How effin' COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.
The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
“This is a historic find, the earliest known recording of sound,” said Samuel Brylawski, the former head of the recorded-sound division of the Library of Congress, who is not affiliated with the research group but who was familiar with its findings. The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio, and its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison.
Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered.
But the Lawrence Berkeley scientists used optical imaging and a “virtual stylus” on high-resolution scans of the phonautogram, deploying modern technology to extract sound from patterns inscribed on the soot-blackened paper almost a century and a half ago. The scientists belong to an informal collaborative called First Sounds that also includes audio historians and sound engineers.
David Giovannoni, an American audio historian who led the research effort, will present the findings and play the recording in public on Friday at the annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
Scott’s 1860 phonautogram was made 17 years before Edison received a patent for the phonograph and 28 years before an Edison associate captured a snippet of a Handel oratorio on a wax cylinder, a recording that until now was widely regarded by experts as the oldest that could be played back.
Mr. Giovannoni’s presentation on Friday will showcase additional Scott phonautograms discovered in Paris, including recordings made in 1853 and 1854. Those first experiments included attempts to capture the sounds of a human voice and a guitar, but Scott’s machine was at that time imperfectly calibrated.
“We got the early phonautograms to squawk, that’s about it,” Mr. Giovannoni said.
But the April 1860 phonautogram is more than a squawk. On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” in a lilting 11-note melody — a ghostly tune, drifting out of the sonic murk.
The hunt for this audio holy grail was begun in the fall by Mr. Giovannoni and three associates: Patrick Feaster, an expert in the history of the phonograph who teaches at Indiana University, and Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey, owners of Archeophone Records, a label specializing in early sound recordings. They had collaborated on the Archeophone album “Actionable Offenses,” a collection of obscene 19th-century records that received two Grammy nominations. When Mr. Giovannoni raised the possibility of compiling an anthology of the world’s oldest recorded sounds, Mr. Feaster suggested they go digging for Scott’s phonautograms.
Historians have long been aware of Scott’s work. But the American researchers believe they are the first to make a concerted search for Scott’s phonautograms or attempt to play them back.
In December Mr. Giovannoni and a research assistant traveled to a patent office in Paris, the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle. There he found recordings from 1857 and 1859 that were included by Scott in his phonautograph patent application. Mr. Giovannoni said that he worked with the archive staff there to make high-resolution, preservation-grade digital scans of these recordings.
A trail of clues, including a cryptic reference in Scott’s writings to phonautogram deposits made at “the Academy,” led the researchers to another Paris institution, the French Academy of Sciences, where several more of Scott’s recordings were stored. Mr. Giovannoni said that his eureka moment came when he laid eyes on the April 1860 phonautogram, an immaculately preserved sheet of rag paper 9 inches by 25 inches.
“It was pristine,” Mr. Giovannoni said. “The sound waves were remarkably clear and clean.”
His scans were sent to the Lawrence Berkeley lab, where they were converted into sound by the scientists Carl Haber and Earl Cornell. They used a technology developed several years ago in collaboration with the Library of Congress, in which high-resolution “maps” of grooved records are played on a computer using a digital stylus. The 1860 phonautogram was separated into 16 tracks, which Mr. Giovannoni, Mr. Feaster and Mr. Martin meticulously stitched back together, making adjustments for variations in the speed of Scott’s hand-cranked recording.
Listeners are now left to ponder the oddity of hearing a recording made before the idea of audio playback was even imagined.
“There is a yawning epistemic gap between us and Léon Scott, because he thought that the way one gets to the truth of sound is by looking at it,” said Jonathan Sterne, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and the author of “The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.”
Scott is in many ways an unlikely hero of recorded sound. Born in Paris in 1817, he was a man of letters, not a scientist, who worked in the printing trade and as a librarian. He published a book on the history of shorthand, and evidently viewed sound recording as an extension of stenography. In a self-published memoir in 1878, he railed against Edison for “appropriating” his methods and misconstruing the purpose of recording technology. The goal, Scott argued, was not sound reproduction, but “writing speech, which is what the word phonograph means.”
In fact, Edison arrived at his advances on his own. There is no evidence that Edison drew on knowledge of Scott’s work to create his phonograph, and he retains the distinction of being the first to reproduce sound.
“Edison is not diminished whatsoever by this discovery,” Mr. Giovannoni said.
Paul Israel, director of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., praised the discovery as a “tremendous achievement,” but called Edison’s phonograph a more significant technological feat.
