Towards the end of the 1800s, there were three primary American groups competing to invent technology to record and play back audio.
Alexander Graham Bell worked with with Charles Sumner Tainter and Chichester Bell in at their
Volta Laboratory in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., while
Thomas A. Edison worked from his
Menlo Park facilities, and
Emile Berliner worked in
his independent laboratory in
his home. To secure the rights to their inventions, the three groups sent samples of their work to the Smithsonian. These recordings became part of the permanent collections, now consisting of 400 of the earliest audio recordings ever made.
But knowledge of their contents was limited to old, short descriptions, as the rubber, beeswax, glass, tin foil and brass recording media are fragile, and playback devices might damage the recordings, if such working devices are even available. That is, until
a collaborative project with the Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory came together to make 2D and 3D optical scanners, capable of
visually recording the patterns marked on discs and cylinders, respectively.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 10, 2012 -
19 comments
78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it."
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posted by carter
on Jan 29, 2012 -
15 comments
All Together Now. Every Beatles tune, played together, sequenced in order of lengths, with the longest starting first and all 226 tunes ending together. This is a single link SoundCloud post.
posted by The Discredited Ape
on Dec 14, 2011 -
36 comments
Theta Music Trainer — Train your ear with fun music games. Sharpen your sense of pitch and tone. Unlock the hidden patterns in music. Strengthen your music theory skills.
posted by netbros
on May 25, 2011 -
13 comments
Physics tricks could create one-way soundproofing. Materials that genuinely discriminate between the direction of light or sound might be possible, according to a new study. That could make for true one-way mirrors or for directional soundproofing—imagine, for instance, a wall through which sound can enter but not escape.
posted by Leisure_Muffin
on Apr 28, 2011 -
35 comments
Canadian horror flick
Pontypool (
trailer) is a modern zombie tale quite unlike any other. Loosely based on a
dense, complicated novel by Tony Burgess and
inspired by Orson Welles'
War of the Worlds, it tells the story of Grant Mazzy, a grumbling yet likable radio host (played by veteran character actor Stephen McHattie) whose penchant for
philosophical ramblings gets him booted from Toronto to the sleepy winter pastures of Pontypool, Ontario. One bleak morning, as the outspoken Mazzy chafes against no-nonsense producer Sydney Briar,
disturbing news begins rolling in of a series of
bizarre and violent incidents sweeping the town. Trapped in their church basement broadcasting booth,
Mazzy, Briar, and intern Laurel-Ann Drummond struggle to understand the odd nature of the crisis and warn the wider world before it's too late. But this is no ordinary virus, and they find their efforts may be causing far more harm than good. You can watch the film on YouTube horror channel Dead By Dawn (
1 2 3 4 5 6 7), but if you're pressed for time you can also experience it in its more logical form: as
a one-hour BBC radio drama voiced by the original cast. And after the credits, make sure not to miss
the film's playful non-sequitur coda.
posted by Rhaomi
on Feb 25, 2011 -
49 comments
Modern mainstream video games tend to be about framerates and millions of polygons per second. But it is possible to play games that have hardly any graphics at all: audio-only games like
Papa Sangre, designed for iOS devices, being the most recent example of the genre (and with binaural audio, probably the most ambitious). There are others:
In The Pit for Xbox 360 (or a PC with a 360 wired controller)
[previously], the (sadly incomplete)
Cadet 277 for PC and Mac, and
SoundVoyager, released in 2006 for the Nintendo. More at the
Experimental Gameplay Project.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Feb 12, 2011 -
14 comments
radio k'bvh;b is on the air. A three day Internet radio experiment by Catalin Ilie and Letitia Calin, radio k'bvh;b presents field recordings, noise, experimental stuff, and live performances direct from Berlin. It only goes until Sunday midnight CET, so tune in to the odd noises while you still can.
posted by sixohsix
on Jan 28, 2011 -
17 comments
While the self-appointed task of one creative act per day continues to exist, I present the sonic explorations of
Clang Jingle Clang . Highlights of Kerrith Livengood's early morning posts include a
Goomba attack, political
musings, and a fable from
Aesop.
posted by Bistle
on Jan 14, 2011 -
2 comments
The Books is a collaboration between musicians and found sound archivers Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong. If you're not familiar with their music, allow me to recommend giving their newest album,
The Way Out a
listen over at NPR (where you can no longer stream the album in its entirety, but individual tracks are still available for your listening pleasure). Two videos are already available—the summer camp hit
A Cold Freezin' Night and
We Bought The Flood, which was 'directed' by archival image researcher
Rich Remsberg. Since
The Way Out's release Nick has been proceeding track by track through the album, explaining and annotating the techniques, instruments, and ideas used on each song—and resulting in a collage of thoughts as powerful and varied as The Books' collage of sound.
