T H E E F F E C T S O F R E C O R D I N G O N M U S I C

PINNING BUTTERFLIES

SOUSA

• “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing… Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left”

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF MUSIC

• Disc• Online• Cars• Supermarkets• headphones

BUT!

• Hardly any of it will be the immediate result of physical work by hands or voices• Fewer people know how to play instruments or

read music• Fewer people sing properly• Music is now passive (isolating), rather than

active (binding society together)

GOOD OR BAD?

• Technology has liberated music, bringing it to the masses• You want Beethoven, how will you get it?• How did I get it?• What did Bach do? For example: walking 250

miles over 10 days to hear Buxtehude play the organ

EDISON’S PHONOGRAPH

• This was invented in 1877• It recorded and played back sound using a

cylinder• Meant to record speech and do away with printing

VICTROLA: 1906

Aimed at the piano as the music piece of furniture in salons, pubs and living rooms

CARUSO: THE FIRST RECORDING STAR

• Listen to this recording, taken from 1904. Imagine the power of suddenly having this in your living room

TAPE, MICROPHONES, BING, CROON

• The use of tape to reduce hiss and microphones to amplify meant that you could sing quietly and be heard• Listen to Bing: crooning became the new style of

singing

OTHER FEATURES OF TAPE

• Correcting errors• Splicing together different recordings. The Beatles

copied composers like Stockhausen. Listen to both• Speeding up, slowing down, backwards

ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY

• From cylinder to vinyl, tape, cd, mp3; from mono to stereo, living presence, hifi , quadrophonic, surround sound: things just keep getting more realistic. CD advertised as perfect sound forever. Remastered? Compare 2 Beatles songs• Or each device is inferior to the old: artificial,

inauthentic, soulless. Faults add warmth and atmosphere. Listen to Furtwängler

DISCUSS!

• Bob Dylan recorded 15 albums in 90 days. Sgt. Pepper took 129 days to record• Is back-to-basics more authentic?

DIGITAL

• Compression?• “listening to a CD is like looking at the world

through a screen”• Each advance is more fictional – autotune• Interfering with live: overdubbing, patching, pitch

and rhythm correction• The canon• Music can break boundaries and crossover –

blues, rock and roll, hip hop• Online libraries

ESSAY PLAN

• It’s not an essay, it’s an article!• Intro – interesting quotation. Outline the issues• Either – describe the innovations and the

positive and negative effects• Or – describe the arguments for and against

recorded music• Conclusion – summarise the effects recording

music has had on music and society. End with an interesting quotation• Illustrate all points with musical examples• Bibliography, discography, web sources