Development of Sound

Recording
Convergence
Radio = Wireless Telegraphy
Television = Picture Radio
Sound Recording Machines = Talking Machines, Phonographs

Convergence can not be escaped!

First Sound Recorders
Leon Scott, a Frenchman, does the
first sound recordings in the 1850s
Hogs hair as a needle
Stretched a thin membrane over a
funnel
Membrane attached to hog hair
You speak into the funnel, it shakes
the needle
The needle scratches a spinning
piece of paper covered in soot
 First Sound Recorders
Thomas Edison is first to
play back sound
Records voice by using a
needle to press into tinfoil
wrapped around a cylinder
(size of toilet paper roll)
To playback, Edison
repositioned the needle to
trace the grooves
This was the phonograph =
Greek sound + writing
 Edison Makes Bank
First comes novelty, then comes
entrepreneurial stage
Edison patents phonograph as an
answering machine
Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter
create graphophone, which used wax
cylinders
No one wanted a voice recorder for
personal use, but the did want
Make the Music Last
German Emile Berliner makes a
better playback in 1887
Coats a zinc disc with beeswax
These discs spin on a turn table
This is called a gramophone

Berliner also makes a way to mass

produce his round records
Mass Production!
German Emile Berliner makes a
better playback in 1887
Coats a zinc disc with beeswax
These discs spin on a turn table
This is called a gramophone

Berliner also makes a way to mass

produce his round records
Mass Production!
Edisons toilet paper rolls required
that a person sing the song every time
to make a new recording

Berliners discs could be copied from a

master disc

Berliners discs could also have a label.

Why would this be important?
Getting Records at home
The Victor Talking Machine
Company put the guts of the
phonograph into a cabinet

Called it furniture

More houses got electricity to plug

in; much less hand cranking!
Give Em a Shellacing!
Sound quality on the zinc-and-
beeswax disc was poor

People dont want to buy stuff that

sounds bad

It was replaced with a disc made of

shellac

Shellac is fragile, still doesnt sound

great
Side Note: What is Shellac?
A resin secreted by the female lac bug
onto trees in India and Thailand

Dissolve it in ethanol to make it a

liquid

Shellac is a tough natural primer and

sealant

Can keep moisture out of electrical

appliances
Goodbye Shellac
Take a guess why people didnt buy
records in the 1930s?

By the 1940s, shellac was needed

for the war effort

Shellac replaced with vinyl

Vinyl is more durable and less noisy

You want a revolution?
1948: CBS Records introduces the
33 1/3 RMP (revolutions per
minute) long play record
About 20 minutes of sound per side

The old shellac records were 78

RPM, could do about 4 minutes per
side

RCAs 45 RPM was used in

jukeboxes, mostly for single songs
Record Types
 Audio Tape
You can magnetize tape and then play
back that sound

Early tape in 1929 broke easily,

expensive (first made of steel, and
then paper), was bulky, and took a ton
of tape to record, and sounded bad

Germans in WWII figured out how to

make tape from plastic

Americans brought that Nazi

technology back to the USA
 Tape allows for Music Editing
Most music was recorded on tape,
but pressed and sold on vinyl
By 1960, tape was miniaturized and
put inside small plastic cassettes
Cassettes allowed for the first truly
play-on-the-go recorded music
People at home also started
recording music off the radio
Cassette sales doubled in the 70s
while vinyl sales dropped
 Mono vs Stereo
Vinyl record sales improved because
of sound quality

1931 Alan Blumlein crated stereo

sound, allowing for two separate
tracks of sound

First used commercially in 1958

Using audio tape, you can record

multiple tracks and mix them down to
two channels
 The Biggest Sound Quality
Improvement
Analog recording:
the old way to record,
capture the fluctuations of sound waves and
store that information record grooves
Or record on tapes stream of magnetic particles

Digital Recording
Translate sound waves into binary on-off signals
Microprocessor translates these codes back into
sound
By late 70s, Sony and Phillips work together to
make the CD
 What happened to Vinyl?

CD sales doubled LP sales by 1987

In the 2000s, only DJs and record
enthusiasts still used vinyl
Companies tired to replace the CD with
a sort of Super CD (think DVD vs Blu Ray)
MP3s would be king
As for vinyl
Return of the vinyl Jedi
Day Two
 Early Record Sales Boom and Bust

By 1915, phonograph had become cool

1915: 30 million records sold
Record sales tripled each year until 1924
1924: Record sales cut in half

What do you think happened?

