These days when we want to listen to music, we turn on the TV, tune into the radio, we put on a CD or we click on an MP3 file on our computers. Then we can listen to rock, classical, pop, jazz and anything else that we want. However, CDs have only been around for barely 30 years, and the records that preceeded it only for about 80 years. It wasn’t until the 1920s that disc-records made of shellac and later, vinyl, started replacing the archaic and fragile cylinder-records which dominated the recording industry up to the start of the Great Depression.

Although audio-recording and storage technology has existed since the 1860s, it wasn’t until the late 1870s that a man named Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph (or ‘gramophone’ in British English), the first machine capable of both recording, and then playing back, actual sound, and in a quality decent enough to be heard and understood. So, what was early sound-recording like?

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Thomas Edison announced the creation of his newfangled ‘talking machine’ during the last months of 1877. Edison’s machine was surprisingly simple for doing something that was thought impossible in the late 19th century: Recording sound! It relied on an amplification horn, a vibrating needle or stylus and a cylinder wrapped in tinfoil. As Edison spoke (or rather, SHOUTED!) into the amplifying horn, the soundwaves vibrated the needle which cut a long, continuous groove into the tinfoil cylinder while Edison turned the crank-handle on the side. The louder or softer Edison spoke, the deeper or shallower the grooves in the tinfoil turned out to be. By placing the needle at the start of the recording and turning the handle again, a very crackly, but nonetheless, discernable voice could be heard, saying the very first words ever heard on an audio-recording machine:

“Mary had a little lamb, it’s fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to follow!”

Edison’s initial recordings were nothing amazing. It took him a considerable time to figure out how to get everything to work. He had discovered that if he spoke loud enough, he could make a needle vibrate and that this vibrating needle would cut a groove into a material which would record sound. But he needed a material that would both record and play back the sound iin a better quality. When tinfoil at least showed him that his theory was correct, he moved onto other things, and eventually came up with a winning combination which heralded the dawn of the recording age.

A turn-of-the-century mechanical cylinder phonograph.

Wax Cylinders

When Edison showed that his newfangled recording machine actually worked, people really started getting interested. Until then, everyone thought the recording of sound was something impossible, but now it was here! But how could people record things that they wanted easily, cheaply and effectively? The big problem with tinfoil records was that the tinfoil had to be REALLY smooth when it was wrapped around the cylinder. Any creases or crinkles or folds in the foil, and it was useless, because it meant that the needle wouldn’t cut a neat groove around the recording-cylinder.

How was it possible for people to mass-produce easy recording-blanks which could be sold to people or which could be sold to recording-companies, to make easy, commercial audio-recordings? How about if they could be formed from a mould just like easter-eggs or waffles or candles?

Then a smart cookie came up with a wonderful idea: Making recording-cylinders out of…wax! Using molten wax and a mould, people could make hundreds, thousands of recording-blanks. The softness of the wax meant that the needle travelled around the cylinder better, and would cut better and more distinct grooves when it was capturing sound. The commercial recording-industry was born!

An Edison ‘Amberol’-brand cylinder-record, cast from wax. These were manufactured from 1912-1929, when the Depression put a lot of recording companies out of business.

The nice thing about cylinder records was that they were easy to produce and they were easy to use. People could buy recording-blanks, take them home and slot them into their phonographs. They could turn on their phonographs and record their own voices or music into the recording-blanks and then play them back. Long before walkmans, camcorders or audio-recording software, people were making home-recordings!

The big problems with cylinder records is that they did not produce a uniform playing-speed as smoothly as later disc-records. And being made of wax, they were easily broken and they could only be played so many times before the needle cut into the wax too much, damaging the already mediocre sound-quality.

The Disc-Record

The disc-record which most of us recognise today, was the idea of Mr. Emile Berliner. It was his belief that if the record went around horizontally rather than vertically, the needle wouldn’t be bumped and jolted as much and it would produce a clearer and more uniform sound and the record could play at a more uniform speed.

A typical phonograph-record.

