Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Sound recordings – History'

Vast numbers of historical field recordings are currently being digitised and disseminated online; but what are these field recordings-and how do they resonate today? This thesis addresses these questions by listening to the digitisation of recordings made for a number of ethnographic projects that took place in Britain in the early 1950s. Each project shared a set of logics and practices I call national phonography. Recording technologies were invested with the ability to sound and salvage the nation, but this first involved deciding what the nation was, and what it was supposed to sound like. National phonography was an institutional and technological network; behind the encounter between recordist and recorded lies a complex and variegated mess of cultural politics, microphones, mediality, sonic aesthetics, energy policies, commercial interests, and music formats. The thesis is structured around a series of historical case studies. The first study traces the emergence of Britain's field recording moment, connecting it to the waning of empire, and focusing on sonic aspects of the 1951 Festival of Britain and the recording policies of national and international folk music organisations. The second study listens to the founding of a sound archive at the University of Edinburgh, also in 1951, asking how sound was used in constructing Scotland as an object of study, stockpiling the nation through the technologies and ideologies of preservation. The third study tracks how the BBC used fieldwork - particularly through its Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme (1952-57) - as part of an effort to secure the aural border. The fourth study tells the story of The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, produced by Alan Lomax while based in Britain and released in 1955. Here, recordings were presented in fragments as nations were written onto long-playing records, and the project is discussed as a museum of voice. The final chapter shifts perspective to the online circulation of these field recordings. It asks what an online sound archive is, hearing how recordings compress multiple agencies which continue to unfold on playback, and exploring the archival silences built into sonic productions of nations. Finally, online archives are considered as heritage sites, raising questions about whose nation is produced by national phonography. This thesis brings together perspectives from sound studies and ethnomusicology; and contributes to conversations on the history of ethnomusicology in Europe, the politics of technology, ontologies of sound archives, and theories of recorded sound and musical nationalisms.

This thesis is an ethnographic analysis of a collection of field recordings of music from sub-Saharan Africa: The Sound of Africa series made and published by Hugh Tracey between 1933 and 1973. I analyse the aims, methods, value and potential use of this collection, now held at the International Library of African Music (ILAM), in order to address a gap in the ethnomusicological literature and to begin to develop a critical framework for an evaluation of field recording and aural ethnography. An archival analysis of the collection enables me to trace the scope and intended uses of Tracey’s recordings. Identifying a primary intended audience that has not to date been engaged, I argue for the need to develop a new way to circulate recordings among a source community that has never before been reached through institutional archival practice. I use a small sample of Tracey’s archival Xhosa recordings and develop a method of sound elicitation designed to take the recordings back to urban Xhosa communities in the townships located near ILAM. By circulating archival recordings using local mechanisms in township communities, rather than institutional archival methods, I assess the potential relevance of historical recordings to an urban source community more than fifty years after the recordings were made. Having collected and analysed contemporary Xhosa responses, I consider the limitations and the potential for the recordings to connect with indigenous audiences and generate value. I argue that non-analytical responses to historical recordings may contribute to ethnographic understanding, to people’s own sense of Xhosa identity, and to archiving practice in future. Such responses may help increase our understanding of the relationships between music collectors in the field and the people recorded, whether fifty years ago, today or in future.

Orientadores: Edson do Prado Pfützenreuter, Anna Paula Silva Gouveia
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes
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Resumo: No fim do século XIX, o diálogo entre as artes visuais e a música abriu precedentes para que as artes aplicadas, ou comerciais, incentivassem o consumo do espetáculo musical. Paralelamente, com o desenvolvimento tecnológico da indústria fonográfica, a música passou a ser gravada e comercializada. A comercialização da música gravada, por sua vez, também foi beneficiada por um interesse de explorar-se uma conexão visual com o conteúdo da gravação. Em 1940, este interesse foi diretamente manifestado pelo designer gráfico norte-americano Alex Steinweiss, quando começou a projetar capas de álbuns de discos de 78rpm para a gravadora Columbia Records. Steinweiss não foi o primeiro artista comercial ou designer gráfico a projetar uma capa ilustrada para álbuns de discos de 78rpm mas, ao projetar capas, foi pioneiro na intenção de exercer uma correspondência semântica com o conteúdo musical dos discos. Esta tese tem como grande objetivo o resgate das principais condições históricas e culturais que ajudaram a caracterizar o trabalho de Steinweiss e que possibilitaram fosse ele incorporado com sucesso pela indústria fonográfica. Por meio do levantamento de tais condições e também do próprio método de projeto de Steinweiss, observou-se que seu sucesso proporcionou o estabelecimento de um paradigma, na medida em que as soluções propostas por ele foram, posteriormente, tomadas como modelo e substituíram as regras vigentes para o projeto gráfico das capas dos álbuns de discos
Abstract: By the end of the nineteenth century, the dialog between visual arts and music was a great influence on the applied arts, or commercial arts, in its own task of promoting the music spectacle. Meanwhile, with the technological development of the music industry, music started to be recorded and commercialized. The recorded music business, moved by its own interests, also explored a visual connection with the recorded musical content of their product. In 1940, the early work of the American graphic designer Alex Steinweiss was a consequence of this interest, as he started to design album covers for 78rpm records while working at Columbia Records. Steinweiss was not the first commercial artist or graphic designer to design illustrated album covers for 78rpm records, but he was the first one who expected to achieve semantic correspondence with the musical content of the record. The main goal of this thesis is to retrieve key historical and cultural conditions that influenced Steinweiss' work and allowed him to succeed as a graphic designer inside the recorded music business. By doing so, and by setting up aspects of Steinweiss' design methods, we have come to the conclusion that his success characterized a paradigm. The solutions he offered were taken as models and replaced the rules that determined how an album cover should be designed
Doutorado
Artes Visuais
Doutor em Artes