“What made Edison different from Scott was that he was trying to reproduce sound and he succeeded,” Mr. Israel said.
But history is finally catching up with Scott.
Mr. Sterne, the McGill professor, said: “We are in a period that is more similar to the 1860s than the 1880s. With computers, there is an unprecedented visualization of sound.”
The acclaim Scott sought may turn out to have been assured by the very sonic reproduction he disdained. And it took a group of American researchers to rescue Scott’s work from the musty vaults of his home city. In his memoir, Scott scorned his American rival Edison and made brazen appeals to French nationalism. “What are the rights of the discoverer versus the improver?” he wrote less than a year before his death in 1879. “Come, Parisians, don’t let them take our prize.”
Always Buy Chesterfield!
Found this radio commercial from October 1952. I had to share!
I've always thought smoking was a stupid thing to do. Knowing what everyone knows about smoking, why would you even start?!?!?!?!
This commercial changes my mind, though. I'll start smoking Chesterfields cuz they's'll make me live forever!!!
Had a bad night last night. Took a while before I fell asleep, and I woke up every hour for about ten minutes, AND every time I woke up "Livin' La Vida Loca" was in my head!!!! I successfully avoided that rotten song until Saturday when me and Kat ate at a "Mexican" restaurant. God, what an awful song. I was right to avoid it for so long.
I tried other songs, but like a tainted burrito, it seeped back in. "They're Here" by Boots Walker seemed to chase away Ricky Martin.
My Gramma's been dead for seven years now.
About 6 months after she died I had a dream about her during naptime. Don't remember the dream. When I woke up, I stumbled into the living to get ready for...where I went every day to get money in return for my time...and pushed play on my CD player. With seven CDs full of songs to randomly pick from, it played this one.
I thought it was eerily appropriate.
One of my favorite Jonathon Brandmeier bits. From Monday, August 23, 1982 on 104 FM KZZP.
Before he was Richard Cheese, before he was Jingle Boy at NBC, before he did "Rock Me Jerry Lewis" he was Mark Davis. He got his start by calling in to Brandmeier's show as Floyd the Barber, song parodies under the name Heave-O, and here as Rosanne Rosannadanna (I never know how to spell that, and I'm too lazy to look it up.)
Jonathon read a story about a 14 year-old boy who got a 9-foot javelin stuck in his head. The boy survived, by the way. This was Mark Davis' responce to that.
Monday, August 23, 1982.
Listen through the Gemco commercial to hear one for the 1982 Us Festival. Sounds like I'd like to go, but I'm 25 years too late.
May 11 is my birthday, and the 25th anniversary of the first Mike & Eric "radio" show. "Radio show" in the sense of most radio shows done by two 13 year-olds. In a bedroom with our records and tape decks. Mike and I did a lot of these shows between 1982-1984 (and one in 1986, three in 2002.) It was fun, Mike was, and still is, such a wit, and it was fun to pretend like we were radio morning men. If you think anything we ever did on these shows were scripted or planned then have I got a Republican President for you!
These two samples are from the May 11, 1982 show.
The Myth: KZZP (a real station in Phoenix at the time) hired two inexperienced 13 year-olds to substitute for their #1 morning man Jonathon Brandmeier when he'd be on vacation, or take a day off.
Mike Sortino & Eric Johnson's debut would come on Brandmeier's scheduled day off of May 12. First they had to get used to the control board, and were given the last hour of Dave Otto's popular night time show to do this. They were told to just get used to the board, don't do a lot of talking.
What happened can be best described as audio anarchy.
THE REALITY: I got a microphone and some blank tapes for my birthday. After cake and ice cream me and Mike went to my bedroom. My sister followed. Mike pushed record and things started.
It was hard to pick one or two tracks from this show. Sure they were funny and entertaining. But Mike and I have the same reaction. We wince in embarrassment at our own contributions to the show. We love the other's bits, though. I tried to pick a couple of things that would make us wince the least.
The first is titled "Disco Diane."
Diane is my sister. She was very annoying. She wasn't playing the part of an irritant for the show, she WAS an irritant. I just want to have recording fun with my friend, but she shoved her way in, and wouldn't go away.
It was 1982. Disco was scorned and dead. My sister watched the disco dancing show Dance Fever. The song playing is "Get Off" by Foxy. It was my record. Why did I have it, being a disco-hater? Someone gave me a box of free singles and that was one of them.
