 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-03-27 14:46
There's a very interesting article in today's New York Times about the Phonautogram, the earliest sound recorder from 1860, predating Edison's "Mary Had a Little Lamb" recording by 20 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html?hp=&pagewanted=all.
The inventor held a sheet of paper over a smoky lamp until it was covered with soot. He then wrapped it around a cylinder and had the person to be recorded speak into the large end of a barrel-shaped megaphone, with a stylus at the bottom that scratched the sound waves into the soot as it moved across the cylinder driven by a worm gear.
There was no way to play the recording, so it was only a curiosity. However, in an earlier story I now can't find, I read that the inventor traveled around recording people, who paid for at least a theoretical recording. I recall that the earlier story mentioned that he had recorded Abraham Lincoln.
Phonoautograms are now readable by laser, and a 10-second recording of "Clair de Lune" is available on a link to the story.
Archeophone Records specializes in reissuing early cylinder recordings and already has a link to the Times article on its site. http://www.archeophone.com/index.php With luck, we might get Lincoln's voice, or perhaps a bit of Liszt, Lazarus or Mühlfeld.
Ken Shaw
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Author: 53engine
Date: 2008-03-27 16:22
THere was an article in Time a number of years ago that discussed finding a piece of ancient grooved piece of pottery that has been"recorded"on. The idea was that as the potter was turning this piece of pottery and making grooves in it, the knife arc was changed by the sound vibrations of the surroundings and they could hear animal noises and garbled speech.
This was a serious article, but obviously that doesn't mean that it is accurate.
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Author: 53engine
Date: 2008-03-27 20:27
I've always been curious about this. I looked up a couple of things, Brahms lived from 1833-1897 and wrote the quintet in 1891 and the sonatas in 1894; Muhlfield lived from 1856-1907. Edison's first recordings were in 1877-1878 and weren't much good but over the next 10 years, he developed and perfected the wax cylinder. That would make it about 1888. If the clarinet works weren't written till into the 1890's, there chould have been some recordings made. Does anybody know anything about this?
Perhaps, I'm just wrong.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-03-27 21:17
I suppose the question about Mühlfeld recordings has occurred to nearly every clarinetist. I've had some correspondence with Michael Bryant, who knows more about clarinet recordings than the rest of us put together. He says that while Mühlfeld died in 1907, and so could have made recordings, none have ever been found. He said he even went from England to Israel once to pursue an alleged Mühlfeld cylinder, but it turned out to be one he already knew about, and knew not to be by Mühlfeld.
Here's a great list of acoustic clarinet recordings: http://www.clarphon.com/clarinetrecordings.htm. Many of them have been reissued on a CD http://www.clarphon.com/cd.htm, which is listenable once you learn to tune out the background roar. It's called Vol. 1, and I just got a message from the producer that he plans to put out Vol. 2 sometime this year.
Ken Shaw
Post Edited (2008-03-28 15:20)
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2008-03-28 11:16
Ken, thank you for these fascinating links. People interested in knowing more about the early history of sound transmission and recording (and about Edison's pilferage of other people's ideas) also may want to read this biography of the great inventor, Nikola Tesla:
Margaret Cheney. "Tesla: Man Out of Time." New York: Prentice-Hall, 1981 (and in paperback, New York: Dell, 1983).
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2008-03-30 16:23
Tesla was working on the transmission of electricity sans wires at the time of his death.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2008-03-30 18:33
Tesla also made some fascinatingly wild claims about what he could do with sound waves from his electromechanical oscillator. He said he could bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. He also claimed that, with just the right extreme basso profundo frequency, he could crack the earth open like an egg. Nobody's been able to replicate the exact experiments he said led him to these conclusions, although the phenomenon of amplitude increasing over time is now well-documented. (See the famous footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, aka "Galloping Gertie," bucking up and down more and more wildly until it shakes itself to bits. Though the wave in that case was created by a steady wind, not sound, the principle is the same.)
But while Tessla was promoting himself with such lurid and dubious claims, he was also working on practical, replicable wireless and radio designs--well ahead of his rivals who took the credit. Tessla sued Edison over the patents and won--posthumously, alas.
Shadow Cat claims, meanwhile, that sound waves from clarinets in Eb, Bb and A can bring a vacuum cleaner to malevolent life while wirelessly evoking the Garbage Truck Devil to come into the house with a mighty roar and devour everything within, but despite diligent experimentation, I haven't been able to verify her claims, either.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2008-03-30 18:37)
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2008-03-31 01:07
Great Guns, Lelia, you are making me look [back] at Tesla, since all I can recall is the T--- coil, high freq. generator ?? Help , Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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The Clarinet Pages
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