for American television at the time. Their appearance on the show is considered the beginning of the “British Invasion” of music in the United States. The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show the following two Sundays in a row, as well. On this first time, exactly 47 years ago today, they sang “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and finally “I Want to Hold Your Hand” — which had just hit No. 1 on the charts.

Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne were a British folk/rock group from Newcastle upon Tyne established in 1970 (originally called Brethren and fronted by singer/songwriter Alan Hull. Their music combined a strong sense of yearning with an even stronger sense of fun. The original line-up comprised Alan Hull (vocals, guitar, piano), Ray Jackson (vocals, mandolin, harmonica), Simon Cowe (guitar, mandolin, banjo), Rod Clements (bass guitar, violin) and Ray Laidlaw (drums).

They are best known for the albums Nicely Out of Tune (1970), Fog on the Tyne (1971) and Back and Fourth (1978), also for the success of songs such as “Meet Me On The Corner”, “Lady Eleanor”, “Run For Home” and “We Can Swing Together”.

The group began as The Downtown Faction, led by Rod Clements, but soon changed their name to Brethren. In 1968, they were joined by Alan Hull and became Lindisfarne after the island of that name off the coast of Northumberland. In 1970 Tony Stratton-Smith signed them to Charisma Records and their debut album Nicely Out of Tune was released in 1970. This album defined their mixture of bright harmony and up tempo folk rock. Both singles released from the album “Clear White Light” and “Lady Eleanor” failed to chart, as did the album itself at first, however the band obtained a strong following from its popular live concerts.

Their second album Fog on the Tyne (1971), produced by Bob Johnston, began their commercial success. This album reached #1 in the UK charts the following year. The single “Meet me on the Corner” and a re-release of “Lady Eleanor” followed in 1972. The album Nicely Out Of Tune belatedly made the UK album chart Top 10 and the band began to attract a huge media following, with some calling Hull the greatest songwriter since Bob Dylan. The band were even referred to as the “1970s Beatles”.

in 1972 they recorded their third album, Dingly Dell. The band were unhappy with the initial production and remixed it themselves. It was released in September 1972. Though it entered the Top 10 in the first week of release, it received lukewarm reviews. The ecologically themed single “All Fall Down” was a UK Singles Chart #34 hit but the second single “Court in the Act” failed completely.

Internal tensions surfaced during a disappointing tour of Australia in early 1973. Hull initially considered leaving the band, but was persuaded to reconsider. It was agreed that he and Jackson would keep the group name while Cowe, Clements and Laidlaw left to form their own outfit Jack The Lad. They were replaced by Tommy Duffy (bass guitar), Kenny Craddock (keyboards), Charlie Harcourt (guitar) and Paul Nicholl (drums). The new line-up lacked the appeal of the original and with Hull also pursuing a solo career, the band’s next two albums Roll On Ruby and Happy Daze and the subsequent singles failed to chart. They disbanded in 1975.

The original band reformed in 1976 to perform a one-off gig in Newcastle City Hall, but the revival ultimately became permanent. They gained a new record deal with Mercury returned to the charts in 1978 with the UK chart top 10 hit “Run For Home”, an autobiographical song about the rigours of touring and relief at returning home. The song also gave them a US singles chart hit and the album Back and Fourth moved into the UK album chart top 30. Subsequent singles “Juke Box Gypsy” and “Warm Feeling” failed to sustain their newfound success. The next album The News (1979) failed to impress and the band lost their record deal.

The next decade witnessed various lineup changes and the band continued to release albums. They formed their own company Lindisfarne Musical Productions and recorded singles such as “I Must Stop Going To Parties” in the mid-1980s, as well as the album Sleepless Nights. In 1984 they supported Bob Dylan and Santana at St James’ Park. Saxophone player and vocalist Marty Craggs joined the group shortly afterwards. Throughout this period they played annual Christmas tours and released Dance Your Life Away(1986) and C’mon Everybody(1987) – the latter made up of covers of old rock’n’roll standards.

Another album, Amigos, was released in 1989. In 1990 Lindisfarne introduced themselves to a younger generation with the duet “Fog on the Tyne Revisited” accompanied by footballer Paul Gascoigne, which reached #2 in the UK singles chart. Soon afterwards Jackson left the band. Cowe left in 1993, shortly after the recording of the album Elvis Lives On The Moon. Hull died on 17 November 1995, but the surviving members continued to use the name.