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posted by carsonb
on Aug 2, 2010 -
20 comments
Acousmata is a unique music blog devoted to "idiosyncratic research in electronic and experimental music, sound and acoustics, mysticism and technology" with special focus on the early history of electronic music.
posted by speicus
on Jul 30, 2010 -
16 comments
"Tone-Quester" is generally a musician (more than likely a guitarist) who purchases/modifies amps/pedals/cabinets in search of a certain sound. They fiercely pride themselves on being able to distinquish the differences between pickups, tube amps vs. transistor amps. With this in mind,
Wolfe McCloud, a pickup designer, decided to challenge
My Les Paul forum members.
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posted by KevinSkomsvold
on Jun 18, 2010 -
34 comments
Audiophoolery: Pseudoscience in Consumer Audio.
You might think that a science-based field like audio engineering would be immune to the kind of magical thinking we see in other fields. Unfortunately, you would be wrong [...] As a consumerist, it galls me to see people pay thousands of dollars for fancy-looking wire that’s no better than the heavy lamp cord they can buy at any hardware store. Or magic isolation pads and little discs made from exotic hardwood that purport to “improve clarity and reduce listening fatigue,” among other surprising claims. The number of scams based on ignorance of basic audio science grows every day. Via.
posted by amyms
on Jan 11, 2010 -
209 comments
Cymatics is the study of visible sound and vibration, typically on the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane. Directly visualizing vibrations involves using sound to excite media often in the form of particles, pastes, and liquids. The apparatus employed can be simple, such as a
Chladni Plate or advanced such as the
CymaScope, a laboratory instrument that makes visible the inherent geometries within sound and music.
Hans Jenny (1904-1972) is considered the father of cymatics.
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posted by netbros
on Dec 18, 2009 -
8 comments
Luigi Russolo was a
futurist painter,
experimental composer, and
instrument builder. In his 1913 manifesto "
The Art of Noises" he declaimed the death of traditional Western music and foresaw the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, screeching, moaning, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments. He and his assistant Ugo Piatti built the
Intonarumori to bring these new sounds -
"the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags" - to life. Listen to them,
then and
now.
posted by fire&wings
on Oct 28, 2009 -
10 comments
The Present Sound of London --
"I’ve been lured to London by money at the hottest, stickiest time of year. Every time I visit, I’m struck by the noises—not necessarily their volume, but their strangeness and variety in comparison to the quiet humdrum of the provincial town where I live. So this time I’m equipped with an audio recorder." By Giles Turnbull.
posted by nthdegx
on Jul 21, 2009 -
8 comments
Last year we discussed a recently discovered 10-second audio recording from 1860 that was thought to be the oldest known recorded human voice, a girl or woman singing the 18th century French folk song
“Au Clair de la Lune”. Turns out, it was being played too fast - slow it down and it's the voice of the inventor himself. As well, a number of other recordings have been found, pushing back the oldest recording to 1857.
Hear it all on NPR (5-min).
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posted by stbalbach
on Jun 1, 2009 -
24 comments
Seattle-based German artist Trimpin makes sculptural musical instruments. He was
profiled in a mini-documentary by Washington public TV station KBTC a couple of years ago. Here are videos of some other works of art he's created,
Fire Organ,
Liquid Percussion,
Cello, Sensors and Record Players,
Contraption at Seattle-Tacoma Airport,
MIDI-controlled Player Piano and
Sheng High.
Kyle Gann wrote
an essay by that placed Trimpin in the tradition of John Cage, Harry Partch and other avant-garde American musical inventors. The audio of a nearly hour and a half long 1990 interview with Trimpin by Charles Amirkhanian can be
downloaded from the Internet Archive. Another,
more light-hearted interview in connection to his show at this year's SXSW, where a documentary about him premiered (
trailer).
posted by Kattullus
on May 4, 2009 -
5 comments
Friday
Flash JavaScript Fun!
Balldroppings (ha.) is a gravity-based game where balls drop at regular intervals from a particular point in the screen and you draw lines to make them bounce. The excellent part: every time the balls bounce off a line, they sing.
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posted by LMGM
on Mar 20, 2009 -
19 comments