Radio arrived as a competing mass
medium, provided free entertainment
Legal
Battles!
Radio stations start playing
recorded music without
paying the music recording
industry
A union is formed in 1914
to fight for the money the
music makers deserved
By 1925 the ASCAP
establishes music fees for
radios ($250-$2,500),
many stations leave the air
Radio Works
Around the
Fees
Radio stations hire orchestras
to play live music, thus beating
the fees from ASCAP

Record sales drop in 20s & 30s

Record sales see quick bump in

1933 when prohibition is lifted
and bars install jukeboxes
A new
enemy?
Why cant we be
friends?
1950s, radio and recording industry
team up
Television took most of the cool
shows on radio and made them into
tv shows
Radio and recording industry work
together to promote hit songs,
focusing on marketing together
Rock n roll gives a big boost to radio
by providing youth customers
Recordings & Radio in the 21st Century

At first, internet radio had to pay to

play songs but traditional radio did
not
Clear Channel (the radio overlords
who own way too much) struck a
deal to pay for songs on traditional
radio if companies would limit the
amount internet radio had to pay
The Perfect Mix Tape

What can recorded music have in common with, say, a library or an arcade?
Convergence?
Recorded music industry saved
radio in the 1950s
Recorded music industry was
almost torn apart by the internet in
the 2000s
Napster, the music piracy service,
was founded by Shawn Fanning to
build communities around
different types of music
Social connections make-and-
break mass media!
The MP3
Invented in 1992
Allowed recordings to be shrunk
down
Files were so small that they could
now be easily transferred
CDs have a higher quality sound
file, but are larger files
People took the convenience of the
MP3 over the quality of the CD
Music companies sued music
pirates
Napster was shut down, but other
pirates (Limewire) emerged
P2P
P2P = Peer to Peer
Break a file into small parts,
everyone shares those parts
2005: Grokster shut down and
fined $50 mil by US courts
2010: eDonkey, Morpheus,
Limewire shut down
2011: Major cable companies start
sending out cease and desist
letter to people suspected of
piracy
Cable companies can slow your
internet speed for piracy
Even When
Legal
2003: iPod Launches
By 2008, Apple #1 music retailer
By 2012, 4 of every 5 songs
downloaded are illegally done so
Today, cloud music services are
slowly replacing some piracy by
being more convenient
U.S. Popular Music and the
Formation of rock
Page 128
 What is Pop Music?

Popular Music: music that appeals to a wide

cross section of the public or to a sizable
subdivision within the larger public based on age,
region, or ethnic background
Teenagers
Southerners
Mexican Americans

U.S. pop includes stuff like

Blues, country, Tejano, salsa, jazz, rock, reggae, punk, hip-
hop, and dance

Classical Music: music written primarily for ballet,

opera, ensemble, or symphony
Rise of Pop
Peeps assume pop arrived with
radio and phonograph; it did not
Late 1800s: Sale of sheet music for
piano from New York section called
Tin Pan Alley
Music did not travel by record or
radio, but by paper!
Marches of John Phillip Sousa
Ragtime piano of Scott Joplin
Continues with Irving Berlin,
George Gershwin, George M
Cohan, and Cole Porter
Why do you think this song was particularly
popular when it came out in 1917?
Genius Idea!
Leisure time + printing press = lots of
sheet music
Middle class starts buying sheet music
Use phonograph to record songs and
boost sheet music sales!
 Jazz
Jazz develops in New Orleans
Mostly improvised (that means not
planned ahead) and mostly
instrumental (not too much
singing)
Jazz is a mixing pot of
African poly-rhythms (two or more
independent rhythms, call and
response, scale structures)
Blues
Gospel

Jazz influenced the swing music

leaders of the day
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Glenn
Miller (check out that sweet Lindy Hop
dance to In the Mood)!
 First Pop Singers
Starts with Vaudeville shows of
the 1800s-1930s a type of
staged variety show with sings,
dancers, comedians, animals,
minstrels (i.e. white people
mocking black people), and
more
Early 1920s popular singers
come from vaudeville shows- Al
Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Belle
Baker
 The Crooners
Crooners: Male singers of pop
standards from the 1930s-40s
Pop standards: The hits or
classics of the American
songbook
Bing Crosby singing Irving
Berlins White Christmas

Frank Sinatra arrives in 40s,

foreshadows rock n roll teen
love songs; has crazy concerts
 The Cultural Storm Hits!
Rock and Roll arrives in the
1950s
Rock: A term at first associated
with firm religious belief,
eventually associated with a
fast, passionate kind of dancing
to African-American music
Roll: to roll in the sheets or roll
in the hay
This is the sort of music that
made people want to do both
of those things
 What makes up rock?
From the African-American
community: Take the speed and
energy of jazz, the passion of
the blues, and the guitar of
Robert Johnson (he was so
good, people say he sold his
soul to get these skills)