The band continued to play with a fluid line up, releasing two studio albums, Here Comes The Neighbourhood (1997) and Promenade (2002). A number of live albums were also released.

Lindisfarne finally broke up in late 2003, performing a final concert on 1 November 2003 at the Newcastle Opera House. The final line up as a band included Dave Hull-Denholm, Billy Mitchell, Rod Clements, Ian Thomson and Ray Laidlaw. Three members continued to tour under the name Lindisfarne Acoustic until May 2004.

On 19 November 2005 the friends and colleagues of Alan Hull held a memorial concert at Newcastle City Hall in honour of Hull and included musicians such as Alan Clark, Simon Cowe, Marty Craggs, Steve Cunningham, Steve Daggett, Tommy Duffy, Mike Elliot, Frankie Gibbon, Charlie Harcourt, Brendan Healy, Tim Healy, Ray Jackson, Ray Laidlaw, Finn McArdle, Ian McCallum, Billy Mitchell, Terry Morgan, The Motorettes, Jimmy Nail, Paul Nichols, Tom Pickard, Prelude, Bob Smeaton, Paul Smith and Kathryn Tickell. Proceeds from the concert were donated to The North East Young Musicians Fund. The Alan Hull Award for young musicians in the North East was set up a year later in response to the success of the concert.

DECONSTRUCTING DAD-The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott

Deconstructing Dad is a documentary dedicated to Raymond Scott, one of the true geniuses of the past century. As (hopefully) most of you will know, he was an accomplished musician, a very original composer and the inventor of some revolutionary electronic musical instruments.

A detailed description of Raymond Scott’s work would take too much space here. I’d recommend having a look at the Wikipedia page and at the lovelyofficial site.

Deconstructing Dad, now available on dvd, is directed and produced by Stan Warnow, Raymond’s son from his first marriage. It’s a an act of love, a virtual reconciliation with someone who’s never been a perfect father. The documentary, while not extremely focused on musical or technical details, is a very interesting journey into Raymond Scott’s life and carreer.

It’s cool to see the few rare clips of Raymond Scott’s bands in action, and to hear some phone conversations (yes, he used to record private conversations, that was part of his technology addiction). Also, the interviews with people like Jeff Winner (co-producer and founder of the official Raymond Scott Archives), Hal Willner, Don Byron, Williams, Herb Deutsch (Moog co-inventor) etc. help understanding Scott’s personality and approach to music.

There’s a passage in the movie which tells a lot about Scott’s approach and evolution: with his bands he was playing jazz, but it was not actually jazz. I mean, the instrumentation and the language could be defined as such, but the approach was completely different.
Control is the keyword here. He wanted to be in control. No improvisation, almost a sacrilege for jazz purists!
This clearly explains why later he fell in love with creating and using electronic instruments. In his lab (which looked incredible, by the way) he finally had complete control over the whole musical process. And, as far as we know, the tools he created were really unique and ahead of his time. In the fifties he had created a synthesizer, the Clavivox, and a polyphonic sequencer, before these words even existed.

But he wanted more, he was dreaming of an intelligent machine, able to automatically generate music. And he created one, the Electronium, which was also bought by Barry Gordy, Motown’s godfather (which hired Scott at Motown too, as researcher). Raymond Scott was definitely not interested in marketing his creatures. For him they were all a huge “work in progress”, he was constantly working to improve them, and that explains why years later he was fired by Gordy, tired of investing so much money on machines that were not ready to be shown to potential customers yet.
Raymond Scott to me is a sort of modern Leonardo Da Vinci: a perfect, rare, visionary mix of art and craft skills.

As said, this documentary is more about the man than about his music or his creations. While this leaves space to other, more specialized analysis of his work as composer and inventor, I’d definitely recommend watching Deconstructing Dad. It’s an excellent, intimate and original introduction to Raymond Scott’s genius.

