The miracle of recording is somehow no less extraordinary in this digital age – the ability to capture sound, the revolution that transformed music making worldwide, for better and for worse.
In fact, if anything, the abundance of digital music is causing some people to rediscover the recording techniques that preceded it. Andy Deitrich of Chicago’s Mucca Pazza writes to share the experience of returning to that means of recording. I love the saturated quality of the sounds you get: it’s really evident how much the medium here colors the sound. Andy writes:
Back in June we recorded one of our songs onto wax cylinder at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park. We had to speed up the song in order to fit it onto the 2 minute 10 second recording limit. Pretty neat experience!
It inspired us to create a music video for that recording. We played with the idea that this was actually a antique recording of the band.
I guess there’s nothing digital about it! The Edison recorder we used was hand cranked! But we transferred it turned it into a
YouTube music video.
I wonder, in fact, what new ways people may find to integrate physical and mechanical musical techniques with digital systems. Anyone with ideas, fire away.
Mission accomplished. Photo (CC-BY) Thoth God of Knowledge.