Kyle Rhine
Media 4
Communications Technologies
May 15 2014
Digital Recording
Recording technology wasn’t always a digital process. Before the 1970s, all recordings depended on capturing a physical analogue sound with microphones. This was done on either tape or disk. Analogue recordings lacked the sonic integrity that the 21st century demanded; it was becoming increasingly problematic and expensive in reducing noise and distortion that plagued analogue recordings. As a result, audio researchers began to study digital conversion techniques. They discovered that digitizing an electrical audio signal consisted of sampling the audio wave thousands of times a second, measuring the peak amplitude of each sample, and then assigning one of a limited number of binary values to each.
In analogue recording, the noise floor and distortion often accumulated at the recording and post-production stages, while a digital recordings signal was cleanly represented through binary values. In 1967, the first digital tape recorder was seen in Japan and was involved in the first digitally mastered records in 1972. The Sony PCM-1 was the first commercially available digital recording device. It converted captured analogue signal into a digital binary format. Initially digital records were still released on vinyl in analogue but in 1982 Sony and Philips released the first compact discs. Friction and noise from physical contact was now eliminated allowing a much clearer sonic representation. In 1987, digital audio tapes were introduced however record companies opposed a medium that allowed flawless copies of compact discs to be made so digital audio tapes were never released in America, however were quite popular for professional recordings. In 1995 the ...
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...popularized with absolutely no real instruments being played. We live in a world now where the keyboard is the best instrument you could play. Violins, drums, guitars, any instrument you could imagine can now be emulated with a synthesizer and programmed in a computer.
Digital Audio in music gave middle class people a chance to step foot in the music industry. Lowering costs, ultimately, allowing for a much larger demographic in audio engineering careers. People can now be creative and utilize affordable technologies with no limitations other than their own creativity. We live in a time of complete opportunity; limits are only defined by the individual. Technology will continue to improve and so will the music created by it. "There is a new, tonal vocabulary hidden there that could transform musical composition and create another wealth of great artistic works."
In 1904 Eugene Lauste successfully recorded sound onto a piece of photographic film. This invention was known as a “Sound Grate” the results where still far to crude to be used to public display.
Before 1925 recordings were made with an acoustical horn that would capture the sound of the musicians in front of it and transferred the vibration to a cutting stylus. No electricity was used. This process was called the acoustical process. In 1925, microphones were introduced to transfer the acoustical energy to an electric signal, which fed the cutting stylus. This electrical process ameliorated recordings sound.
After two years, Futurist Luigi Russolo, published a book called The Art of Noise. In his book, he suggested; “Music sound is too limited in qualitative variety of timbre … we must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds.” (Note: the noise mentioned above is not about the unpleasant sound. It refers to the sound from the nature. For instance, Screams, whispering, boom, Whistles, .etc.) The book mounds a basic concept about electronic music.
While it is impossible to specify an exact date as to when the loudness wars began, we can study the trends of mastering over the past forty years, and, from our data, hypothesize when engineers began prioritizing loudness over quality. Before examining the levels of commercially distributed audio, the medium of recorded music must be taken into consideration. The earliest indications that loudness was prioritized in commercial music occurred on vinyl. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, 7” singles were extremely popular among bars, clubs and pubs housing jukeboxes. The jukebox would typically have a pre-set level for playback, so if records were mastered louder, they would...
The future of industry depends on whether the people involved in it can use the new technology in a smart way. It’s up to the music industry to make the right next move.
In the late 1890s, the concept of self-playing piano start to capture the attention of the inventors and the public and several different inventors’ mechanisms were marketed. Player piano has all the characteristic of a piano and it can play by itself. Piano designer and inventor Melville Clark had his very first instrument “Apollo Player Piano”, built with 88note standard in 1901 caused a major impact on the music industry. Player piano is the very first widely successful consumer device that was able to encode the data in binary format. This was done by hand punching rolls ...
I have been asked to identify and evaluate two important current developments in the music industry. I will be discussing the rise of electronic dance music and also the growing number of musicians gaining success via YouTube.
With each passing year, technology has become highly involved in our lives, and continues to at a rapidly increasing rate. Technology, in many ways, was designed to help people in various fields of work. However, it has also achieved the reciprocal. Where does music lie? Has technology hurt or helped the field of music, specifically hip-hop? What do these advancements mean for the genre?
Different devices can change music immensely. For example, many people think of an instrument as something that involves keys, valves, or strings, but the truth is that something as simple as your voice or as complicated as a computer can create music just the same as a traditional instrument. Before fancy sound boards and computers were around to manipulate music into almost unnatural perfection, there was just a person with their instrument and an audience. If somebody messed up then it would be heard, but the world wouldn’t end. Now it is completely absurd to hear music that is not completely perfect thanks to the use of sound editing software, autotune, and lip
Most successful musicians know a hidden art carried out by the work of a good sound engineer; it is essential for a magnificent album. For the rest of us novice listeners and fans, we believe what we hear through our speakers or played over the radio are the true skilled professional musicians, soaring at their craft. Most contemporary music, from pop to R&B and acid jazz to the sophisticated realm of orchestral film scores, has been modernized by several inventions encased within the studio. The art of audio engineering has taken on new forms, from the nuts and bolts, "plug it in, and see if it works" era into the digital world, because of these wonderfully tragic solutions to a higher pace of life. A musician's art have been made solely because of it, and others have been destroyed and humiliated by it. The complex new inventions of technology shape the adaptive method of studio recording and production however caused a drastic negative musical degrading of our beloved art.
How did the music industry started to get the music out to the people? At first it started with the phonograph came out in 1877 and was made mostly out of tin foil. Then came the first jukebox that was placed in the Palais Royale Saloon in 1889 in San Francisco. A few years later in 1890 the radio was intruded which is still around to this day in cars mostly. The single tape cassettes came around in 1962 two years later in 1964 came the 8-track tape. In 1975 the boom box/ghetto blaster had its days it was a big role in movies like Do The Right Thing and Say Anything. 1978 the Sony Walkman sold more the two hundred twenty million worldwide. Briton Kane Kramer invented the digital audio player in 1979 known as the MP3 player. Finally the compact discs (CD) came out in 1982 and “The first album ever released on a CD was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. The first to sell one million copies was Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms.” Following the CD where: DAB radio, So...
Nothing in this world remains stationary. Everything is constantly changing and advancing, and technology is no exception. Daily, new technological inventions are being created. One of the more recent ideas is the electronification of music. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, electronic music has done nothing but aid in the growth of humanity. This form of music is commonly disliked and labeled as “fake music,” but it is actually the exact opposite of these ignorant remarks. Electronic music has progressed throughout the years, completely revolutionizing society through its innovative properties and educational qualities.
Electronic devices were developed around the end of the 19th century when people began to use magnetic audio tape to record sounds. Once sounds could be recorded, they could be manipulated. As musicians across the world began to experiment
Back in the early 1980’s, record labels controlled what people could hear through airplay, record distribution and manufacturing, and selective promotion of music based on their judgement of their audience. An artist’s only feasible option was to go through this system. To obtain music of high quality, people had to buy vinyl singles or albums or tape, and later, only CDs. There was no practical way to listen to music before buying it without listening to or taping off the radio. Music was very restricted by several different record companies.
Music and the relationships of music have changed drastically in our society. The course of studies and the evaluations of the applications of the technology of music, the making and the listening of music have changed in the way we listen to music, the styles of music in our society and in the media. The importance of the technology in music today, has, over the past century been charted through the study of musical examples and through viewing how human values are reflected in this century's timely music. There are very many different types of music that are listened to. There are readings, writings, lectures and discussions on all the different types of music.