Via:  Audio News Room

The Wrecking Crew

 

 

I had a chance to see the documentary “The Wrecking Crew” a few weeks ago. This documentary is a is a journey back to an era in the music industry that will never come again.  I hope that you have a chance to view the movie or visit the website http://wreckingcrew.tv/

The Wrecking Crew was a nickname coined by the drummer Hal Blaine after the fact for a group of session musicians in Los Angeles, California, who earned wide acclaim in the 1960s. They backed dozens of popular singers, and were one of the most successful “groups” of studio musicians in music history. The Wrecking Crew were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame on November 26, 2007.

The Wrecking Crew’s members typically had backgrounds in jazz or classical music, but were highly versatile. The talents of this group of ‘first call’ players were used on almost every style of recording, including television theme songs, film scores, advertising jingles and almost every genre of American popular music, from The Monkees to Bing Crosby. Notable artists employing the Wrecking Crew’s talents included Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Vee, The Partridge Family, The Mamas & the Papas, The Carpenters, The 5th Dimension, John Denver, The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, and Nat King Cole.

The figures most often associated with the Wrecking Crew are producer Phil Spector (who used the Crew to create his trademark “Wall of Sound”), and Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, who used the Crew’s talents on many of his mid-1960s productions including the songs “Good Vibrations”, “California Girls”, the acclaimed album Pet Sounds, and the original recordings for Smile. Members of the Wrecking Crew played on the first Byrds single recording, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, because Columbia Records did not trust the skills of Byrd musicians except for Roger McGuinn. Further recordings of the Byrds were conditional on the success of the single. All of the Byrds played on their subsequent recordings. Spector used the Wrecking Crew on Leonard Cohen’s fifth album, Death of a Ladies’ Man.

According to Blaine, the name “The Wrecking Crew” was derived from the impression that he and the younger studio musicians made on the business’s older generation, who felt that they were going to wreck the music industry.

Members

Members of ‘The Wrecking Crew’ included:

▪   guitar: Glen Campbell, Barney Kessel, Tommy Tedesco, Al Casey, Carol Kaye, Billy Strange, Don Peake, Howard Roberts, James Burton, Jerry Cole, Bill Aken, Mike Deasy, Doug Bartenfeld, Ray Pohlman, Bill Pitman, Irv Rubins

▪   saxophone: Steve Douglas, Jay Migliori, Jim Horn, Plas Johnson, Nino Tempo, Gene Cipriano

▪   trumpet: Roy Caton (contractor), Tony Terran, Ollie Mitchell

▪   trombone: Lou Blackburn, Richard “Slyde” Hyde, Lew McCreary

▪   keyboards: Leon Russell, Mac Rebennack (aka Dr. John), Mike Melvoin, Don Randi, Larry Knechtel, Al Delory, Mike (Michel) Rubini

▪   bass: Carol Kaye, Joe Osborn, Max Bennett, Chuck Berghofer, Ray Pohlman, Larry Knechtel, Lyle Ritz, Jimmy Bond (007), Bill Pitman

▪   drums: Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer, Jim Gordon

▪   percussion: Julius Wechter, Gary L. Coleman, Frank Capp (contractor)

▪   conductor/arranger: Jack Nitzsche

▪   harmonica: Tommy Morgan

▪   The Ron Hicklin Singers often performed backup vocals on many of the same songs on which The Wrecking Crew had played instrumental tracks.

Though not an official member, Sonny Bono did hang out and contribute to sessions recorded by the Crew.

Glen Campbell later achieved solo fame as a singer-guitarist in the 1960s and 1970s, and Leon Russell and Mac Rebennack (as Dr. John) both went on to be successful songwriters and had hit singles and albums. Also, Nino Tempo with his sister Carol (under her stage name April Stevens) had a U.S. #1 hit song in 1963, “Deep Purple”. Otherwise, the best-known ‘members’ of this unofficial group are bassist/guitarist Carol Kaye, one of the few female instrumentalists to achieve success in the recording industry at the time; and drummer Hal Blaine, who has played on tens of thousands of recording sessions, including Sinatra’s, and is believed by some to be the most recorded drummer in history. Among his vast list of recordings, Blaine is credited with having played on at least forty U.S. #1 hits and more than 150 Top Ten records.

