Who was the very first in music recording to overdub? AND - What year was it?

[Bruce Swedien]

Who was the very first in music recording to overdub? AND - What year was it?

 

Being the very first to overdub in recorded music, for some reason, has always been a more or less significant declaration for an artist/producer/engineer to make. I was, of course, much too young to have been involved in the first overdubbing attempts.(It

[Mr. Botch]

I thought it was Les Paul. Don't know the year, though...

[boosh]

In 1947, Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)", which featured Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar. This was the first time that multi-tracking had been used in a recording.

[boosh]

What did I win????

[Tedster]

Yeah, I thought it was Les Paul, too.

[Bruce Swedien]

Tedster sez--------> Yeah, I thought it was Les Paul, too.

 

Brucie sez--------->Not even close!!!!!

 

 

 

boosh sez-------->In 1947, Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)", which featured Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar. This was the first time that multi-tracking had been used in a recording.

 

Brucie sez--------->Not even close!!!!!

 

boosh sez----------> What did I win????

 

Brucie sez--------->Absoluetly nothing!!! Not even close!!!!!

 

 

 

Mr. Botch sez--------->I thought it was Les Paul. Don't know the year, though...

 

Brucie sez--------->Not even close!!!!!

 

 

 

 

Brucie sez----------->This is a tough one! Go to your local library.....

[Lee Knight]

Since it's not Les Paul (I thought so too), can I think out loud? Hmmm, could it be a classical recording that needed an overdub to be complete... like 1812 Overture's cannons?

[Tedster]

Okay... hmmm... to clarify...

 

"Sound on sound" (adding audio while pingponging between two machines as my definition) came about before true multitrack...did it not? But, as to the term "overdub"...could it be used interchangeably to mean either "sound on sound" or "multitrack"? I mean, nowadays, the term "overdub" is used to talk about "multitrack" because "sound on sound" is hardly used anymore...

 

???????? (raises eyebrow)...

[Bruce Swedien]

I'll give you a little hint.....

 

The overdubbing was done on 35 mm motion picture film!

 

There, I almost told you the answer!

 

Brucie the Viking!!!

 

[antematter]

Hey, what about the guy that sold his house to Bugsy Siegel...uh,, yeah yeah that guy....Lawrence Tibbett ! Opera singer did it in a movie I think. Brucie?

 

My research skills are the real shiz.

[Bruce Swedien]

antematter sez-------->Hey, what about the guy that sold his house to Bugsy Siegel...uh,, yeah yeah that guy....Lawrence Tibbett ! Opera singer did it in a movie I think. Brucie?

 

Brucie sez--------->Yes!!!! Yes!!!! Yes!!!! Yes!!!! Yes!!!!

 

NOW..... Just to make it interesting..... WHAT YEAR? And----->WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE MOVIE????

 

Bruce Swedien

 

[Tedster]

Well, I believe the first released "talkie" was "The Jazz Singer"...but...hmmmm...

[MrKnobs]

"The Rogue Song," 1929.......

 

BUT.....

 

Terry D.

[MrKnobs]

 

The first commercially issued records using over-dubbing were released by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the late 1920s.

 

 

So it's hard to say.

 

Like most technologies, once something was possible quite a few people started doing it at the same time. And, as always, one or two guys who made the biggest splash with it (Tibbett & Les Paul) are credited with being the "first."

 

Terry D.

[Will Chen]

 

Hey, what about the guy that sold his house to Bugsy Siegel...uh,, yeah yeah that guy....Lawrence Tibbett ! Opera singer did it in a movie I think. Brucie?

 

 

1931 The Sheik of Araby

 

But check this out...the first attempt at surround before multi -tracking was fully developed!

 

 

quoted from http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org Perhaps the pinnacle of optical sound was Fantasia, developed by RCA with Fantasound: 3-channel audio recorded at 100% modulation with a fourth track for gain control, steered to different speakers in the theater by notches cut in the side of the film, and a separate projector for the picture. The Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski were recorded using eight separate optical 35mm film recorders, 33 microphones, and 500,000 feet of film. The first playback setup cost $30,000 and had 60 loudspeakers surrounding the audience. It became a road show transported in 35 enormous packing cases. That was 1940.

 

[boosh]

A very interesting link : history of recording

[boosh]

1937 - The film One Hundred Men and a Girl starring Deanna Durbin was released by Universal in standard monophonic sound, but it was the first film soundtrack originally recorded by RCA in the "Multiple Channel Recording" process that had been developed by Bell Labs and RCA since 1932 at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. The songs of Durbin and the orchestra of Leopold Stokowski were recorded on 9 channels, each channel printed optically on separate 35mm motion picture film. The 9 channels were then edited into one channel for the optical soundtrack on edge of the release prints. The same recording process would be used in 1940 for Disney's Fantasia.

