Members Alndln2 Posted March 27, 2008 Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 It was recorded on April 9 1860 which predates Edison's recording by at least 2 decades. I suggest April 9 as a national recording engineers holiday. For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted March 27, 2008 Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 Oh... I thought this was something you recorded. I was gonna say... finally someone older than me. I heard the sonic reconstruction of it on NPR earlier today. It rocked. Sounded like the whole mix went through a vintage big muff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted March 27, 2008 Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 Fascinating!!! Thanks! Although....I thought the first recorded sound was on a clay potting wheel from Mesopotamia... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted March 27, 2008 Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 Paper. So much warmer than tape. Oh, how I pine for the good ol' days of analog!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 Paper. So much warmer than tape. Oh, how I pine for the good ol' days of analog!!! Oh yes... waxed paper is better, anyway. Ask the chinese ! Ooops... On a more serious note, technically it is not right: the sound was not recorded, but graphically represented. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted March 27, 2008 Author Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 Paper. So much warmer than tape. Oh, how I pine for the good ol' days of analog!!! I was thinking the same thing. Anyway, it's funny, about a year ago I was looking at some very old photographs and though to myself, wouldn't it be wild if they somehow captured sound unkowingly and we could extract it? Maybe I wasn't that far off as I thought then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted March 27, 2008 Author Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 On a more serious note, technically it is not right: the sound was not recorded, but graphically represented. They did get the "sound" of a womans voice singing the song.On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted March 27, 2008 Share Posted March 27, 2008 ... not the "they" from 1860 but the "they" from the 21st Century. If the actual definition of "recording" only means "stamping a sound into a media" then, they have the record. If the whole concept implies the ability of playing back the file -in the same century, anyway- then they don't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted March 27, 2008 Members Share Posted March 27, 2008 And here is the lyric of this song, first in French, then an English translation. As you can see, this immortal, sensitive lyric explores man's quest for meaning in the world, the significance of all love, God and life: Au clair de la lune, Pierrot r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John Sayers Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 I'm with you Gus - you have to be able to play it back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 Thanks for letting the mystery out of that one... One of the guiltiest pleasures I know is listening to the Swingle Singers' amazingly shimmering "Claire de Lune"... Their "Summertime" ain't bad, either... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 Paper. So much warmer than tape. Oh, how I pine for the good ol' days of analog!!! I know an audiophile who only listens to recordings made on imported, hand prepared papyrus... He says it sounds great -- but it really comes alive when he brings his Clever Little Clock into the room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 Come to think of it, now that we know excellent sound can be encoded merely as 1's and 0's, it makes you wonder just how many OTHER low-tech media can conceivably store retrievable sound.... Why not the wind itself? Why not a stone in the desert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 I'm with you Gus - you have to be able to play it back. +1. I think Edison's achievement still stands. Although I do often say as a joke when I'm recording someone and they ask me to play back a take: "I'm sorry, we only record things here - we don't play them back." Fascinating stuff though, and amazing that it could be played back at all considering it was just scratches on some sooty paper 150 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 I disagree. Recording is what it is, regardless of playback. (Notice that in all recording devices these are two completely separate functions!) It may not have had an immediate use - Edison would rightly have put together a complete recording & reproduction system - yet it seems to have transported the "sound" through time, via physical media. Consider the converse, for a moment: suppose that, 10,000 years from now, there exists no means to play back any of your music, although the media still exists & the data remains. Does that mean they were never recorded? I say no - and I think that it's valid to call this a "recording". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 Consider the converse, for a moment: suppose that, 10,000 years from now, there exists no means to play back any of your music, although the media still exists & the data remains. Does that mean they were never recorded? I say no - and I think that it's valid to call this a "recording". The difference would be that those people in 10,00 years in the future may not have a way to playback the recordings, BUT we have it today. We recorded and are able to play it back because it is an entire system. What this french dude created was a way to register soundwaves in paper. He did not care about playing them back. So, if "recording" means ONLY that, indeed this is the first recording. If "recording" implies the capability of the device to record AND playback, then it is not. I guess it was, more than a recording device, an analog, non-electric oscilloscope !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members elsongs Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 Let me guess...it'll be remastered and they'll squash the hell out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 If " recording" implies the capability of the device to record AND playback, then it is not. What I'm saying - there is recording, and there is playback. This was recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 ( i am hating me for this but... ) That was NOT recording.That was making a graphic of the soundwave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted March 28, 2008 Author Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 ( i am hating me for this but... )That was NOT recording.That was making a graphic of the soundwave. Sounds like a description of digital. Our lasers read 1's and 0's, his optical recorded lines on paper. End result? Wer'e hearing actual sound from 1860, not an approximation, but actual sound from that time. No, it does'nt diminish Edisons effort as he was first to build a device to both record and playback the results, but Scott isn't to be diminished either as he clearly was the first to capture sound whatever the form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 That's what I keep thinking. The capture of a sound wave and it's storage as binary data would be the same. You can't play back that data (which could be printed out on a piece of paper) without a d/a conversion. Without the d/a converter, your waves files are nothing more than text on a paper. So, is a wav file a "recording"? I think so...and I would say this was a recording. They played it back, right? Regardless of the method, that music was "recorded". Plus, a recording is what it says: a record. re Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted March 28, 2008 Share Posted March 28, 2008 Yeah, I guess that is what a record is. Just like when you get the graphics out from an earthquake or a heartbeat, too. So, let's ask the CSI guys to find that recording made in Mesopotamia! Anyway, a very interesting discovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 It Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members flemtone Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 If the only difference between a 'recording' and a graphic representation is the technology to convert the data into audible sounds, then wouldn't the technology used have actually pushed back the date of the first 'recorded sound' to the French graphic? As has been stated in earlier posts, digital is simply binary code - meaningless unless converted. Edison's recording would have been graphical-only also, without the needle required to 'read' the data and convert it to sound. Seems to me that the 'first' recording would be determined by advanced technology and the ability to convert earlier and earlier items. Wouldn't that make the term 'earlierst recorded sound' a floating character, dependent on the degree of technological advancement? Sheet music cannot be considered a 'recording', but it seems to me that graphic soundwaves are the same as seeing the same waveform on an oscilloscope - both graphical representations of soundwaves, but (now) both able to be converted to audible sound. Of course, since the French 'recording' was made on paper, and paper comes from wood, when the tree that was destined to have this data imprinted on it was felled, did the lumberjack cry 'Timber' or 'Timbre'? *runs, hides* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vbrook Posted March 28, 2008 Members Share Posted March 28, 2008 I'm sure I'm not the only one recorded to VHS tape back in the day. Quality, no, but it made excellent 'scratch paper', and up to six hours long. I'm finding this sound restoration an interesting topic. Loeb Library at Harvard University has a well-known preservation/restoration studio. http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/loebmusic/aps/index.html#projects I wondered, if there's maybe 4 others who are in the Boston area, we could get together and arrange for a tour and demo. Come to think of it, now that we know excellent sound can be encoded merely as 1's and 0's, it makes you wonder just how many OTHER low-tech media can conceivably store retrievable sound.... Why not the wind itself? Why not a stone in the desert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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