Al Casey worked for many years as a session musician. Jim Gordon also drummed on many well known recording sessions and was the drummer in the groups Derek and the Dominos, and Traffic. Ray Pohlman doubled on both bass and guitar, and started heading sessions in the 1950s with a regular group of musicians including, Mel Pollen, Earl Palmer, Bill Aken (aka Zane Ashton), Al Casey, and others. Pohlman would also become the musical director for the TV show Shindig, while Aken became musical director on “Shock Theatre,” both shows being nationally televised. Aken was also musical director on the critically acclaimed syndicated radio show “The Country Call Line” in the mid 1980s. Aken also conceived, arranged, and produced the music for the very first ‘Farm-Aid’ radio special in collaboration with Willie Nelson and LeRoy Van Dyke.

The Wrecking Crew worked long hours and 15-hour days were not unusual, although the rewards were great — Carol Kaye has commented that during her peak as a session musician, she earned more per year than the President.

The Wrecking Crew were featured in the 95-minute 2008 film The Wrecking Crew directed by Tommy Tedesco’s son, Denny Tedesco. The film has screened at several festivals and was featured on National Public Radio, but it has not yet been commercially released.

The Wrecking Crew, or at least part of it, was the house band for 1964′s The T.A.M.I. Show.

Via Wikipedia

From the Collections, Sound Recordings Heard for the First Time

With help from scientists and preservation specialists, the National Museum of American History recovers sound from recordings that have been silenced for over a century

One March morning in 2008, Carlene Stephens, curator of the National Museum of American History’s division of work and industry, was reading the New York Times when a drawing caught her eye. She recognized it as a phonautograph, a device held in the museum’s collections. Credited to a Frenchman named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1857, the phonautograph recorded sound waves as squiggles on soot-covered paper, but could not play those sounds back.

The article reported that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, had managed the seemingly impossible. They played back the sounds. Using equipment housed at the Library of Congress, Carl Haber, a senior scientist in the lab’s physics division, took high resolution digital images of a phonautogram found in a Paris archive. Using computer software, Haber analyzed the images and extracted from the recording a 10-second clip of the French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.” Made on April 9, 1860, the sound snippet predates the oldest known playable sound recording— Handel’s oratorio, made by Thomas Edison and his associates in 1888.

“When I read the article, I thought, oh my gosh,” says Stephens. The American History Museum has about 400 of the earliest audio recordings ever made. Pioneers (and competitors) Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Emile Berliner donated the recordings and other documentation to the Smithsonian in the late 19th century. The inventors conducted experiments from 1878 to 1898, and stashed their research notes and materials at the Smithsonian, in part to establish a body of evidence should their patents ever be disputed.

There are a few cryptic inscriptions on the wax discs and cylinders and some notes from past curators. But historians did not have the means to play them. Stephens realized that a breakthrough was at hand.

“I have been taking care of these silent recordings for decades. Maybe finally we could get some sound out,” says Stephens.

So she contacted Haber and Peter Alyea, a digital conversion specialist at the Library of Congress. Stephens called their attention to a group of recordings made in the 1880s by Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin Chichester Bell and another associate Charles Sumner Tainter. The team had created an early R&D facility at Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle, called Volta Laboratory. (Today, the site is home to Julia’s Empanadas at 1221 Connecticut Avenue.)

“From 1881 to 1885, they were recording sound mechanically. They recorded sound magnetically. They recorded sound optically, with light. They tried to reproduce sound with mechanical tools, also with jets of air and liquid. It was an explosion of ideas that they tried,” says Haber. “There are periods of time when a certain group of people end up in a certain place and a lot of music gets created, or art—Paris in the 1920s and ’30s. There are these magic moments, and I think that historians and scholars of technology and invention are viewing Washington in the 1880s as being one of those moments.”

Eager to hear the content, Haber and Alyea selected six recordings—some wax discs with cardboard backing, others wax on metal and glass discs with photographically recorded sound—for a pilot project.

“We tried to choose examples that highlighted the diversity of the collection,” says Haber. In the last year, they have put the recordings through their sound recovery process, and on Tuesday, at the Library of Congress, the pair shared a first listen with a small audience of researchers and journalists.

The snippets are crude and somewhat garbled, but with a little help from Haber, who has spent hours and hours studying them, those of us in the room could make out what was being said. “To be or not to be, that is the question,” declared a speaker, who proceeded to deliver a portion of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy on one disc. A male voice repeated a trill sound as a sound check of sorts and counted to six on another. From one recorded in 1884, a man enunciated the word “barometer” five times. And on yet another, a voice states the date—”It’s the 11th day of March 1885″—and repeats some verses of “Mary had a little lamb.”