From the Euro-American

community: Take influence of
country music, folk, and pop
vocals (like Frank Sinatra)

People called this

integrationist music
 What is the big deal?
Rock has the most diverse set
of influences
Changed the economic
structure of both selling records
and playing them on the radio
Changed how music is
produced, sold, and performed
Influenced youth culture, race
relations, and challenged
stereotypes
 How does Rock Get Going?
Migration of southern blacks to
northern cities in the early
1900s spreads popular music
styles
The blues comes from the
south, based in African-
American spirituals, ballads,
and work songs from the rural
south
Electric guitar invented in the
1930s gives southern, rural
blues an urban style
 R&B = Rhythm and Blues of the 1950s
R&B has huge rhythm units
(drums and bass) smashing
away behind screaming blues
singers
Young people loved the
forbidden, explicit lyrics
This stuff got banned by some
stations, so of course it just got
even more popular
Racism led to R&B being kept
on a separate chart from the
proper music
I said a shake baby shake baby shake till the meat rolls off your
bones
Shake baby shake baby shake till your mama and your papa
come home
Shake baby shake I just love your sexy ways
Well upside down and all around baby don't be late let's bop
the town
Come on baby shake baby come here baby come on baby
Come on baby I love your sexy ways now
[ piano - guitar ]
Well grandpa he's too old to go he got a shake it just a little to
the rock'n roll
So shake baby shake shake baby shake shake baby shake I love
your sexy ways
Come on now...
 Why was this Edgy?
1950s were a terrifying time
U.S. was ready to have a nuclear war with
the Soviet Union (Russia) at any moment
The law was still being used to uphold
racism, and even when the laws were
changedTHERE WERE STILL RACISTS!
Young people chose to escape the crazy
world of adults
Waltz in the 1700s
1890s Cake Walks to Marches
The Charleston in the 1920s
Swing and Jitterbug in the 30s and 40s
Disco in the 70s
Hip Hop in the 80s and 90s
Whatever disgusting thing you do that
Im sure I disapprove of
Get Out and Meet New People
Tearing down legalized segregation
promotes rock and roll
1948: President Truman integrates the
armed forces
Black and white soldiers hang out, talk, play
music, and share their thoughts
Korean War gives a chance for soldiers to get to
know each other
1910s-1950s: Harlem Renaissance
A boom in black literature, music, art, poetry
White people notice
1954: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP
argue before the Supreme Court,
bringing an end to separate but equal
via Brown v. Board
Blurred Lines
Rock n Roll blurs the once super
defined race lines
Rock n Roll will do this for all
parts of the culture
Religion: Sacred vs Secular
Adults of the 50s said rocks
sexuality and questioning of what is
normal was an affront to God
Turns out, many early rock figures
had ties to religion
Ray Charles converted a song he
heard in church to I Got a Woman
Well, I got a woman, way over town
That's good to me, oh yeah
Said I got a woman, way over town
Good to me, oh yeah
She gives me money when I'm in need
Yeah, she's a kind of friend indeed
I got a woman, way over town
That's good to me, oh yeah
She saves her lovin', early in the mornin'
Just for me, oh yeah
She saves her lovin', early in the mornin'
Just for me, oh yeah
She saves her lovin', just for me
Ah, she, loves me, so tenderly
I got a woman, way over town
That's good to me, oh yeah
She's there to love me
Both day and night
Never grumbles or fusses
Always treats me right
Never runnin' in the streets
Leavin' me alone
She knows a woman's place
Is right there, now, in her home
Religious divide: The First Crazy Rock and
Roll star?
Jerry Lee Lewis was attending bible
school
He got kicked out
Starts a band with his cousin
Lives with his cousin
Gets super famous
Makes a song called Great Balls of
Fire, which is a line from the Bible

Gets a little excited on stage

Religion: Jerry
Lee Lewis Gets
stranger
Like a lot of early rock and roll, his music took
a super sexualized view towards teens
26 year old Jerry Lee and his 13 year old
cousin and her friends
He marries her (again, she is 13 and he lives
with her family), his career tanks, he is
abusive, they divorce
 You know my temperature's risin'
The jukebox's blowin' a fuse
Rock Blurs My heart beatin' rhythm
And my soul keep-a singing the blues

High & Low Roll over Beethoven

And tell Tchaikovsky the news

Culture
What should a talented
musician behave like?
Chuck Berry mocks the idea
with Roll Over Beethoven
The duck walk
Elviss hips!!!
 High Vs. Low Culture: Still Reimaging Today

