Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded MusicIn 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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 83
... thing the universe did was cut a record. For 400,000 years after the big bang, all of creation was a hot, dense, soupy substance that trapped light. It also conducted sound. The pressure from the initial blast pushed on pockets of hot ...
... thing with a recording of herself singing Liddle's “Abide With Me.” She took a break and Fuller introduced Walsh, who soloed over a recording of Ave Maria. After Lyman took his turn, Miller returned to sing “Ah! Mon Fils” and some ...
... thing. Tone tests were eventually held in towns too small to host professional musicians. For some people, a tone test was their first major live music event; for many others, it was the first time they'd been invited to hear expensive ...
... thing we have to a universal musical condition. Glenn Gould articulated this state of affairs in “The Prospects of Recording,” a remarkably prescient manifesto published in 1966, in which he mocked the posturing of symphonic albums that ...
... thing with magnetic tape twenty years later. In the early eighties, one of the first people to sell compact discs in this country did the trick in a Denver theater with a digital recording standing in for the band onstage. Notice the ...
Contents
From the New World | |
Digital | |
Death and Other Dispatches from the Loudness | |
Liner Notes | |
Notes | |
Acknowledgments | |
Notes | |