Song of the Week: Cool Cat in Town – Tape Five
MP3, iPods, phonograph, television, jukebox, cassette tapes, tablets, phones. What do these things have in common? Yes, they’re all devices but what I want to focus on is how they all hold the capability to store music. This ability seems so simple now; we have absolutely no problem capturing sound on our own with ease. But the idea of it, before our time, seemed impossible. How could one squish all the sounds of all these instruments into a record so that it sounded the way it was supposed to?
Well Thomas Edison didn’t seem to think it was impossible. He created the standard cylindrical phonograph, that was produced and sold around the late 1870’s . With help of previous research done by Leon Scot and Charles Cros, he was able to give people the ability to listen to music at home. The way the cylindrical phonograph would work was that the record, back then, was a hollow cylinder. You would insert the record into the phonograph, and have to crank a lever in order to rotate it. On this cylinder are grooves, so once the needle comes into contact with the grooves it gives off a vibration, a sound, a note. This note is then projected through the horn so that it’s able to be heard more loudly and clearly. These cylindrical records are fragile and can shatter when dropped. After the invention of the phonograph, Alexander Graham Bell created the graphophone. Graphophones also involved cylindrical records.
Flat records that we are familiar with, weren’t actually invented until the late 1890’s, along with the gramophone. The gramophone was invented by German inventor, Emile Berliner. They worked similarly to a phonograph, except instead of rotating the cylinder to get the grooves, you are turning the record around. These records eventually developed into being made of a more sturdier material. The records made for the gramophone were much easier to mass produce than the cylindrical because of its ergonomic shape. This was probably why the gramophone out-lasted the phonograph.
(Did you know the earliest jukebox was invented around this time as well? You would put a nickel into a phonograph and they would play you a song.)
The process of recording the music onto the cylindrical records and the flat records are much more complicated to explain, but I will link some videos to my Links and Sources page for you to look at how the recording is done. Some of the devices are different models than the Berliner Gramophone and the Edison Home Phonograph, but it’s cool all the same. Basically, all you have to do is put on a blank record and produce your sound into the horn. You place a weight onto the needle so that it can ingrain the vibrations into grooves onto the record, and there you have it.
The Berliner Gramophone quality of sound, compared to the quality of record players of today, won’t seem very good. But I am amazed at it, as were the people whom were listening to it live as opposed to my computer speakers.
I’m reading this book called, “How Music Works” by David Bryne. His first chapter discusses creation, and speaks a bit about where music is heard and whether we, as humans, adapt our creation of music to the environment it will be heard in. I’ve never thought about quality of music before or acoustics. I began to notice the difference between the sound of music in a highly acoustic place as opposed to a low one.
I also began to understand how you can have a different listening experience with different music playing devices. I mean, let’s take a look at vinyl for a second. Vinyl records began to be sold on the market in the 1930’s, the shape and the speed in which the record played at began to change and evolve during the 70’s and 80’s. As the records changed, the recording playing devices did too. They soon became electrical, which are the kind we use today.
Vinyl is well liked for its warmer sound and its ability to pick up a lot of details, as opposed to CDs. When CDs are compressed, you’re simplifying the songs however they’re better for listening for everyday life. Of course, both of these points are arguable, for the debate between CD and vinyl has been going on for decades.
Vinyl is an excellent example of people wanting different listening experiences. Though vinyl was popular through the 70’s and 80’s, and seemed to fade when CDs and MP3s came around during the late 80’s and 90’s, vinyl survived. (Cassette tapes were also in the mix, but it was more popular in the early 60’s.) There still is a market for vinyl records, and it isn’t as rare as one would think.
We have come so far with revolutionizing the way we hear music and record music for home. Music has become more portable than ever with iPods and smart phones however, sometimes it is at the expense of quality. But the best part about living in the 21st century, is that it gives us the option to pick and choose devices that we have been used in the past to suit the needs of the present.
Music isn't my Forte 