play in progress

The first mechanical instruments/music automata (of course almost every instrument depends on some kind of mechanics, but the instruments I will talk about now were more than any before them perceived and described as ‘mechanic’) have not left as much a mark on music as notation: music boxes and hurdy-gurdies, in use since the late 18th century, with their cylinder technology and small reservoire of sounds and pitches, didn’t have a big impact, in spite of being far spread. On the one side they didn’t need a musician anymore to produce music, but on the other their simple mechanics were easy to hear, and their possibilities limited. But at the end of the 19th century a further development of this cylinder technology became important: the pianola or electric piano. We are not talking electronic sound production here, but a piano with an added mechanism, controlled by punched tape and driven by manpower or later a little motor. This extension could be bought separate to an already owned piano, or was integrated into a new one. The punched tape is exchangeable and makes it possible to ‘play’ practically every piece of piano music. With these aspects, the pianola was an amalgamation of instrument and music medium which still produced the sounds in a conventional way, but didn’t necessitate any special skills from its users.

Mechanics and ‘Democratization’

Until it was replaced by the gramophone in the 1930s, ca. 2 mio specimen were produced. The pianola didn’t establish the first demand for music media (of course music sheets were sold before), but it turned music into a commodity like nothing before could. Paul Théberge has described how in the US the pianola was marketed with a mixture of emphasis on ‘democratization’ (“Everybody can play”) and appeal to the individual achievement of making music:

“The tension between the belief that acquiring musical skills requires concentrated effort (a work ethic) and the marketing requirement that all music-making be seen as a form of entertainment (a leisure ethic) has become one of the more enduring ideological and economic conflicts for the musical instrument trade during the twentieth century, both in its internal and external market relations.”[2]

Of course, all this was a very bourgeois thing, not everybody could afford a piano. But it was the first step towards listening to music not just independent from occasion and public places, but independent from one’s own capabilities.

Catching Soundwaves

In 1877, Thomas Edison developed his ‘phonograph’, a device that can capture sound waves with a membrane and inscribe them on a rotating wax cylinder. Replay works exactly the other way round: A needle picks up the engraved vibrations and transmits them to a membrane which kicks the air around it and gets it moving, this way reproducing approximately the original sound (a ‘loudspeaker’, you know). The original cylinders could only hold 90 seconds of sound. According to Haas/Klever, one of the visitors who had a look when Edison first showcased it in the editorial office of the Scientific American was bischop Vincent of New York. He tested it by calling on all the names of the prophets in a row; after they were played back at him, he was covinced that this was not a hoax, but indeed a new machine, because nobody could say all the names of the prohpets as fast as he could. A little later, when Edison had assured himself of scientific recognition, he founded the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company and put up a ten-steps program about the possibilities of the phonograph:

1. Recording of letters and all kinds of dictations without the help of a stenographer
2. Phonographic books, offering the content of books to the blind without further help
3. Language education
4. Music playback
5. Audible familiy archive: a collection of quotes and memories of family members with their own voices and the last words of the dying
6. Music boxes and playthings
7. Clocks telling with a distinct voice when it is time to go home, have a meal etc.
8. Documenting different languages with the right pronunciation
9. A help for teaching: the teacher’s explanations can always be at hand for the student
10. Assistance for the telephone, in order for it not so stay only a device for instant delivery, but for storage of important messages, too [1]

Only the 6. point should soon be a success (his own writing about this program can be found here: The Edison Papers).

In 1886, Alexander Bell calls his enhanced version ‘graphophon’, Emil Berliner substitutes a little later the wax cylinders first with hard rubber, then shellac plates and calls it ‘gramophone’. These early recording devices depend completely on the mechanical energy of the original sound for recording & reproducing it, because they don’t use electric amplification. A very quiet reproduction follows from this, and several mechanical means are employed to amplify it ‑ mostly resonating components. But because such mechanical amplification systems do not resonate as much with each frequency, this leads to distortions and makes a lifelike reproduction impossible:

“In the beginning of music reproduction the devices are seldomly used for serious musical ends and the weight lies on the popular music genres. >>For a dime everybody could listen to mediocre tenors or pianists, who earned themselves an extra income with cylinder and plate recordings. The bulky playing devices with their horns and headphones-like sound tubes stood in beer gardens and fun fairs. After money input they started to squawk dreadfully.< <"

Orchestras could not yet be recorded:

“The bigger part of recorded music is arranged for piano or brassbands, because the frequenzy spectra of these instruments are especially suited for mechanical recording.”[3]

And the recording of speech has its difficulties, as the english critic Sir W.H. Preece notes:

This device is far from being able to record the voice of a Patti, more exactly spoken: it can only reproduce the parody of a human voice. Especially some consonants pose a problem. D and t sound exactly the same, also m and n. While one can barely comprehend an s in the middle of a word, it disappears completely at the end or beginning.[1]

The Sound of Truth

In Prussia one of Edisons promoters has to flee a mob trying to burn his tent, in which he has to sleep because nobody wants to give him lodging. The people think trying to reproduce the human voice is a sacrilege. Later, one of Berliner’s first hits is the ‘Our Father’, overcoming the bad quality of the sound exactly because everybody knows allready how it sounds, and think they understand clearly every word.

After some further advancements (the records themselves had to become reproducible…), the gramophone, which cannot be used anymore as a recording device as the wax cylinders still could, prevails. The actual playing time of the shellacs rises from originally only once one minute to two times five in 1907. With the help of a focus on popular music the growing recording industry reaches a turnover of $106 mio in the US in 1921. One of the first stars of recorded music is a Ada Jones, a blond, blue eyed epileptic. Around the world men fall in love with her, without having ever even seen a photograph. Nobody knows about her condition, and even her death (5/2/1922) is concealed by The North American Phonograph Company. For her fans she is alive way into the 30ies.[1]

Instruments are manipulated according to their sound characteristics to sound as ‘natural’ as possible on records. An example is the ‘Stroh-Geige’, the ‘Strohviolin’, developed by the electrical engineer John Stroh, on which

“every resonating wood part is removed and the quiet sound of the string system is radiated over two horns, one being turned at the recording device, the other in the direction of the musician, making the instrument audible for him.”

Contrabasses are usually not recorded at all, because their frequencies cannot be contained in the recordings of this era.

1 Walter Haas/Ulrich Klever, Die Stimme seines Herrn – Eine Geschichte der Schallplatte, West-Berlin 1959 (bigger versions of these pictures can be found inthis flickr set)
This book is the gossip version of the history of the record until 1959…
2 Paul Théberge, Any Sound You Can Imagine – Making Music/Consuming Technology, Hanover 1997, p.31
3 Heiko Wandler, Elektronische Klangerzeugung und Musikreproduktion – Einflüsse auf die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S.80ff, zitiert hier M. Janitz und C. Römer, Radio-Platte-Band als Hör-Erlebnis, p.82f & p.16