The other track from that show is "An Ordinary Day at Eric's House."
Me and Mike were loyal listner's of Brandmeier's show. He affectionately called his listener's "Loons." Brandmeier also did his own songs with the his band The Leisure Suits.
My sister continues to be an irritant until she spills a tray of Legos, and that's when I have had enough and actually drag her out by her arms.
The third audio post is from the May 12, 1982 show. It's considered to be the first Mike & Eric show, since last night's was just a test. Mike came by after school, and we started recording.
The song opening this bit is The Lesure Suits parody of The Little River Band's "The Night Owls" called "The Snowbird Song." Willy de Loon sings lead.
Laugh at the datedness of Mike's impression of Bill Maxwel from The Greatest American Hero
KQYT was the Muzak station in town then.
Is it weird for a 32 year-old man to record a promo for a non-existent radio station made up by he and his friend when they were 13? Maybe. But if that’s wrong, then, baby, I don’t wanna be right. I get an idea in my head, and if I can do it, I'd rather make it real than let it fade away and roll out of my brain, or just let it die with me. So that's why a lonely 32 year-old man records stuff for his fake pubescent radio station. There are two radio stations here that go all Christmas for December. Since I’m such a Christmas slut, and want as much Christmas I can get, I listen to these stations a lot. Problem is, they don’t stray far from their soccer mom format of Michael Bolton, Faith Hill, and Kenny G. Doesn’t take long before I get sick of switching from Amy Grant on one station, to The Carpenters on the other before I throw a huff and settle on "Slow Ride" on the crappy Classic Rock station. Mother of God, it makes me wish I really did have my own radio station. Cuz if I did there’d be no lifeless Christmas songs on MY station. And I’d have this promo to emphasize it! Recorded on my Mac in December 2001. After I recorded it I was ready to stick that Pogues thing on at the end, and be all done. Of course, that’s when I found out that I screwed up when I said, "Merry Christmas." Would’ve worked better if I had said, "Happy Christmas." But I didn’t feel like going through the hassle of fixing one word, so I left it. Still works. Oh, and it’s about 40 seconds to 1 minute 10 seconds longer than a radio spot should be. But I figure what’s it matter for a radio station that doesn’t exist? I still really like the commercial, anyway. Anyone know how to get a job making stuff like this for a radio station? KDBX Christmas Promo Copyright ©2001 LoonMedia Partnership by Eric Paul Johnson Recorded, mixed, and produced by Eric Paul Johnson in his living room.
Christmas for a small group of friends who put out a small newspaper. I wrote a page of this in 1991. The rest fell out of me in November 1992. Thought I’d plan ahead and have something ready for the day when my wildly successful syndicated comic strip is approached to do an animated holiday special. Should be aaaaaaany minute now… I had wanted to record this since 1994. Would’ve been done like my homemade music of using two dual tape decks. Fortunately that never happened. Fortunately, home recording really advanced over the years, and thanks to SoundEdit on my Mac I was able to record in stereo, with backing tracks, and effects. And I did in June 2002. I recorded my part. About two weeks later Karen Soock recorded her part as Cindi Hensley. About two weeks laterer Cait and Mychele recorded their parts. When all were recorded, I cut and pasted everything in order. Cait’s portrayal of Mike Sortino is much more perkier than the character is. But it worked out well against my Charlie Brown/Bob Newhart character. I had to search the Internetstrola for some sound effects. Living in a desert since 1976 I didn’t have a lot of walking in snow sounds lying around. I found a sound effects site, and discovered that the sound labeled "crushing head" worked just as well for snow crunching. I had no plans for a constant music background. But as good as home recording on a computer is, it still picked up a mess of tape hiss. I tried to cover this hiss as best as I could with background music. By the way, I LOVE Christmas. If I could, I’d marry Christmas and make sweet, sweet love to it every night. But someone in the story needed to have the Christmas gloom, and my cartoon counterpart is usually very gloomy. I didn’t like how Karen did Cindi. Too flat. When Cait and Mychele came over I tried Mychele out as Cindi, and she did way a million times better! And, I was out of female friends. I tried, as best as I could, to make pictures with sound. But I don’t know how I could’ve done one part better. It’s confusing if you don’t know. When Eric says, "Have a holly, jolly Christmas, Eric," Mike comes up with an armful of Christmas lights and a stepladder. He puts the stepladder next to Eric, climbs