During the 1950s the experience of recording was transformed by a series of technical innovations including tape recording, editing, the LP record, and stereo sound. Within a decade recording had evolved into an art form in which multiple takes and editing were essential components in the creation of an illusory ideal performance. The British recording industry was at the forefront of development, and the rapid growth in recording activity throughout the 1950s as companies built catalogues of LP records, at first in mono but later in stereo, had a profound impact on the music profession in Britain. Despite this, there are few documented accounts of working practices, or of the experiences of those involved in recording at this time, and the subject has received sparse coverage in academic publications. This thesis studies the development of the recording of classical music in Britain in the long 1950s, the core period under discussion being 1948 to 1964. It begins by considering the current literature on recording, the cultural history of the period in relation to classical music, and the development of recording in the 1950s. Oral history informs the central part of the thesis, based on the analysis of 89 interviews with musicians, producers, engineers and others involved in recording during the 1950s and 1960s. The thesis concludes with five case studies, four of significant recordings - Tristan und Isolde (1952), Peter Grimes (1958), Elektra (1966-67), and Scheherazade (1964) - and one of a television programme, The Anatomy of a Record (1975), examining aspects of the recording process. The thesis reveals the ways in which musicians, producers, and engineers responded to the challenges and opportunities created by advances in technology, changing attitudes towards the aesthetics of performance on record, and the evolving nature of practices and relationships in the studio. It also highlights the wider impact of recording on musical practice and its central role in helping to raise standards of musical performance, develop audiences for classical music, and expand the repertoire in concert and on record.

This thesis attempts to chart the development of a Jamaican musical form known as dub. This development is considered primarily in terms of the island's encounter with a series of new playback, amplification, recording, and sound treatment technologies. Section I focuses on the formation of the Jamaican sound system (a network of powerful mobile discos) and its pivotal role in the birth of a fertile domestic record industry. Section II extends the investigation to the Jamaican recording studio and record industry. What distinguishes this work from others on Jamaican dub is its emphasis on technology, and theories of technology, within a geo-political framework. In Section I, this emphasis is most notably informed by the work of Harold Innis, Karl Marx and Lewis Mumford, with Marshall McLuhan and Walter Benjamin becoming more prominent in Section II. Key technologies in this analysis include mechanization (mechanical reproducibility), the Williamson amplification circuit, the House of Joy speaker, the dub plate (acetate phonograph) and vinyl record, twin-turntables and the microphone, the magnetic tape recorder, and perhaps most importantly, the multi-track recorder and interface (the multi-track mixing-board).

This dissertation is an analysis of historical change within those cultural industries involved in the production and dissemination of popular music. Through an analysis of the relationship between the recording and radio industries within the United States, during the period 1976-1985, the manner in which crises within these industries arise and are resolved is traced. The emergence of such musical forms as "disco" and "New Wave", and the manner in which these forms have been integrated within the functioning of the music-related industries, are central concerns of the dissertation. At the same time, more general theoretical hypotheses concerning the role played by taste in the creation of audiences for different categories of popular music are elaborated and employed within the study of specific musical genres.

