This week we looked into the advancements in music technology and techniques used in different periods.
One of the earliest forms of recording music involved wax cylinders. This involved bands or musicians performing into a large horn that etched the audio it received onto a cylinder of wax which could then be played back using a phonograph. This did have a lot of limitations.
There was no ability to modify recordings in post-production or mix. The only way to manage the levels of individual instruments on the recording was the physical placement of the musician within the room. This meant for tracks with vocals, the vocalist would be positioned directly in front of the horn while the louder instruments such as brass and woodwind would stand farther back. This style of recording involved a constant hissing noise and lack of lower frequencies as they found it harder to cut through the mix. This led to a lot of rumbling and bass instruments being a lot quieter in the mix.
https://www.nypl.org/events/tours/audio-guides/treasures-audio-guide/item/3569 – Here is an example of early wax recording.
With the introduction of tape recorders, the ability to overdub was gained in music production. This led to much clearer vocals and allowed for much more creative control in terms of production. Some characteristics of this style of recording were that there was significantly more low-end than with wax recording and much less hissing. Eventually, Dobe noise suppression inputs were created to alleviate the problem of static noise in recordings. In these early styles of recording, producers had to get much more creative when attempting to augment the sound due to much less being readily available such as audio effects within DAWs or Equipment. An example of this is how they created reverb. Studios would often have a room of reflective material in order to make it reverberate. this would be filled with speakers that would be picked up with a microphone to record this reverberated signal.