[Bruce Swedien]

boosh sez---------->1937 - The film One Hundred Men and a Girl starring Deanna Durbin was released by Universal in standard monophonic sound, but it was the first film soundtrack originally recorded by RCA in the "Multiple Channel Recording" process that had been developed by Bell Labs and RCA since 1932 at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. The songs of Durbin and the orchestra of Leopold Stokowski were recorded on 9 channels, each channel printed optically on separate 35mm motion picture film. The 9 channels were then edited into one channel for the optical soundtrack on edge of the release prints. The same recording process would be used in 1940 for Disney's Fantasia.

 

Brucie sez-------->Close! but - that's not it!

 

Brucie the Viking!!!

[boosh]

Last try for Booshy,... Don Juan" Aug. 16, 1926

[boosh]

Very interesting too :

 

 

1932 - in March, several test recordings were made at the Academy of Music using two microphones connected to two styli cutting two tracks on the same wax disk. On March 12 Stokowski recorded his first binaural disc, Scriabin's "Poem of Fire." This recording is the earliest example of stereophonic recording that has survived, although it was not called "stereo" at that time. Keller had apparently made similar dual recordings in New York in 1928 but were lost; Alan Blumlein made his "stereo" recording of Thomas Beecham and the London Philharmonic in January 1934.

[blue2blue]

I know that James M. Cain describes an overdubbing process using audio tracks on film in one of his potboiler novels (can't remember which one... I think the 'hero' is a frustrated opera singer who almost makes it in Hollywood... or something. It's been a couple decades).

 

And I know there are some examples of 'overdubbed' duets in 30's movies -- at least one or two where the singer duets (or even trios, as I recall) with him/herself on screen.

 

Interestingly, the vocoder makes the first appearance I know of in a 1940 movie musical with Kay Kyser ("You'll Find Out" -- w/ Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi -- and, of course, Kyser right hand man, Ish Kabibble). The 'vocoder' is called the "Sonovox." (Patent issues, anyone?) Much better than most of today's vocoders (of course, they had Kysers horn section to feed through it) the Sonovox (at least in the movie) has an animated light display that forms a moving mouth that sings along with the music... it looks kind of like a singing 30's jukebox.

 

 

[Addendum: Well, obviously, I posted before I read anything but the first post. Do I get any points for the vocoder/Sonovox, though? ]

[MrKnobs]

Bruce -

 

After reading at least 50,000 words on this subject today instead of working at my job (thanks, pal! ) I have come to the following conclusions:

 

(1) I don't know who was the very first to overdub music, and

 

(2) I suspect you don't either.

 

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I think people were pretty much overdubbing shortly after the wire recorder was invented, at least by the simple method of playing a recording out one machine and adding audio as a second machine was recording.

 

But go ahead, prove me wrong on #2 above!

 

Terry D.

[Bruce Swedien]

MrKnobs sez--------->Bruce - After reading at least 50,000 words on this subject today instead of working at my job (thanks, pal! ) I have come to the following conclusions:

 

(1) I don't know who was the very first to overdub music, and

 

(2) I suspect you don't either.

 

But go ahead, prove me wrong on #2 above!

 

Terry D.

 

Brucie sez---------->OK Terry D. (And All) Here you are!!!!

 

>Who Was The First to Overdub?

_____________________________________________________________

 

As near as I can figure out the very first person to overdub, in recorded music history, was New York Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett in 1931. This is the earliest such event that I can find any clear-cut documentation of.

 

In the 1931 MGM musical film,

[phaeton]

The first overdubbing was done by Brucie The Viking's ancestor, on a wax drum in the year 876 on a boat trip from Fnjoord Skorgammel to Detroit Michigan. The song was "Longer Boats" and it was performed by Brucie's house band which featured guitarist Toni Iommi. The wax cylinder recorder offered 1024 rewriteable tracks, with 16 recordable simultaneously. It also had a plethora of build-in digital effects such as tremolo, reverb (plate and chamber), chorus, flange, distortion (51 types) and compression (not to mention a built-in 30-band graphic eq).

 

Unfortunately the boat was eaten by a sea serpent, and the recording was lost. Toni Iommi suffered a hand injury and swam 2000 nautical miles back to europe to put on a stupid hat and work under an agriculturist named Jethro Tull.

 

In the early 1980s, the wax drum from the recording resurfaced and floated around the world's oceans once causing Iggy Pop to point off the deck of a Carnival Cruise ship and say "WTF is THAT?" to his fellow stooges.

[Will Chen]

 

Originally posted by Bruce Swedien [On December 3, 1947 Patti Page recorded