In fact, during one recitation of the nursery rhyme, the recorders experience some sort of technical difficulty, made obvious by a somewhat indiscernible exclamation of frustration. “It is probably the first recorded example of someone being disappointed,” jokes Haber.

The National Museum of American History hopes to continue this partnership with Lawrence Berkeley and the Library of Congress so that more of the sound experiments captured on early recordings can be made audible. At this point, the voices on the newly revealed recordings are unknown. But Stephens thinks that as researchers listen to more, they may be able to identify the speakers. In its collection, the museum has a transcript of a recording made by Alexander Graham Bell himself. Could the inventor’s voice be on one of the 200 Volta recordings?

“It is possible,” says Stephens.

 

via From the Collections, Sound Recordings Heard for the First Time.

Eight Track Museum opens in Dallas to display 1960s music cartridge relics

With compact discs going the way of cassettes, it’s unlikely that anyone under the age of, say, 40 even knows what an eight-track tape is. But those who remember–or are just plain curious–will have a place to gather on Valentine’s Day when the Eight Track Museum opens in Dallas’s Deep Ellum arts district.

On display in the museum’s inaugural Conceived In Cars/Birth Of The Eight Track 1965 exhibition will be hundreds of eight-track cartridges, including all Beatles albums released in the format. Also featured is the extremely rare folding eight-track–a variation introduced in response to the audiocassette and marketed for only a few months in 1970.

The museum’s Deep Ellum Foundation building location on East Commerce Street will also house the Cloud 8 Gift Shop, which will offer museum t-shirts, vintage LPs and CDs, and of course, eight-tracks.

Cloud 8 is the name of colorful museum founder Bucks Burnett’s “dead format” eight-track only label. He has now renamed his three-year-old Earotica Music retail store, located in the Dolly Python complex on Haskell Avenue, Cloud 8–”in solidarity” with the museum’s retail division.

Burnett came up with the idea for the museum 20 years ago.

“I had a used record store called 14 Records and sold eight-tracks initially as a novelty,” recalls Burnett, whose other timeless endeavors include the launch of the Mister Ed Fan Club in 1975 (the members of Monty Python were its first members, with Andy Warhol and Alice Cooper joining later) and organizing the Edstock Festival in 1984 (Alan Young, who played Wilbur, was there, and Joe Ely, T Bone Burnett [no relation] and Tiny Tim–whom Bucks produced and managed–performed).

“But they started selling–and actually quite well,” he continues. “I set up a whole eight-track display area because I was the only game in town. This was pre-eBay–the early ’90s–and when I closed the store in ’95, I jokingly said I’d start an eight-track museum.”

By then, of course, the eight-track audiotape configuration was long extinct. The approximately 5 1/4 x 4 x 4/5-in. format became wildly popular in cars after their 1965 debut, but had long since fallen out of favor by its demise in 1989–thanks to the audiocassette tape’s smaller size and easier portability.

“It was sort of a joke, but I kind of meant it when I said it–and 20 years later I’m finally doing it!” Burnett says of his museum concept. “When I first bought the eight-track Beatles White Album in 1988 at a garage sale, I fell in love with it as an outdated but cool relic–and an official Beatles product even if it was an eight-track. Five years later I had a complete Beatles eight-track collection! I had to actually go painstakingly to thrift stores and flea markets back then to be an eight-track collector, whereas now it’s a few clicks on eBay–though even on eBay some stuff doesn’t turn up, or it’s very expensive because eight-tracks have risen in value over the past 15 years.”

Burnett partly blames himself for the increase in respect and corresponding price of eight-track tapes as collectible artifacts–some selling for $100 and up at auction.

“I got a lot of publicity 20 years ago just for selling them as collectibles, and raised prices on classic Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd eight-tracks from $5 to $20,” he acknowledges. “Pink Floyd’s The Wall CD is $20, but the eight-track should be $25. I sold a Sex Pistols eight-track in ’92 for $100 and it went out as a wire story and got picked up nationally and in Goldmine Magazine, and I actually got hate mail from eight-track collectors saying, ‘Thanks! My eight-track days are over.’ But I figure it was good for the Sex Pistols’ career.”