up, and completely clueless of Eric’s funk, Mike drops the lights on him. In my dream recording world, Ken Osmond would’ve done the voice of Marley. He was Eddie Haskell on Leave It To Beaver, don’tcha know. Since Ken wouldn’t answer my voluminous nude-pictured requests, I had to make do with Cait. She tried her best to imitate Eddie. It had been a long time since she’d seen the show. I think it was during the Santa, Mike, and Mrs. Claus scene that Mychele, sitting on the couch next to us, blew out laughing when I paused the tape to give instructions to Cait. She said she’d been holding it in for a while and was waiting for a tape pause to let it all out. I made the effect of the bell being crushed by crushing an empty box of Cap’n Crunchberries. Now, Karen and Mychele have accused me of being insensitive. Not in a heartless bastard way, but in a standoffish Vulcan way. Yet, when it came to the most sensitive part of the show, they could not do it!!!! It took over 20 times before Karen nailed it. I tried three times with Mychele before I gave up and just figured I’ll paste in Karen’s "stay sweet." I didn’t want to stall the recording waiting for Mychele to get it right. Of all of Karen’s stuff for this, this was the thing she nailed. And me, too. I pasted the whole thing together the first week in July. I liked it fine in 1992. In 2002 I thought it sounded too much me at 23. Cindi’s become much less prominent in the strip. I do still would never drink, and sex and love do not separate for me, but I hope I’m not as prudish as I sound in the special. Since then I’ve wanted to do a new Christmas special. I have ideas, but not much incentive to get on it. The new one would have less tainting of the Clauses, and no padding with an Eagles song. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever it is you do in December. Loon Eric Paul Johnson: Eric Paul Johnson M.C. Brennan: Mike Sortino, Marley Jacobs, Santas, Marielle Madigan Mychele Dee: Cindi Hensley Karen Soock: "stay sweet" Recorded, mixed, and produced by Eric Paul Johnson in his living room.
In March 1987 I heard a story on the radio about a story in the newspaper about misheard song titles. "Bad Moon Rising" was heard by some as "Bathroom on the Right." "Dust in the Wind," "Ducks in the Wind." "Beast of Burden," "Pizza Burnin’." "Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue," "Donuts Make My Brown Eyes Blue." I read the story and wanted to use one of them for a parody. Metrocenter mall had one of those shops where you record a song. Superstar Studios had pre-recorded instrumental tracks, you pick the song you want to do, and they give you a lyric sheet. Go in the little studio with headphones and a microphone waiting, sing along with the music, you go home with a professional sounding recording of yourself. Of the songs in the story, Superstar had "Dust in the Wind," and "Beast of Burden." I wanted to do "Ducks in the Wind," but I didn’t have it. I did have "Beast of Burden" on an old Brandmeier show. I listened to the song, and wrote the parody. I showed my lyrics to Cait Brennan the next day in Yearbook class. She laughed a bit. Julian Lennon look-alike, and musician Kenn Grace came over and asked what was funny. "It’s a song he wrote," Cait said. "I’ve been writing a lot of dark songs lately," Kenn said to me. Cait said, "His is from the perspective of a pizza." Kenn wandered off chuckling. Friend Richard Boland and I rehearsed his part at the end during lunch. I had a cold at the time, but the two of us went to Superstar that weekend to record it. When you record at Superstar there’s a vocal track to guide you through the song. When the guy at the board mixes your tape, the guide track is taken out. Since I had our own lyrics, they didn't play the guide track for me. Well, I didn’t know the song well enough, so during the run-through the guitar solo didn’t stand out in their tape and I kept singing over it. We ran through it three times before just giving up, and just record the next attempt. So, this is take four. And I sang over the solo in this one. I got lost and fumbled through for a bit. Found my place in the song again. When I got home I edited out my meandering singing flub. Rich’s "Never"s are fantastic here! It’s the selling point. The song was pretty popular with the Loon set, but not with Dr. Demento. He rejected the song in 1987 saying, "the sexual innuendo is too strong for network radio." Maybe, but what do you do with a pizza? You don’t teach it to be a certified welder, or let it drive a truck. You EAT it! Pizza Burnin’ Copyright © 1987 LoonMedia Partnership by The Loons Till Death From the Loon Disc/Tapes album The Best of Mike Sortino and Eric Johnson Volume III:The Out-Takes: 1979-1987 (Words: Eric Paul Johnson) Eric Paul Johnson: Lead vocals Richard Boland: "Never" vocals Recorded and mixed at the Metrocenter Superstar Studios. Phoenix, Az. Produced by Eric Paul Johnson.