Après l’invention de l’impression typographique à la Renaissance s’est progressivement imposé un régime de connaissance dans lequel les signes n’ont plus de rapport essentiel avec un monde reconstitué spatialement au moyen des mots sur la page. L’âge classique en général et le XVIIIe siècle en particulier ont souvent été caractérisés par le primat de la vue comme moyen de connaissance, aux dépens des autres sens. C’est du moins une des thèses de Michel Foucault dans Les Mots et les choses.Notre thèse tente de nuancer cette perspective en montrant comment, au sein de la culture écrite dominante, persistent de vestiges de la culture orale traditionnelle ; non pas dans les manifestations plus ou moins archaïques de la culture populaire (farces, fêtes, foires, contes bleus), mais dans ce qui pourrait sembler une manifestation de la modernité même des Lumières : les machines. Le XVIIIe siècle a été fertile en dispositifs visant à produire des sons ou des images, et à les enregistrer. Parmi ceux-ci, nous avons particulièrement retenu les inventions, réelles ou imaginaires, de Tiphaigne de La Roche (surveillance auditive et fixation des images), de Diderot (composition automatique et conservation des pièces musicales), de l’abbé Mical (reproduction de la voix humaine) et du père Castel (enregistrement visuel des sons). En étudiant tant le détail de ces dispositifs que le contexte idéologique qui les a vu naître, nous essayons de montrer comment les Lumières ont été ouvertes à des formes variées d’appréhension du monde. Aujourd’hui, le développement de nouveaux moyens de communication nous familiarise à nouveau avec des modes de représentation plus analogiques que l’écriture. Les tensions propres au régime médiatique du XVIIIe siècle nous donnent des indices pour réfléchir aux problèmes actuels de la connaissance
After the invention of the printing press in the Renaissance, knowledge became progressively based on the use of signs with no essential relation with things, spatially reconstructed with words on the page. The classical age in general and the eighteenth century in particular have often been characterized by the primacy of sight as a means of knowledge, at the expense of other senses. Such is at least one of Michel Foucault’s arguments in the Order of Things.Our thesis strives to qualify this perspective and show how, within the domination of the written culture, remnants of the traditional oral culture survived. Not only in the archaic forms of popular entertainment such as fairs, farces and fairy tales, but in what might be considered as the epitome of modernity: machines. The eighteenth century was a hot bed of contraptions aiming to produce sounds and images and to record them. Among these, our attention has focused on the real or imaginary inventions of Tiphaigne de La Roche (audio monitoring and fixation of images) Diderot (automatic production and conservation of musical pieces), Abbé Mical (reproduction of the human voice) and Father Castel (visual transposition of sounds). The careful examination of such machines as well as the ideological context of their emergence, enables us to show how the Enlightenment was open to forms of comprehension of the world much more varied than is often stated.Today the development of new media has made us familiar again with modes of representation which are more analogical than words. The tensions proper to the media system of the eighteenth century provide us with instruments to think about our relation to the world around us

Defence date: 16 December 2002
Examining board: Prof. John Brewer, supervisor ; Prof. Laurence Fontaine, co-supervisor ; Prof. Jean-Louis Fabiani, external supervisor ; Prof. Dominique Poulot ; Prof. William Weber
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
Ce thèse reconstitue les différentes étapes de la transformation d'une invention technique en médium musical. De l'étonnante " machine parlante " au système audio en passant par 1'" instrument de musique ", il reconstitue la genèse d'un objet et, avec lui, d'un système culturel tellement omniprésents aujourd'hui qu'ils en sont devenus transparents. Loin du schéma linéaire habituel des travaux sur l'histoire du disque, il suit pas à pas une trajectoire au caractère incertain, hybride et collectif : des espaces dans lesquels s'inscrit le disque, des réseaux qui se forment autour de lui, des qualités qui lui sont prioritairement attribuées, des compétences requises pour son appropriation, des moments et situations de son usage, des paradigmes préexistants sur lesquels celui-ci s'invente, aux publics visés ou conquis en passant par l'" objet " de l'enregistrement, ce thèse analyse une innovation culturelle associant ingénieurs, agents commerciaux, musiciens, critiques et amateurs, mais aussi objets, espaces, répertoires, compétences, médiations discursives et arts de faire. Ce faisant, il nous fait prendre la mesure des profondes mutations culturelles associées à ce processus, dont la moindre n'est pas l'invention d'un paradigme nouveau de la culture musicale, caractérisé par la triade consommation, domestication, personnalisation, et qui régit aujourd'hui encore, à travers de nouveaux médias, les pratiques musicales. Au-delà, l'analyse de cette innovation culturelle offre des ressources pour appréhender le développement des médias les plus contemporains, eux aussi situés à la rencontre des domaines technique, commercial, esthétique et culturel.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, 1998.
Online version produced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. Title from title screen (viewed Nov. 8, 2001). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-183). Online version of the print edition.

