All the things you are
Early this year, I was fortunate enough to gift myself with a completely functional gramophone which my wife and I bought at an antiques and collectibles store in Alabang Town Center. My 14-year- old daughter couldn’t contain her excitement and astonishment when she saw this Jurassic sound gear and heard it playing music. It certainly made her day when Stanley Worth, accompanied by Eddy Duchin and his orchestra, crooned All The Things You Are as the 78-rpm resin disk spun on its platter.
The technology may be crude by today’s standards, but had it been invented only now, it would have won hands down cheers for energy conservation. No electricity is needed to run this thing. All it takes is a little sweat in cranking up its lever. Who cares if the sound is throaty and riddled with hiss? With analog renaissance in full swing these days, I might as well push my analog passion to the max.
The grammy and how it plays music give me a glimpse of how music lovers between the 1800s and early 1940s had their respective fix. It actually gives me goose bumps to hear music from this contraption, which has long been buried in oblivion and now merely serves as a trophy to antique collectors. It also paints a clear picture of how the technology of recorded music has grown by leaps and bounds… Or has it?
When I was a young boy, I would insist on tagging along with my electronics engineer-brother when he reported for work. His office afforded me a venue for listening to sounds (such as chirping birds and rushing waves) from headphones which in later years I would learn was binaurally recorded. The sound was so real for me that I would stay in his office for hours just listening to the sounds of nature.
Long before stereo, binaural recording was touted to be the best way of recording audio; accurately recording and conveying realistic tonal, spatial and directional information. Binaural literally means “having or relating to two ears.” The process used two microphones at a human head’s distance apart. Stereo recording, on the other hand, was made with two properly placed microphones. The latter’s process, in the mid ’50s and up until the late ’70s, set the standard for spatial and sonic accuracy.
With modern-day recording, we now have multi-trackers capable of handling 32 separate and independent channels of information. Mixing consoles with multi-inputs are used so that record engineers can mount a dozen microphones on a drum set and still have many inputs left for the perusal of the band. Convenience is what today’s recording offers. With it, musicians do not have to move around. The engineers only have to change the level on their individual microphone on the mixer. Pan-pot control can also be moved for proper placement of instruments — left to right of the stereo mix — and equalizers can add superficial glitter to the highs or extra punch on the lows. Musicians can also alter parts or passages of music or replace the original with a new one if they’re unhappy with the initial results.
Sound purists have long argued that this is not the way to enjoy music. With musicians – drummers, hornists and keyboard players — never really present together in a recording studio, and singers usually recording their parts while listening through headphones to pre-recorded material, there never really is a live performance to speak of.
Purists say that translations are naturally lost, and this process goes against sonic reality. Mixers, multi-microphones and sound processing equipment conspire to degrade music. The supposed stability made in the final mix down to two tracks never really existed, they argue. Excessive equalization, artificial reverberation, compression limiting, among others, help craft an artificial music so distinct from the natural.
This probably explains the reason for the surge in the demand for music recorded on vinyl during analog’s Golden Age. In a recent article published in Time magazine, the iPod generation has joined the fray: “From college dorm rooms to high school sleepovers, an all-but-extinct music medium has been showing up lately. And we don’t mean CDs. Vinyl records, especially the full-length LPs that helped define the golden era of rock in the 1960s and ’70s, are suddenly cool again. Some of the new fans are baby boomers nostalgic for their youth. But to the surprise and delight of music executives, increasing numbers of the iPod generation are also purchasing turntables (or dusting off Dad’s), buying long-playing vinyl records and giving them a spin.”
As I have written frequently in the past, the choice of music differs from one person to another. But the romantic in me would like to believe that your individual choice of music should define all the things you are.
* * *
For comments or questions, e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com or at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.