By the time Berliner’s new record had come out, though, the cylinder record had already been established for several decades. It would take some careful and clever marketing to make people accept the new type of record. Berliner tried recruiting singers and musicians who claimed only to record for Berliner’s new kind of record for various reasons, claiming that the sound-quality was better or that the recording was smoother. One big pulling-point for the disc-record was that it was more compact than the cylinder-record, which made storage and transportation a lot more convenient and significantly easier than its bulkier cousin. These new records were also made of better materials. Originally shellac, but then celluloid and finally, vinyl, starting in the 1940s.

Make Some Noise!

When we listen to old-fashioned jazz music in movies or on the radio or even on MP3-recordings, one thing that is immediately noticable is the recording-quality. Some records are surprisingly crisp and bright and easy to hear, while other recordings are hazy, crackly, muffled or have a significant level of static and buzz. Why is this and why does it happen?

There were two ways of recording music back in the “good old days”. Either you did it acoustically or you did it electronically. These two, very different methods of audio-recording, created two very different levels of playback quality.

Acoustic recording came first and lasted from the birth of audio-recording and playback, until the late 1920s. It involved the singers or instrumentalists crowding around what was known as an amplification or recording horn. Singing or playing into the horn very loudly (or at least, louder than what we’d be used to), caused the soundwaves to vibrate the needle needed to cut the groove into the master record.

A band during a recording-session in the early 20th century. The huge cone to the left is the recording-horn. As you can see, the musicians all have to huddle around it and had to play a lot louder than they usually would, in order for the needle at the other end to vibrate enough to cut the master record.

While this type of recording was effective, the playback quality was mediocre at best. Similar-sounding words in the lyrics of songs might get garbled and meshed together; it was difficult to identify the individual instruments in any given recording. Instruments such as the piano, drums, saxaphone, trumpet or trombone were easy to pick up on early records because they were so loud and strong. More sweeter, high-pitched instruments such as violins and flutes were notoriously hard to record successfully because they couldn’t produce the required level of sound to vibrate the needle. Indeed, a modified instrument, the Stroh Violin, was invented, to try and remedy this problem.

Although this looks like a mutilated Frankenstein’s instrument, this contraption, resembling a cross between a violin and a tuba, is actually a Stroh violin. The horn on the violin allowed the violinist to amplify and project the sound of the usually, rather weak violin, so that it was loud enough to be picked up during early recording-sessions.

Apart from modifications to instruments, vocalists also had to modify the way that they sang. Early recording artists such as the notable Billy Murray, had to sing considerably louder than what they might do in other circumstances. Much like how talkies put silent-film actors out of business, the coming of electronic recording put acoustic singers out of a job. Murray described his style of forceful singing as ‘hammering’, since he practically had to hammer his voice out for it to be loud enough to be picked up on the master record. With newer, eletronic technology, Murray’s singing-style was too powerful and forceful for the new kind of vocalist, who sang more or less how they still do today.

In 1925, the electric microphone was invented, and all over the world, musicians relaxed their fingers and singers took big, grateful gulps of water. For the first time now, there was something to do the amplifying FOR them! And something to rotate the master record at a more uniform speed, and better recording-equipment to get a clearer sound! Find a recording from between 1900-1925 and listen to how grainy and crackly it is. Then find one recorded after 1930: The difference in sound-quality is immediate and stunning. Gone were the warbly, weak voices and the grabled and indistinct musical notes, to be replaced by clear, pleasant lyrics and crisp, bright notes. The era of electronic recording had begun!

The changing voice of audio-recording

From crackly, barely distinct sounds in the 1880s to recognisable and tolerable tunes in the 1910s, finally arriving with clear, crisp recordings in the 1930s, in less than sixty years, mankind had seen the rapid and amazing development of something once thought impossible: The capture and recording and the playing back of sound. And not just sound, not just voices, but music! For the first time, you didn’t need to know how to play an instrument to have music in your home. Instead, you had a machine that could play records which would fill your house with the relaxing parlour songs and ragtime tunes of the 1900s, the hot jazz beat of the Charleston, the energetic swing-dancing music of ’30s big-band or the jitterbugging, lindyhop-inducing rock of the 50s and 60s. We all know what happened after the record was replaced, so this is where this article ends.

Thank you for listening.