In the late nineteenth century, many techniques were explored in the effort to reproduce and duplicate sound. Not many remember the early experiments involving wax cylinders, zinc discs, vertical 'hill-and-dale' grooves, shellacs or hard-rubber records. As remote and esoteric these systems might seem today, they were at the forefront of the scientific debate on sound hundred years ago.
We must forget all that we know of sound in order to evoke the era of frenzied development that was sparked by the invention of the phonograph. When 'Mary had a little lamb' was played back in Edison's laboratories, in 1877, it was clear to everyone that a historic breakthrough had been achieved, but no one knew what it actually meant. Edison himself thought he had invented a 'talking machine'. During the next years, while he and his entourage poured all their effort into producing a commercially viable dictating device, many competing companies forged ahead with their vision of the music-recording potential of Edison's patent.
In the beginning, sound reproduction systems could be used only for recording speech. Then the concept broadened to opera. Until the invention of electrical amplification, there was hardly any other way to record anything else. Live instrument recordings just didn't sound right after the primitive, acoustic recording operation: they sounded feeble and withdrawn. Only the human voice was versatile enough to use the acoustic horn. Hence, opera singers, with their bursting and vibrating vocal energy, became the first successful recording artists.
Although we generally associate the emergence of the star system with cinema, records preceded film, as well as radio and telephony. In 1903, millions of copies of opera recordings were being sold worldwide, propelling the singers to previously unheard-of heights of stardom. It was the first time in history that artists could seamlessly cross geographic boundaries. Opera spawned the birth of an early form of 'virtuality' that would soon be carried further with film.
More than 100 million records are produced and people spend more money on recorded music than on any other mode of entertainment. Traditional limitations binding to the recording process are gone. Equipped with electrical amplification, producers fully exploit the new ability to incorporate instrumentation in recordings. Exposed to unprecedented acoustic wealth, people are ecstatic. They want to dance.
The era of the Big Bands has begun.
And so people dance to the tunes of the big orchestras and their leaders: Guy Lombardo, Paul Whiteman, Abe Lyman, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington... creators of dance music in its purest form: jazz, dixie, foxtrot, swing. Never had a musical movement struck so strong as the Big Bands. But the success of the orchestras was only partly due to the innovations in the record industry. A much bigger broadcasting system had reached its momentum, radio.
Radio was spreading at an amazing rate, and while promoting music and being an incentive to artists, it was killing the record industry at the same time. Between a radio receiver and the phonograph, both relatively expensive at the time, the customer's choice was obvious. With a radio receiver, people could purchase a genuine 'music making' machine, for it included both the playing device and the content itself. This seemingly undefeatable rival, plus the worldwide recession crisis, almost brought the record industry down.
At that time, "electric" was the buzz word, much as "digital" or "virtual" is today. Electricity brought amplification, and numerous applied techniques that would form the foundation of the studio, a new-sprung magic realm with an immeasurable impact on the artifices of music creation. With this in mind, Brian Eno[1] talks about the emergence of eroticism-laden sound following the advent of the microphone, one of the new techniques made possible through electricity.
"I think what happened in pop music, because of electronics and recording and other cultural factors as well, was that suddenly it became possible to work with all sorts of sounds, to put together things that could never have been put together before. For instance, just the microphone enabling a singer to sing very quietly against a full orchestra. This, in itself, was an incredible revolution in eroticism. Frank Sinatra singing in an offhand, almost introspective way against a big band was a fabulous breakthrough which could never have happened in any classical music because it's physically impossible. He would have been drowned."
Records were 78 round per minute 'shellacs', named after a natural resin found in the Far East. It is a substance secreted by a small bug coating itself for protection. Since it was the British Empire that controlled the areas where this bug was found, all record production depended on British export. But the world would soon be freed from this monopoly with synthetic materials, one of which was vinyl, replacing shellac.
Vinyl was better than shellac because it suited the economical and technical requirements of the record industry. It was marketed as 'unbreakable' compared to shellac, just as CD would be in regard of vinyl. But vinyl had other advantages beyond being strong and cheap: it allowed finer and more precise grooves, microgrooves, that would also affect the speed at which records could be played.
It was Columbia that officially introduced the LP, a 33/3 round per minute long playing record, in 1948. Suddenly, the available recording space was extended, giving birth to the very notion of the album. Not only did albums significantly broaden the artist's range of expression by offering him the ability to work on moods and relations between tracks, they changed the definition of music as a discipline.
