The Evolution of Music Technology Howard Goodall’s Big Bang Moments in Musical History- Recorded Music

The Evolution of Music Technology

Howard Goodall’s Big Bang Moments in Musical History-

 Episode 5: Recorded Music 

1. We take the easy availability of music for granted. 

2. People used to hear music once or twice a decade. 

3. The big bang that allowed music to be recorded was to change it forever. 
4. 20th century musicians were also impacted by the development of recorded music.

5. Serenoda Bergerac had a vision of the journey to a moon where they were talking. 

6. Captain Bergerac was a moon dweller.
7. The first recording was Mary had a little lamb in 1977.

8.  Made from Tinfoil, needle and diaphragm by Thomas Edison. If you shout into the tube, the diaphragm will consequently move and push the needle onto the cylinder tinfoil. This will create dents to listen.

9. The problem with using the tinfoil was that it only had one use and not reusable.

10. The improvement that came into the 1880’s were the wax cylinders and these were reusable.
11. In the 1890's the jukebox and the phonogram took America by storm.

12. The classical music world turned their noses up at the ability to record as there was a better way to light dance music and variety of music. 
13. The earliest surviving musical recording in existence is a piece of Handle's (found in Egypt).

14.  Since the record only last for 2 minutes.

15. Gang recording are when they copied into each cylinder again and again. 
16. Emil Berliner created the flat disk gramophone so that unlimited copies could be made.
17. The rubber disks were replaced by Shellac- made by Malaysian beetles.
18. A portrait called “his masters voice” became the most recognisable trait. 

19.  Opera was the genre of music celebrating its ‘golden age’ at the turn of the century (1800 into 1900). 

20. Enrico Caruso became one of the biggest singers in the world. Enrico’s life changed when he was invited to sing in the holiest of all shrines at the age of 27.  

21. 10 records were cut that made gramophone history. 

22.  Curuso’s discs were the first million selling discs.
23. The craze that made classical artists to also join was Curuso's fame and wealth.

24. Alessandro Moreschi was the last living castrato. He is considered unique in terms of unique of recording as it was considered very haunting and frightening. 

25. The gramophone caused music to lose its context as it became portable. For example instead of using it for a theatrical performance, it’s now used for even just a merry picnic resulting in the lost context. 

26. In the first 20 years of recording technology, it was difficult for recording as it was less pure and the sounds are very faint as they are too low, too quite or too subtle to be picked up.

27. Nowadays, the recordings have varied, as all sounds are heard clearly with the use of modern microphones.

28. They tried to solve these problems by the pioneer engineers improvising vigorously to improve sounds. They created a platform for the piano to be placed on to elevate sounds. And also they used more beefy strings to thicken sound.  Additionally, a new a violin was invented, although it looked a bit eccentric it played louder sounds and changed the string instruments to brass. 

29. They recorded Mozart’s Overture The Marriage of Figaro by changing the strings on the brass strings. 

30. The genre it had the most impact of electronic microphone was on Popular Music. Much more sensitive and could cope with a wider range of frequencies. 

31. The classic music scene was affected by the development of recorded sound, as it was no longer needed to sing into the tin foil dome. Quieter instruments could be artificially boosted to be heard better. 
32. This allowed the audience to focus on more serious concert music. 

33. The player could only play for a maximum period of 6 minutes, but they improved this by introducing shellac. They used shellac to make vinyls, which could play for a maximum period of 25 minutes with no disruption.

34. Maria Callas was a female successor like Caruso because of her recordings. Her vocal performances could be heard with absolute quality. 

35. In the 1950’s the industry went to overdrive, vast range of music found its way on to disc.

36. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band enabled different performances of the same piece to be put together (like copy and paste). 

37. 200 edits may be included in a 2-hour piece.
38. The purpose of music changed in the modern age because of the battle between the concept of music on the one hand as a living, breathing, organic condition, ceaselessly reinventing itself, never static, never finished and on the other hand, the concept of music as a thing, like a building, poem, painting or sculpture. Throughout the 20^th century composers and performers grappled with these 2 conflicting views of music.

39. Recording is considered a double-edged sword for soloists because the recordings have vastly increased the technical proficiency of music and you can’t get away with performing live in a less perfect manner. This has led to a lack of risk-taking and uniformity of performers. 
40.  Recordings standardized performance styles and also standardized the repertoire. 
41. Listening in the present is considered a triumph over the past

    42.  Fred Gaisberg set off across the globe to capture on them the strange and wonderful sounds of music from other cultures. 
      43. This effected composers as it broadened their minds and triggered their imagination. 
      44. Bela Bartok took a photograph and recorded the folk music of his native country. After analyzing this ethnic raw material, he then wrote his own pieces inspired by it. 

      45. The form of music that had the biggest impact on European music was African music.

46. The English composer David Fanshawe toward Africa and Middle East and the Pacific in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, compiled a vast library of tapes of tribal music. Fanshawe’s African saunters mixed Western African music with live instruments and singers.

47.  David Fanshawe believes that all music is related, all human beings are interrelated musically. He believes we have our soul is the universality of music. 

48. Black America gave birth to wave after wave of new musical forms and styles from Jazz to Hip-hop, from Ragtime to Jungle, from the Blues to Motown.

49. Some of the classical composers who were influenced by the sound of black American’s were Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel.

50. Avant Grande composers from a classical background were engaged in experiments and sounds and technology that would have an equally profound effect on popular music.

51. Digital sampling is the love child of recording in music. Few composers have been as intrigued by its possibilities and as key to its developed. One of these composers is Steve Reich and he is considered brilliant for this.

52.  Steve Reich’s ‘Different Trains’ is about the moving work to attempt to blend speech tape and live performance. It’s a haunting and powerful application of his childhood and reflection on the American Jewish experience. The third and final movement of trains is an attempt to reconcile the painful memories of the past with the present.

53. Few contemporary composers have managed as effectively to marry such ideas with musical techniques that themselves defy the old musical boundaries. Steve is aware of these boundaries. He thinks they are in touch with the folk music of our time. “It’s what people do not coached and unbidden in their garages, in their homes and eventually it becomes professional and that is the mark of folk music. It’s just urban, we don’t have much left but urban”. 

54. Music historians of the future might describe this time as the age of convergence.

55.  In this current era, we are observing the meltdown of previously rigid musical compartments and styles. A protest we owe principally to Edison’s Big Bang, the invention of recorded sound.

56. The 4 earlier big bangs in music all started small, local and specific, whereas today, the bread and butter of musicians from many different styles, cultures and traditions, music is simply unthinkable without them.

57.  The next Big Bang for music might potentially be the impact of the Internet, but whatever it is, it will be creating to the generations that follow us, a treasure of incomparable value and beauty.

58. The effect of this invention of recorded sound has had an impact on music. It has completely changed the purpose of music and discovered new styles correlating with different cultures and races to suit all people.

59. This has changed the expectations and perceptions, with the repeatability of recorded sound on a much broader scope. When the phonograph was invented, the goal for any recording was to simulate a live performance, to approach reality as closely as possible. Over the decades, expectations have changed. For many listeners, music is now primarily a technologically mediated experience. Concerts must therefore live up to recordings.

60. Since the phonograph was the reason for the change in expectations and perceptions, I consider this to be the most important aspect of the invention of recorded sound.