Burnett eventually got an astonished Johnny Rotten to autograph a Sex Pistols eight-track. After closing 14 Records (named, he says, because the number 14 “sounded like a lot of records–more than you can count on two hands”), he found he missed being “an important member of the eight-track community.”

He staged a first exhibit of eight-tracks from his private collection in October, 2009, at the prestigious Barry Whistler Gallery, and drew 300 people opening night–with another 50 to 100 showing up for each of the event’s following three days. A second exhibit was held last March near the town square in Denton, Texas, and featured a special celebration of the 35th anniversary of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

“Eight-tracks are still considered a joke–and I’m having a good laugh myself–but at the same time, with the success of the art gallery exhibit I knew I’d get phone calls,” he tells a reporter. “You’re one of them!”

Burnett held a one-day “soft” opening for the museum on Christmas as a test, and says that 150 people showed in six hours.

“We sold a ton of t-shirts,” he says, noting that the Cloud 8 Gift Shop also sells all formats of music, books and “rock junk of any kind.” The museum itself displays all audio formats from wax cylinders to iPods, in addition to over 2,000 eight-tracks.

The Valentine’s Day grand opening will be highlighted by performances by Dallas band The O’s, whose new album Between The Two will be released in a Cloud 8 limited edition eight-track version, and Dallas songwriter Stu Dicious. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, the nucleus of Talking Heads offshoot Tom Tom Club, will be present to sign Cloud 8′s version of their latest album Genius Of Live, being released in a special 30-piece eight-track edition in commemoration of the legendary band’s 30th anniversary.

“We feel inspired and astonished that in our thirtieth year, Genius of Live will be available through a technology platform that is clearly on the rebound from obscurity to its rightful place as the transcendent format of the 21st century,” states Weymouth and Frantz.

Burnett has made a “video guided tour” of the museum to let people know that the Eight Track Museum is for real, and is wrapping up a documentary about eight-tracks, Spinal Tape, that he began filming in 1992 and will include commentary from Jimmy Page, Tiny Tim, Talking Heads, the Velvet Underground’s Sterling Morrison and Black Oak Arkansas’ frontman Jim “Dandy” Mangrum. He’s also writing a book about the tape format.

“We want to introduce the concept of the eight-track as a limited-edition collector’s item format with the goal of having release parties for artists, who sign and number them and sell them out literally overnight,” says Burnett. “It creates a buzz for the bands and the museum.”

Although “you can buy really great working players on eBay any day of the week,” Burnett is not starting Cloud 8 for people to play eight-tracks so much as collect them.

“I don’t even play eight-tracks,” he says. “I just collect. I think they’re cool artistic relics. Think of how great Led Zeppelin album covers are, and imagine lining up all 10 eight-tracks side-by-side, with all the different-color plastics backing up that great cover art. They look cooler than LPs, and they’re harder to get!”

By Jim Bessman Baby Boomer Entertainment Examine February 3, 2011

Continue reading on Examiner.com

History is added to Creative Audio Works

Creative Audio Works recently acquired 2 channels of Ampex 350 electronics for use in our new mix/mastering suite, which is expected to come online in March.  The Ampex 350 electronics came with the original estimate addressed to Milton Yakus of Ace Recording Studio, Boston, MA.  Milton Yakus was best known for co-writing the song “Old Cape Cod” along with writers Claire Rothrock, and Allan Jeffrey, made famous by Patti Page peaking at number 3 on the Billboard 100 list in 1957.

Milton Yakus’s son Shelly is considered one of the best engineers and mixers in the music industry. Formerly chief engineer and vice president of A&M Records. Yakus’ engineering work has help sell in excess of one hundred million records, equaling over one billion dollars in sales. He was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

Shelly Yakus has engineered recordings for many performers, including John Lennon, The Ramones, U2, Tom Petty, Van Morrison, Alice Cooper, The Band, Blue Öyster Cult, Dire Straits, Don Henley, Madonna, Stevie Nicks, The Pointer Sisters, Lou Reed, Bob Seger, Patti Smith, Suzanne Vega, and Warren Zevon. He acted as Assistant Engineer (1967–1969) for recordings by Dionne Warwick, Peter, Paul & Mary, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Count Basie & His Orchestra, and Frank Sinatra.