How do you think people would have reacted to a symphony playing pop songs 60 years ago?
 Rock Blurs
Gender Lines
Rock & roll first pop music
genre to purposely confuse
issues of sexual identity and
orientation
Androgyny used to excite
and make fans question
norms
Racism in the 50s lead Little
Richard (top left) to blur
sexuality lines for his own
safety
Rock Blurs City &
Country Lines
Rock blurs the urban
rhythms of Memphis and
the white country/wester
music of Nashville
Mix of hillbilly music,
southern gospel, and
Mississippi delta blues
makes rockabilly
Chuck Berry takes old
country song to make
Maybellene
Rock Blurs City &
Country Lines
The 50s rock was not overtly
political, but it did threaten long
held race and class boundaries
1956 North Alabama White
Citizens Council secretary: Rock
and roll is a means of pulling the
white man down to the level of the
Negro. It is part of a plot to
undermine the youth of our
nation.
 Rock Blurs North and South
Like many white teens today who are fascinated by
hip-hop, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and Buddy Holly-
all white and from the rural south- were fascinated
with and influenced by the black urban styles they
heard on the radio or in nightclubs

Producers wanted the black sound with a white

face to sell records to white people

White rockabillies like Elvis took poor white southern

mannerisms of speech and behavior deeper in to
mainstream culture than they had ever been taken.
How Should People
Spread Rock?
Alan Freed (white guy who popularized the term rock and
roll) played original R&B recordings from black musicians
on his radio show

Dick Clark believed to get white people to listen meant

having to have white artists rerecord black artists songs

What do you think happened when white artists started

covering black artists songs?
Covering Songs
White producers would buy up song rights, give
credit to white performers, give few (if any)
royalties to black artists in the 50s

Even by the mid 50s when R&B crossed to white

charts, the white cover would inevitably become
more played by white-run radio stations

Fats Domino (who just died like last month) wrote

and records Aint That a Shame, it goes to No. 10
on charts

Pat Boone records it and it goes No. 1 for 20

weeks

Little Richard got an idea, what was it?

Covering Songs: A
Turning Point
1962: The last year Pat Boone
ever had a Top 40 Hit
1962: Ray Charles covers I
Cant Stop Loving You, a white
country song
Payola Scandal
Payola = Bribery to DJs play song
Was not technically illegal in the
50s
Congress got involved
Mostly a way for congress to
complain about DJs corrupting
children (lol)
Alan Freed admitted to it and
lost his career
Dick Clark denied it, though he
had shady payola-ish deals
The end of Early
Rock and Roll
Rock was blamed for youth crime
The real reasons for youth crime
were
Child Neglect
Rising Consumer Culture (cars,
buying stuff)
Fast growing youth population
The view that rock was bad kept
getting it censored
What Ever The Day the Music Died
Happened to
Jerry Lee Lewis: Married 13 year old
cousin and was exiled
Elvis Presley: Censored on TV and
drafted into the army
Chuck Berry: Run out of Mississippi,
jailed for gun possession and
transporting a minor across state lines
Little Richard: Felt forced to tone it Buddy Holly: First big 4 person rock band leader (two guitars,
a bass, and drums)
down and became a gospel singer
Ritchie Valens: First big Latino rocker (did La Bamba)
Big Bopper: Well he just sounded cool
What Replaced
the Wild Guys?
Rock now made lots of $$$
Music industry put clean cut, well
behaved, white faces in place
Rock in the early 60s was no longer a
place for rebels
Hey, lumpa sugar, you look kinda sweet
Cuter than a baby walkin' down the street
When I look into your eyes, I want to leap
I can't conceal that you make me feel
Like a tiger, ooh, ooh, ooh, like a tiger
Ooh, ooh, ooh, just to see you smile nearly drives me wild
I want to growl wow!
A Changing Industry:
Reformations in Pop Music
At the Start of
the 60s
Rock was safer (think Jan and Dean
on the right)
But, we do start getting all female
groups
Soul and Motown develop in the
60s
Politics will influence folk music
Musicians will experiment with
psychedelics
Brits are coming!
Rock spreads across the ocean to
Britain
They like the blues of Robert
Johnson and Muddy Waters
The young Beatles tried imitating
Chuck Berry and Little Richard
(listen to Paul McCartney sing LRs
Long Tall Sally)
Brits are coming!
1964: Beatles come to America
doing American blues and rock
This leads to more UK bands
coming to America
Rolling Stones
The Kinks
Zombies
Animals
Hermans Hermits
The Who
Yardbirds
Everyone started with the same hair?
Thoughts?