In 1991 M.C. Brennan visited Phoenix in the car she drove from San Francisco. Her car was having trouble, though. You could tell when it was about to die if the last number on her clock started to fade. One night she picked up Leon, and myself to go clubbing (1 of maybe 3 times in my life I’ve done that. My other choice, though, was stay home with my parents. And, yes, the only thing I drank was a very watered down Coke.) She was driving when she said, "The car’s running pretty good tonight." "Yeah," I said, looked at the clock, saw it was 9:37, and said, "The 7 never dims." I titled my 1991 album The 7 Never Dims. In 1989 I did an ep called Jeff Quinlin Loves You!. On The 7 Never Dims I did a song called "Jeff Quinlin Loves You!" So, on my next album I have to do a song called "The 7 Never Dims." I wanted it to sound big, overblown, and early ‘80s ELO synthi. Wanted the words to sound deep, and profound, yet mean absolutely nothing. After winning an award for my comic strip in May 1992 I went to a Denny’s with Eric Wincentsen and his girlfriend Karen. I told him my idea for the song, and he wrote the words on a napkin on the spot. I later replaced his chorus words with mine. Inspirations for the sound of this song can be traced to E.L.O., Melissa Etheridge, Jesus Jones, The Police, and Sinead O’Conner. I heard Melissa do, I think it was, "2001," on Letterman. It was the first time I heard hip-hop drums in a Rock song. I thought it was neat, so I swiped the idea. I recorded this in November 1993 in my Studio Recording Music Class. I was given two days to record it, but the teacher was sick, so I was jilted a day and only had a few hours to record it. He thought it was just gonna be a simple song. Before this he oversaw the recording of "The Fife In My Life," and "4 A.M. Insomnia." He didn’t know what he was in for with this song. Prologue: I wanted this to be an overwhelming wall of noise. The other students in the class went through the closets in the studio picking out things to play. While this was going on, the teacher programmed the drum machine. The "orchestra" had a great time recording the prologue of the song. The electric guitar is played by the guy I wanted to do the solo in "The Fife In My Life." The quiet part between the prologue and main song features disembodied sounds from my previous album The 7 Never Dims. The rest of the song is by me. Mostly. I never played with drums before, so I kept falling out of time with the drum machine. The speedy solution; I did the chords, the teacher sat in front of me and strummed the guitar. A pick was nowhere to be found, so he had to use a penny. Once that was done, we recorded the vocals. Then keyboard. Then acoustic guitar. He hated the untuneable 12-string I used in "Fife," so I was stuck using someone else’s acoustic guitar. It had nylon strings. I hate the sound of nylon strings. Over the hours students trickled out, and by 5:00 there was just one person left at the board. I could tell the teacher, even though he kept his patience, was getting annoyed by everything I kept wanting to add. A couple weeks later we mixed the song. I wasn’t real happy with the final mix. Sounded empty, but time was up, other students had studio time reserved. It came out on March 2, 1994. First song on The Pastor of Muppets album, and first single. This, and "The Fife In My Life" and "4 A.M. Insomnia" were rejected by Dr. Demento. In 2001 I did some reworking to try and make it a little more like what I had in my head. Flanged my voice, added all sorts of starship sounds (the Millenium Falcon, X-Wing fighter (from the movies and toys.) Samples from ‘80s E.L.O., the organ from Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, old sci-fi sound effects. The backwards masking I added says, "If you can hear this, you’re listening to it backwards." Someday I would like to totally redo this song from the baseplate up. First thing I would do is get rid of that stupid hip-hop beat. Forgive me. It was 1993. The 7 Never Dims Copyright © 1994 LoonMedia Partnership) by The Loons Till Death From the Loon Disc/Tapes album Pastor of Muppets Prologue performed by The Dinky Bossetti Orchestra: Adrian Brown: Conductor Dave Buck: Cymbals Rob Durkin: Wratchet, gong, kettle drums, cow bell Arron Feller: Electric guitar Dave LaBounty: Kettle drums Dave Temby: Big bass drum Eric Paul Johnson: Chimes, keyboard Eric Paul Johnson: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboard, lead vocals, backing vocals Dave Shmidt: Electric guitar, HR-16 Alesis drum machine Recorded and mixed by Dave Schmidt at the GCC Studios Produced by Eric Paul Johnson.
How the hell did you get a Vox blog, anyway? read more
on A Place For My Stuff