At the Vanguard of Vinyl investigates the jazz industry's adoption of the long-playing record (LP), 1948-1960. The technological advancements of the LP, along with the incipient use of magnetic tape recording, made it feasible to commercially issue recordings running beyond the three-minute restrictions of the 78-rpm record. LPs began to feature extended improvisations, musical mistakes, musicians' voices, and other moments of informal music making, revolutionizing the standard recording and production methods of the previous recording era. As the visual and sonic modes of representation shifted, so too did jazz's relationship to white mainstream culture, Western European musical aesthetics, US political structures, and streams of Afro-modernism. Jazz, as an African American social and musical practice, became a form of resistance against the violent structures of institutional racism within the United States in the 1950s.

Using the records of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Cannonball Adderley, this study outlines the diverse approaches to record making that characterized the transitional years as the LP became the standard recording format. Through archival research, close listening, and detailed discographical analyses of the era's most influential record labels, I show how jazz practices and musical "mistakes" caught on record provided opportunities for recording experimentation. I examine choices made during the record production process, such as tape edits, microphone placement, overdubbing, and other sound processing effects, connecting such choices to the visual and tactile attributes of these discs. Drawing on scholarship that considers how sound reproduction technologies mediate constructions of race and ethnicity, I argue that the history of jazz in the 1950s is one of social engagement by means of and through technology. At the Vanguard of Vinyl is a cultural history of the jazz LP that underscores the ways in which record making is a vital process to music and its circulation.

Dissertation

by Wong Siu Ling, Gabriella.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-69).
Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1
Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- THE RECORD INDUSTRY --- p.6
Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.15
Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES --- p.23
Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- METHODOLOGY --- p.37
Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- FINDINGS --- p.44
Chapter CHAPTER SEVEN --- DISCUSSION --- p.52
BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.64
Chapter APPENDIX 1 --- List of Big Corporations and Independents --- p.70
Chapter APPENDIX 2 --- Production cost of a Standard L.P. record --- p.74
Chapter APPENDIX 3 --- Categories of song types --- p.75
Chapter APPENDIX 4 --- Comparison of songs from Big Corporations and the Indies by year --- p.78
Chapter APPENDIX 5 --- Comparison of songs from Big Corporations and the Indies from 1980- 1985 (51) 1986 -1991 (52) --- p.91

In 1887, Emile Berliner patented the gramophone and its flat lateral-cut records, a format that was the basis of the birth of the music recording industry. The aim of this study is to contribute to the history of sound recording and to the preservation of shellac discs through a better knowledge of the material and immaterial aspects of industrial record manufacture during the acoustic period, ca. 1898-1925, through a multidisciplinary approach, combining research methods from ethnomusicology, history of technology and conservation sciences. The first part of this study is dedicated to the history of the recording companies and record labels active in Europe during the acoustic era, considering the different perspectives of their activity in these early decades: from artist and repertoire selection to the technical challenges of the early recording sessions, and to the marketing and distribution strategies that led to the implementation of this emerging industry across the globe, with Portugal serving as a case study of how the business relations could lead to the introduction of local labels in a country with no manufacturing facilities, and how major companies, like the Gramophone Co., operated in these smaller markets. The study then goes into the more technical aspects of record manufacture, with a focus on the procedures inside the factory. Shellac disc compound recipes were compiled, retrieving information from patents and historical documentation, to assess the most common ingredients used over time by each company as fillers, binders, and additives. This then led to the second part of this study, where a set of shellac discs from Portuguese collections was analysed with a non-destructive method, µ-EDXRF, with the aim of identifying the materials used as fillers and ascertain whether it would be possible to attribute a specific pattern or a tendency to the production of each European factory over time. This study may enable the material characterization of the production of each factory over time, allowing in the future a better knowledge of the manufacturing location of local labels whose history is little known up to now, being also important for further studies on the preservation of these sound carriers – which are important information providers themselves, and need to be preserved together with the audio signal they carry.
Em 1887, Emile Berliner patenteou o gramofone e os seus discos planos de gravação lateral, um formato que esteve na génese da indústria fonográfica. O objetivo deste estudo é contribuir para a história da gravação sonora e para a preservação dos discos de goma laca por meio de um melhor conhecimento dos aspectos materiais e imateriais envolvidos no fabrico industrial de discos durante o período acústico, ca. 1898-1925, através de uma abordagem multidisciplinar, combinando métodos de pesquisa da etnomusicologia, história da tecnologia e ciências da conservação. A primeira parte deste estudo é dedicada à história das empresas discográficas e etiquetas activas na Europa durante a era acústica, considerando as diferentes perspectivas da sua atividade nessas primeiras décadas: desde a seleção de artistas e repertório aos desafios técnicos das sessões de gravação, passando pelas estratégias de marketing e distribuição que levaram à implementação desta indústria emergente por todo o mundo, com Portugal servindo como um estudo de caso de como as relações comerciais levaram à introdução de etiquetas locais num país sem meios próprios de produção, e como grandes empresas, como a Gramophone Co., operavam nesses mercados mais periféricos. Em seguida, o estudo aborda os aspectos mais técnicos do fabrico de discos, com foco nos procedimentos internos da fábrica. Foram compiladas receitas de compostos para fabricardiscos de goma laca a partir da consulta de patentes e de documentação histórica, de modo a listar os ingredientes mais comuns usados por cada empresa ao longo do tempo com a função de carga, ligante e aditivo. Este passo conduziu então à segunda parte deste estudo, onde foi analisado um conjunto de discos de gomalaca de colecções portuguesas por um método não destrutivo, µ-EDXRF, com o objectivo de identificar quais os materiais utilizados como carga, e averiguar a possibilidade de atribuir um determinado padrão ou tendência à produção de cada fábrica europeia ao longo do tempo. Com o desenvolvimento deste estudo poderá ser possível atribuir o fabrico de etiquetas locais, cuja história empresarial ainda seja pouco conhecida, a um determinado centro de produção. O conhecimento dos materiais presentes nos discos será também fundamental para futuros estudos sobre a preservação destes suportes de áudio, que são eles próprios importantes fontes de informação, sendo importante a sua preservação juntamente com o sinal de áudio que armazenam.