20,000 Watts, 1976 style

Every audiophile including myself has sometimes fantasized about the components he’d or she would get if unlimited funds where available, the most knowledgeable design engineers to serve him, and a couple of highly qualified technicians for construction and installation. But that’s where it ends for most of us–as an occasional fantasy.

Please check out the Dick Burwen home audio system from 1976

“The ‘In’ Crowd-October 9, 2011

Ramsey Lewis was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ramsey Lewis, Sr. and Pauline Lewis. Lewis began taking piano lessons at the age of four. At 15 he joined his first jazz band, The Cleffs. The seven-piece group provided Lewis his first involvement with jazz; he would later join Cleffs drummer Isaac “Redd” Holt and bassist Eldee Young to form the Ramsey Lewis Trio. Lewis is a graduate of DePaul University.

The trio started as primarily a jazz unit and released their first album, Ramsey Lewis And The Gentlemen of Swing, in 1956. Following their 1965 hit “The In Crowd” (the single reached #5 on the pop charts, and the album #2) they concentrated more on pop material. Young and Holt left in 1966 to form Young-Holt Unlimited and were replaced by Cleveland Eaton and Maurice White. White left to form Earth, Wind & Fire was replaced by Maurice Jennings in 1970. Later, Frankie Donaldson and Bill Dickens replaced Jennings and Eaton; Felton Crews also appeared on many 1980′s releases.

“The ‘In’ Crowd” is a 1965 song, written by Billy Page, arranged by his brother Gene. Dobie Gray originally performed it on his album Dobie Gray Sings for ‘In’ Crowders That ‘Go Go. His Motown-like version reached #13 in the US Billboard charts.

The Ramsey Lewis Trio recorded an instrumental version of the tune later that same year at the suggestion of a coffee shop waitress. Their jazzy take, recorded live in a Washington, D.C. nightclub, reached # 5. The Ramsey Lewis Trio also recorded a smooth jazz version of the song for the 2004 album Time Flies, 39 years after recording their original instrumental version.

Instruments: From the Rolling Stones Archive

The tools of the musical trade have their own special mystique, never more so than in the case of the Rolling Stones, whose lifespan and legacy with technology stretches back deep into the warm and fuzzy world of analogue.

The band’s first recording session,for example, took place in a back room on Denmark Street, London, where the ‘deck’ was nothing more than a two-track tape recorder, nailed to the wall rather than sitting on the table to provide the ‘studio’ with some semblance of professionalism.

This an exclusive collection shot recently for rollingstones.com at one of the many secret archive warehouses dotted around the world, an Aladdin’s cave of arcane instrumental and amplification technology that saw active service on the frontline with The Rolling Stones at the height of the fighting.

Look, learn and enjoy…

Today in rock history – Earth, Wind and Fire hit #12 with “That’s the Way of the World”.

Earth, Wind & Fire is an American R&B and funk band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1969 by Verdine and Maurice White. Also known as EWF, the band has won six Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards. They have been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone has described them as “innovative, precise yet sensual, calculated yet galvanizing” and has also declared that the band “changed the sound of black pop”. In 1998, they were ranked at number 60 on VH1′s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Rock N’ Roll.

The band’s music contains elements of African, Latin American, funk, soul, pop and rock music, jazz and other genres. The band is known for the dynamic sound of their horn section, and the interplay between the contrasting vocals of Philip Bailey’s falsetto and Maurice White’s tenor.  The kalimba (African thumb piano) is played on all of the band’s albums.

“That’s the Way of the World” is a song by the R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire and is also the title track of their album That’s the Way of the World. Written by Charles Stepney, Maurice White and Verdine White for Columbia Records, “That’s the Way of the World” was released as a single in many countries and reached number 12 and number 5 on the US Pop and Black Singles charts. It ranks #329 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

Various kinds of thumb pianos have existed in Africa for thousands of years. The keys were originally made of bamboo but over the years metal keys have been developed. The instrument is known by different names in different regions of Africa, including Mbira, Mbila, Mbira Huru, Mbira Njari, Mbira Nyunga, Marimba, Karimba, Kalimba, Likembe, Okeme, as well as marímbula (also called kalimba) in the Caribbean Islands.