Music ceased to be perceived as an isolated expression. It started to actively participate in a maturing cultural framework, brought about by years of technical achievements, epochal social changes and unexpected multidisciplinary encounters. In this postwar world, pop music would eventually overrun its commercial brims, morphing into elusive experiments and initiating fortunate chain reactions.
At the time when sound processing is increasingly being carried through digital means, records have become obsolete and undesirable. The archaic manufacturing process that didn't change since the early days, the high transportation costs associated with vinyl parcelling, the inherent vulnerability of plastic grooves, these among other are the factors that render vinyl inferior and cumbersome compared to modern digital storage techniques.
For this reason, vinyl pressing plants are becoming scarce and records have vanished from the traditional music retail channels. It appears, however, that to a part of the audience, vinyl is too dear to be unceremoniously abandoned in favor of the next sound reproducing technique in line. The loyalty to vinyl, far from emanating from resigned nostalgia, is neither an expression of stodgy conservatism.
For one, it's the most evolutive musical genres that rely on vinyl, in contrast to mainstream or pop music. Electronic music, from dancefloor to experimental, is systematically pressed on plastic. Not because it would be cheaper than using CD technology, it is not (not even in the case of limited editions), but simply because vinyl has turned into a cause worth fighting for, like, say, the preservation of an endangered species.
To those genres where vinyl remains mandatory, CD is associated with mass production and with the pragmatic approach typical of large corporations. In this sense, vinyl is the symbol of a romantic alternative. It is the militant response of an untamed public that has gone 'underground'. A consumers' guerilla war fought against omnipotent majors - those that initiate new technologies while holding the rights to the music of the past.
The reemergence of vinyl is an unusual phenomenon in the history of technology in the sense that it is not driven by techno-economical factors. The adherence to vinyl as platform of choice in the underground is mainly ideological although not completely, since vinyl has some objective advantages over CD.
First, records and decks are the most appropriate tools for the DJ. The proportionate format, the 'physical' visualization of track progression, and the ability to manually intervene on pitch or playing direction (e.g scratching) are all key-factors in the DJ's fierce devotion to vinyl.
The second benefit of records lies in their distinctive sound. Vinyl buyers will often talk about the more 'open' and 'breathing' sound of records versus CD's. Truly, the two formats are based on radically different concepts. With CD, the source of music is being sampled at a predefined frequency and is then converted into digital data. With records, there is no sampling and no digital conversion, producing in theory a 'purer' sound.
It is this 'purity' that vinyl aficionados seek to emphasize. Engineers counterargue that, in CD technology, the sampling rate and the bit width are largely satisfactory to the human ear. They reckon that the discrepancy in purity results from conversions between digital and analog, where filtering and error-correction occurs. During these steps, sound gets irremediably altered, necessitating the use of high-end mastering systems that are believed to yield maximum fidelity.
But some remain in doubt. In a manifesto calling for the 'preservation of the analog infrastructure', Irdial, a small British techno label, expresses its mistrust of engineers, whose opinions are suspected of reflecting the influence of their employers' interests. A century long apprenticeship in analog recording leaves no reason to delegate the sacred task of sound capturing to zealous newcomers:
'Research and development into further improving the near perfect world of analog audio reproduction has virtually stopped, due to the destructive influence of digital. It is not only the patents and designs that must be carried into the future, but also the personal expert knowledge of engineers, gained over many years, which must survive; knowledge which can never be replaced once lost - the knowledge of what quality to expect from the best possible analog reproduction system.'
Surely, it is a paradox that the persistence of vinyl fabrication is due to avant-gardists and techno kids, who make or buy pure machine music. How ironic that those who are at the forefront of the offending technology are the ones that strive for the rescue of records. How complex the semantics of audio reproduction where the CD, failing to extend the home studio along with hard disks, back-up tapes and DAT's, could be outlived by records.
Still, vinyl has prolonged its life-span as a consumer good far beyond reason. Technologically, vinyl has expired. If it seduces and carries on as it does, it is because it has reached a semi-fetishistic status among a few. Vinyl's ideological cache plus its few true benefits are assuring for now its position in the weird vastness of consumerism. But for how long?
When pressing vinyl will become financially unrealistic, when new mixing devices will match the robustness and manipulability of a pair of decks and a mixing table, when improved and generally available digital carriers will satisfy the most demanding sound purists, vinyl will be relegated to the altar of sacrificed objects evoking nothing but extinct collective memories.
For the moment though, vinyl is living intense and providential days, for its enduring presence is essentially attributable to the obsession of those who love and care for it the most.
