Re: GG: Sound recording resources?

["John P. Hill" <jphill@frank.mtsu.edu>]

On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Mary Jo Watts wrote:

> I'm trying to put together a bibliography about the history of sound
> recording.  I have quite a few books about early recording
> machines/Edison/phonography etc. but I'm looking for more contemporary
> sources which address issues that relate to GG and to his "Prospects of
> Recording" essay.

Since this is what I teach, I can give you a fairly extensive list of
current materials.  I think I'll do that off the list though, since it's a
pretty lengthly document and may not be of general interest.

For those who want such texts, the easiest approach would probably be to
go the amazon.com (or other site with a good search engine) and enter in
the following authors:

John Woram
John Eargle
Bruce Bartlett
Ken Pohlmann
John Watkinson  (there sure are a lot of JOHNs in sound recording!)
John Borwick
David Miles Huber
Francis Rumsey
Ron Streicher
F. Alton Everest
Wayne Wadhams


I've forgotten a few, but this would be a good start.

> Anyone know of some good reference materials about tape splicing,
> multitrack recording, overdubbing, stereo/Dolby etc? When did tape
> splicing become a common recording practice?  In what musical genres?
> What are the most important musical recordings in terms of the artistic
> use of recording technology?  In pop? rock? Jazz? classical?  spoken
> word?  

Analog tape has been with us since the early 50s.  The Germans developed
the modern analog tape recorder during the 40s and they called this
invention the Magnetophon.  This technology was basically stolen by some
very enterprising Americans, brought back to this country, embraced by 
Bing Crosby (who wanted to use it in radio production) and then developed
by the Ampex company, who (sadly) got out of the tape machine business in
the mid-80s.  Tape splicing has been with us since the 50s.  Virtually all
current classical recording is done using digital recorders and tape
cutting is really not done at all any more for editing classical
recordings.  Editing is now carried out on hard-disk-based systems like
the Sonic Solutions platform, or Pro-Tools, which offer much greater
precision, flexibility and the ability to rehearse all edits as long as
needed before commiting to them.

> Everyone please join in with suggested recordings and why you think
> they're important to recording history.  How successful were GG's?
> experimetns in the studio?

This one could take several posts.  For those interested, you might check
out Stereophile and The Absolute Sound for reference recordings.
Stereophile has a semi-regular listing of "Records to Die For" that has
many interesting items.  My current faves for sound quality are often on
Dorian.  I'm also a big fan of Shawn Murphy's sountrack recordings.  I had
the good fortune to work with Shawn up at the Aspen Music Festival for a
few summers, where I grew to appreciate his work.

The most obvious pop music album to mention would be Sgt. Peppers Lonely
Hearts Club Band by the Beatles (and George Martin).  You can really
divide pop music recording nicely into "Before Sgt. Peppers" and "After
Sgt. Peppers", even though the basic multitrack technology was solidly
exploited during the early 50s by guitarist Les Paul.  His development of
SEL-SYNC (selective synchronization) allowed one track to be played back
while another was being recorded.  He probably had *no* idea how powerful
and important that little idea would turn out to be.

GG's recordings are a mixed bag, in my opinion.  Despite Gould's interest
with the technology, many of these do not qualify as reference recordings,
from a sound quality point-of-view.  His experimentation with splicing
different spatial perspectives together (Sibelius, Hindemith Marienleben,
etc.) is interesting, but a bit odd as well.  This idea did not catch on
and even Gould seemed to tire of it pretty quickly.

His philosophical ideas about editing are interesting and well-taken, but
if you listen carefully, you can hear *tons* of splicing on his albums
(yes, even some on the 1981 Goldbergs) and one could make the argument
that some of these juxtapositions of very dissimilar material just don't
work too well in the final analysis.  While it's true that you might never
hear such a performance live, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's
really all that compelling coming off of tape, either.  In the hands of a
less-gifted performer, it might have sounded like an unbelievable mess.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that there is a lot less "internal"
editing going on with his later albums, but rather large chunks of the
structure utilizing one primary take.  I like the performance continuity
of the later recordings much better than the early ones.

I have no doubt that Gould would have loved the idea of surround sound
(5.1, etc.) and DVD, since this does represent the next step in recording
and playback.  After all, the theoretical ideas behind stereo date from
the 1930s (Alan Blumlein and Harvey Fletcher spearheaded this research).
And even though recording *hardware* has evolved significantly, the basic
ideas of stereophonic recording and playback really have not.  I'm sure
Gould would have been very gung-ho about taking the next step.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Hill
Professor, Dept. of Recording Industry
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN
------------------------------------------------------------------------