Imperfect Sound Forever

Resonance ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-167
Author(s):  
Christopher DeLaurenti
Keyword(s):  
Remote Control ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Audio Tape ◽  
Recording Equipment ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
History Of

What is phonography? In this essay, Christopher DeLaurenti, a phonographer with three decades of experience, maps an axiomatic 13-lesson pedagogy through an abbreviated history of field recording, from Jesse Walter Fewkes in 1890 to Tony Schwartz in the early 1960s. This paper surveys various meanings and uses of the term phonography from a text published in 1701 to the formation in 2000 of the phonography listserv, an online community of makers of field recordings. The author, himself an early member of the phonography listserv, discusses three traits to define phonography as a community in the early 2000s: inexpensive recording equipment; a community of knowledge; and the “easy fidelity” made possible by portable and lightweight Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and MiniDisc (MD) recorders. The author contrasts the traits of phonography with elements of soundscape composition as articulated by Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Andra McCartney. The paper concludes by proposing possible elements of post-phonography, including remote control recording, the possibility of voice print identification, and the generation of unimagined data.

scholarly journals London Street Noises: A Ground-Breaking Field Recording Campaign from 1928

Acoustics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-136
Author(s):  
John L. Drever ◽  
Aysegul Yildirim ◽  
Mattia Cobianchi
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sound ◽  
Daily Mail ◽  
Recording Technology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regulatory Bodies ◽  
The Uk

In a leading article by Sir Percival Philips in the UK popular newspaper, the Daily Mail, July 16, 1928, came the following headlines: “Millions Lost by Noise – Cities’ Worst Plague – Menace to Nerves and Health – What is Being Done to Stop it”. The article was supported by research from Prof Henry J. Spooner, who had been researching and campaigning on the ill-effects of noise and its economic impact. The article sparked subsequent discussion and follow-up articles in the Daily Mail and its international partners. In an era of rapid technological change, that was on the cusp of implementing sound pressure measurements, the Daily Mail, in collaboration with the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd, experimented with sound recording technology and commentary in the field to help communicate perceived loudness and identify the sources of “unnecessary noise”. This resulted in the making of series of environmental sound recordings from five locations across central London during September 1928, the findings of which were documented and discussed in the Daily Mail at the time, and two recordings commercially released by Columbia on shellac gramophone disc. This was probably the first concerted anti-noise campaign of this type and scale, requiring huge technological efforts. The regulatory bodies and politicians of the time reviewed and improved the policies around urban noise shortly after the presentation of the recordings, which were also broadcast from the BBC both nationally and internationally, and many members of the public congratulated and thanked the Daily Mail for such an initiative. Despite its unpreceded scale and impact, and the recent scholarly attention on the history of anti-noise campaigning, this paper charts and contextualises the Daily Mail’s London Street Noise campaign for the first time. As well as historical research, this data has also been used to start a longitudinal comparative study still underway, returning to make field recordings on the site on the 80th and 90th anniversaries and during the COVID-19 lockdown, and shared on the website londonstreetnoises.co.uk.

scholarly journals STILL RECORDING AFRICAN MUSIC IN THE FIELD

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-158
Author(s):  
Gerhard Roux
Keyword(s):  
Data Gathering ◽  
Research Process ◽  
African Music ◽  
Recording Equipment ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
Multiple Field ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Field Sound ◽  
Made In

Field sound recordings are an indispensable source of data for ethnomusicologists. However, to my knowledge there are no standards or guidelines of how this data should be captured and managed. With the progress made in machine learning, it has become vital to record data in a way that also supports the retrieval of information about the music. This article describes a model developed for field recordings that aims to aid an objective data gathering process. This model, developed through an action research process that spanned multiple field recording sessions from 2009–2015, include recording equipment, production processes, the gathering of metadata as well as intellectual property rights. The core principles identified in this research are that field recording systems should be designed to provide accurate feedback as a means of quality control and should capture and manage metadata without relying on secondary tools. The major findings are presented in the form of a checklist that can serve as a point of departure for ethnomusicologists making field recordings.

scholarly journals ‘The Age of the Golden Ear’:The Columbia World Libraryand Sounding out Post-war Field Recording

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOM WESTERN
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Recording Technology ◽  
International Networks ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
Listening Environments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

AbstractThis article responds to Alan Lomax's pronouncement that the mid-twentieth century constituted ‘the age of the golden ear’, when ‘a passionate aural curiosity overshadowed the ability to create music’. It examines a project born out of Lomax's own aural curiosity and his foregrounding of recording technology – theColumbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music(1955) – using it to sound out the history of mid-century ethnographic field recording. By retracing the production of theWorld Library, this article explores the various agencies compressed into the audible exteriors of field recordings, as they were produced by and for specific technologies and formats, circulated through international networks, and as they became part of the aural public sphere of post-war Europe. It concludes by considering some of the implications of this sonic labour as field recordings find their way into new, digital, listening environments.

Ethics of Conducting Virtual Ethnography on Visual Platforms

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Kayla Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Gender Segregation ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Virtual Ethnography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Standard Set ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Visually Based ◽  
Diverse Groups

For scholars, the internet provides a space to study diverse groups of people across the world and can be a useful way to bypass physical gender segregation and travel constraints. Despite the potential for new insights into people’s everyday life and increased attention from scholars, there is no standard set of ethics for conducting virtual ethnography on visually based platforms, like YouTube and Instagram. While publicly accessible social media posts are often understood to be a part of the public domain and thus do not require a researcher to obtain a user’s consent before publishing data, caution must be taken when studying members of a vulnerable community, especially those who have a history of surveillance, like African-American Muslims. Using a womanist approach, the author provides recommendations for studying vulnerable religious groups online, based on a case study of a YouTube channel, Muslimah2Muslimah, operated by two African-American Muslim women. The article provides an important contribution to the field of media studies because the author discusses a “dead” online community, where users no longer comment on the videos and do not maintain their own profiles, making obtaining consent difficult and the potential risks of revealing information to an unknown community hard to gauge.

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