Perfecting Sound Forever

Perfecting Sound Forever PDF Author: Greg Milner
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429957158
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 566

Book Description
In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented. Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner takes us through the major breakthroughs and glorious failures in the art and science of recording. An American soldier monitoring Nazi radio transmissions stumbles onto the open yet revolutionary secret of magnetic tape. Japanese and Dutch researchers build a first-generation digital audio format and watch as their "compact disc" is marketed by the music industry as the second coming of Edison yet derided as heretical by analog loyalists. The music world becomes addicted to volume in the nineties and fights a self-defeating "loudness war" to get its fix. From Les Paul to Phil Spector to King Tubby, from vinyl to pirated CDs to iPods, Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever pulls apart musical history to answer a crucial question: Should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? The answers he uncovers will change the very way we think about music.

Alan Parsons' Art & Science of Sound Recording

Alan Parsons' Art & Science of Sound Recording PDF Author: Julian Colbeck
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 1480397237
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Book Description
(Technical Reference). More than simply the book of the award-winning DVD set, Art & Science of Sound Recording, the Book takes legendary engineer, producer, and artist Alan Parsons' approaches to sound recording to the next level. In book form, Parsons has the space to include more technical background information, more detailed diagrams, plus a complete set of course notes on each of the 24 topics, from "The Brief History of Recording" to the now-classic "Dealing with Disasters." Written with the DVD's coproducer, musician, and author Julian Colbeck, ASSR, the Book offers readers a classic "big picture" view of modern recording technology in conjunction with an almost encyclopedic list of specific techniques, processes, and equipment. For all its heft and authority authored by a man trained at London's famed Abbey Road studios in the 1970s ASSR, the Book is also written in plain English and is packed with priceless anecdotes from Alan Parsons' own career working with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and countless others. Not just informative, but also highly entertaining and inspirational, ASSR, the Book is the perfect platform on which to build expertise in the art and science of sound recording.

Wonderstruck

Wonderstruck PDF Author: Brian Selznick
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 1407166557
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
Ben's story takes place in 1977 and is told in words. Rose's story in 1927 is told entirely in pictures. Ever since his mother died, Ben feels lost. At home with her father, Rose feels alone. When Ben finds a mysterious clue hidden in his mother's room, both children risk everything to find what's missing.

Music, Sound, and Technology in America

Music, Sound, and Technology in America PDF Author: Timothy D. Taylor
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822349469
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Book Description
This reader collects primary documents on the phonograph, cinema, and radio before WWII to show how Americans slowly came to grips with the idea of recorded and mediated sound. Through readings from advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles, popular fiction, correspondence, and sheet music, one gains an understanding of how early-20th-century Americans changed from music makers into consumers.

Early Sound Recordings

Early Sound Recordings PDF Author: Eva Moreda Rodriguez
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000845079
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Book Description
The use of historical recordings as primary sources is relatively well established in both musicology and performance studies and has demonstrated how early recording technologies transformed the ways in which musicians and audiences engaged with music. This edited volume offers a timely snapshot of a wide range of contemporary research in the area of performance practice and performance histories, inviting readers to consider the wide range of research methods that are used in this ever-expanding area of scholarship. The volume brings together a diverse team of researchers who all use early recordings as their primary source to research performance in its broadest sense in a wide range of repertoires within and on the margins of the classical canon – from the analysis of specific performing practices and parameters in certain repertoires, to broader contextual issues that call attention to the relationship between recorded performance and topics such as analysis, notation and composition. Including a range of accessible music examples, which allow readers to experience the music under discussion, this book is designed to engage with academic and non-academic readers alike, being an ideal research aid for students, scholars and performers, as well as an interesting read for early sound recording enthusiasts.

Inventing the Recording

Inventing the Recording PDF Author: Eva Moreda Rodríguez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197552064
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Inventing the Recording focuses on the decades in which recorded sound went from a technological possibility to a commercial and cultural artefact. Through the analysis of a specific and unique national context, author Eva Moreda Rodríguez tells the stories of institutions and individuals in Spain and discusses the development of discourses and ideas in close connection with national concerns and debates, all while paying close attention to original recordings from this era. The book starts with the arrival in Spain of notices about Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877, followed by the first demonstrations of the invention (1878-1882) by scientists and showmen. These demonstrations greatly stimulated the imagination of scientists, journalists and playwrights, who spent the rest of the 1880s speculating about the phonograph and its potential to revolutionize society once it was properly developed and marketed. The book then moves on to analyse the 'traveling phonographs' and salones fonográficos of the 1890s and early 1900s, with phonographs being paraded around Spain and exhibited in group listening sessions in theatres, private homes and social spaces pertaining to different social classes. Finally, the book covers the development of an indigenous recording industry dominated by the so-called gabinetes fonográficos, small businesses that sold imported phonographs, produced their own recordings, and shaped early discourses about commercial phonography and the record as a commodity between 1896 and 1905.

Capturing Sound

Capturing Sound PDF Author: Mark Katz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520261054
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
Fully revised and updated, this text adds coverage of mashups and auto-tune, explores recent developments in file sharing, and includes an expanded conclusion and bibliography.

Tinfoil phonographs

Tinfoil phonographs PDF Author: René Rondeau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Describes the origin of the tinfoil phonograph. Includes sales records of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, 1878-1879.

Studying Popular Music

Studying Popular Music PDF Author: Richard Middleton
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335232280
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
A critical analysis of issues and approaches in a variety of areas, ranging from the political economy of popular music through its history and ethnography to its semiology, aesthetics and ideology. The book focuses on Anglo-American popular music of the last 200 years.

America on Record

America on Record PDF Author: Andre Millard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521835152
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
This study provides a history of sound recording from the acoustic phonograph to digital sound technology. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.