Wong King-chung.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-78).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Abstract (Chinese) --- p.ii
Acknowledgement --- p.iii
Table of Contents --- p.v
List of Figures and Tables --- p.vii
Chapter Chapter 1´ؤ --- Introduction
A New Age of Sound --- p.1
Academic Background and Related Studies --- p.2
Chinese Music and the Media --- p.4
The Present Study and Methodology --- p.5
Chapter Chapter 2´ؤ --- SoundScape of China: The Influence of Ethnomusicology in China in the 1980´ةs
Introduction --- p.8
From Comparative to Cultural: Chinese Music Scholarship in the Twentieth Century Mainland China --- p.10
Revealing a Soundscape of Chinese Music´ؤDevelopment of Musical Genre Study --- p.13
Concluding Remarks --- p.18
Chapter Chapter 3´ؤ --- Mapping a Soundscape: Analyzing the HUGO CD Catalogue(s)
Introduction --- p.20
"Classification, Category and Catalogue" --- p.20
Recording Industry in Hong Kong --- p.22
Aik Yeh-goh and HUGO Production (HK) Ltd --- p.28
HUGO'S Label Division --- p.29
Statistical Analysis of HUGO CD Catalogues --- p.31
An Aural Map´ؤSoundscape of China --- p.38
Concluding Remarks --- p.42
Chapter Chapter 4´ؤ --- Whose Music? The Role of the HUGO CD Catalogue in Chinese Cultural Memory
Introduction --- p.44
Communication Theory in Studying Recording Industry --- p.46
Lasswell's 5-W Formula as a System --- p.46
Lewin's Gatekeeping Theory --- p.50
The Role of HUGO CD: Imagination of Chinese Music outside Mainland China --- p.52
Concluding Remarks --- p.54
Appendix A: Name List of Record Companies in Hong Kong before the 1990's --- p.56
Appendix B: The Catalogue of the HUGO CDs --- p.58
Selected Bibliography --- p.66

This thesis is an historiographical and sociological study of Indian South African broadcasting and the music industry between 1924 and 1983. A multilevel approach which integrates empirical and cultural materialist critical theoretical methodologies reveals the relationships between the media, industry, economy, politics, and culture. Until the sixties, Indian South Africans were denied the civic rights that were taken for granted by white South Africans. Broadcasting, for them, was to be a concession. On being declared South Africans, broadcast programmes were expanded and designed to pacify and Indianise Indian South Africans, preparing them for their role as a middle-class racially defined group, a homelands group without a homeland. South Africanised popular music, and Indian South African Western semi-classical, popular music, or jazz performance was rejected by the SABC. Ambiguous nationalisms shaped Indian South African aesthetics. Global monopoly controlled the music industry. Similarly, disruptions in the global market enabled local musicians and small business groups to challenge the majors. In the late forties and fifties, this resulted in a number of locally manufactured records featuring local and visiting musicians, and special distribution rights under royalty to an independent South Asian company. The local South African records were largely characterised by their syncretic nature, and generated a South African modernism which had the capacity both to draw and repel audiences and officials alike. A glossary of non-English terms and a discography of Indian South African music have been included.
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.