The kalimba appears to have been invented twice in Africa: a wood or bamboo-tined instrument appeared on the west coast of Africa about 3000 years ago, and metal-tined lamellophones appeared in the Zambezi River valley around 1,300 years ago (Kubik, 1998). These metal-tined instruments traveled all across the continent and differentiated in their physical form and social uses as they spread. Kalimba-like instruments came to exist from the northern reaches of North Africa to the southern extent of the Kalahari desert, and from the east coast to the west coast, though many or most groups of people in Africa did not possess kalimbas. There were thousands of different tunings, different note layouts, and different instrument designs, but there is a compelling case from Andrew Tracey about a hypothetical tuning and note layout of the original metal-tined instrument from 1,300 years ago.

The Thumb Piano

The thumb piano was typically played while walking by traveling Griots, African poet bards who keep the history of the tribe or village, and to entertain people with songs, stories, poems, dances, etc. It was thought in ancient times that the thumb piano was able to project its sound into the heavens and could draw down spirits to the earth. Some of them were evil spirits so the people would stop playing the music until the spirits had departed from the area.

Many players and griot clans have their own idiosyncratic tunings. Most of the time the instrument is played solo and tuning is not as critical as when playing with other musicians. But the tuning can be changed by adjusting the length of the metal tines inward or outward. It is also often an important instrument to be played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. It is a particularly common musical instrument of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Shona people of Zimbabwe.

In the mid 1900’s the instrument was the basis for the development of the Kalimba, a westernized thumb piano designed and marketed by the ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey. This has become very important in popularizing the instrument outside of Africa. While the arrangement of notes on a thumb piano is considerably different from those on a piano or guitar, their arrangement is fairly intuitive, and it is considered to be an instrument easily learned. This quality is exploited in many elementary schools who use the thumb piano as an entry-level instrument. One of its indigenous names for this instrument can be translated as “The thing that makes walking easier” and as such it could be considered “the first walkman.”

Via Wikipedia

Harman Releases “How to Listen”. Available For Download!

Here is a tool used to teach listening techniques. Version 2.04 of Harman How to Listen is now available for download here. Also an updated the user’s manual to help navigate around some installation issues some users have reported.

Man On Abbey Road Cover Doesn’t Like The Beatles

The Beatles walked across a zebra crossing in an innocuous North London street. The photoshoot for their new Abbey Road album happened just yards from the eponymous recording studios and took ten minutes – only six frames were taken by the photographer, Iain Macmillan, who was perched on a stepladder. It has since become one of the most iconic covers in history.

Imagine never having listened to Abbey Road. No, imagine never having listened to Abbey Road but being featured right on the cover. Paul Cole was accidentally included in the album as he watched the foursome one by one cross the street while on vacation in London. He thought they were just 4 “kooks.” Yes, just 4 world renowned kooks!

The Cinematic Orchestra-Manhatta

Manhatta documents the look of early-20th-century Manhattan. With the city as subject, the film consists of 65 shots sequenced in a loose non-narrative structure, beginning with a ferry approaching Manhattan and ending with a sunset view from a skyscraper. The primary objective of the film is to explore the relationship between photography and film; camera movement is kept to a minimum, as is incidental motion within each shot. Each frame provides a view of the city that has been carefully arranged into abstract compositions.

The film was an attempt to show the filmmakers’ love for the city of New York. Manhattawas a collaboration between painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand. The intertitles include excerpts from the writings of Walt Whitman.

The music score is provided by The Cinematic Orchestra.  In both live and studio contexts, employs a live band which improvises along with a turntablist and electronic elements such as samples provided by Swinscoe. In their studio releases Swinscoe will often remix the live source material to produce a combination of live jazz improvisation with electronica, such that it is difficult to tell where the improvisation ends and the production begins.

Abbey Road Remasters the works of Wilhelm Furtwängler

Simon Gibson one of Abbey Road Studios’ most experienced mastering engineers, talks us through the process of restoration and remastering of the works of  Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Wilhelm Furtwängler (January 25, 1886 – November 30, 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe.  Even today, many musicians, critics and record collectors still revere him for his very subjective conducting style, which is often compared and contrasted to the more objective style of Arturo Toscanini, who was probably the most famous conductor at the time. Like Toscanini, Furtwängler was a major influence on many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretive style.