How do the Rolling Stones sound differ from the Beatles? What kind of music
does it remind you of?
Brits are coming!: Two paths
Rolling Stones would influence with
gritty, chord driven, high volume rock
Glam Rock
Hard Rock
Heavy Metal
Grunge
Beatles would influence with more
accessible, melodic, softer sounds
Pop Rock
Power Pop
New Wave
Alternative Rock
Both groups showed
The power of musicians writing their own great
music (not having others write)
The power of repackaging 50s American blues
and R&B
Motor City: Detroit Gives America Soul

The Brit musicians loved the black

influence of American R&B
Ironically, white people spent their
time and money on the British
singers and not on the new
generation of black sings
James Brown
Otis Redding
Aretha Franklin

The new singers made soul: mix of

gospel and blues, very emotional,
draws on the black experience
Soul contrasted with the loud, fast,
shallow white rock music
Motor City: MoTown

Started by former autoworker and

songwriters Berry Gordy
Produced hits by
Smokey Robinson 1960
Temptations (My Girl)
Mary Wells (My Guy)
Four Tops (I Cant Help Myself)
Martha and the Vandellas (Heat Wave)
Marvin Gaye (I Heard It through the Grapevine)
Jackson 5 [in the 70s] (ABC)
Supremes (Stop in the Name of Love)
These hits rivaled the Brit Invasion
Thoughts?

How does James Brown compare to what we just heard from Aretha Franklin and
Martha & the Vandellas? What does this music remind you of?
Reflect the Times
Pop music has always reflected the era
it was made
What does this music say about the
era (Marvin Gaye, 1971, Whats Going
On)
Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, eheh
Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, oh oh oh
Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on
What's going on
Yeah, what's going on
Ah, what's going on
Reflect the Times: Folk Music
Folk Music: Songs performed by
untrained musicians and passed
down mainly through oral
tradition
Came out of the rural areas in the 30s and
into cities; became entwined with labor
movement
Check out this 1930s folk song
that we love, but has a political
message. What do you think it
is?
Woody Guthrie This Land is Your
Land
Reflect the Times: Folk Music in the 60s
Folk Music gets political again in the
60s
Joan Baez
Arlo Guthrie
Bob Dylan
Starts acoustic in Greenwich Village
neighborhood of NYC
Popular for looking chill and his nasal
sound
Influenced by the blues
Made music that addressed social issues
Always a rebel ---------------------------
Rock Goes Psychedelic
Alcohol and drugs have long been
associated with the private lives of
musicians
In the 60s and 70, when the Rolling
Stones and Beatles got busted, it
became more public
Drugs became more prevalent in
youth culture
LSD was introduced and alters the
way people experience the world
(and not illegal until the mid-60s)
This seeps in to music
Beatles as Example
Beatles start as a very talented, hard
working band that plays familiar-
sounding music
The more they played, listened to new
music, and experimented with drugs,
the music changed and became more
complex Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
So please, love me do
Whoa, love me do

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I'll always be true
So please, love me do
Whoa, love me do

Beatles as Example
Beatles start as a very talented, hard
working band that plays familiar-
sounding music
The more they played, listened to new
music, and experimented with drugs,
the music changed and became more
complex
They start adding in orchestral
instruments, playing tracks backwards,
bringing in Indian instruments, writing
cryptic lyrics, getting political and
angry; and animal sounds
Being angry, insanely driven, super
talented, artistic, and high will make
your friends hate you
I am he
As you are he
As you are me
And we are all together
See how they run
Like pigs from a gun
See how they fly
I'm crying
Sitting on a cornflake
Waiting for the van to come
Corporation tee shirt
Stupid bloody Tuesday
Man, you been a naughty boy
You let your face grow long
I am the eggman (Ooh)
They are the eggmen, (Ooh)
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob
Beatles as Example
Paul McCartney sees the band
splitting apart and tries for
one last change
The last two Beatles albums
use less experimental
technology and outlandish
lyrics
They Get Back to their roots
What is the tone of this song, considering this
was the last time the most famous band in the
world would ever play together?
Beatles as Example
The Beatles dissolve on the last day of the year, 1969
Psychedelic
Rockers
Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, the
Doors, Grateful Dead
These artists saw that artistic
expression could be enhanced by
mind altering drugs
They believed this was part of their
free-speech rights and a way to
respond to a world gone insane
with war (Vietnam)
Hope & Change
Vietnam War
Americans being drafted and killed for a
war that not everyone felt was
necessary
Politicians were being less that
forthcoming about how bad the war
was
If the system is broken
Change the way you see the world (with
drugs)?
Change the way you form bonds (free
love)?
Change the way you live in society (not
the way your parents generation says)?
The High Point: Woodstock
Hope & Change
Vietnam War
Americans being drafted and killed for a
war that not everyone felt was
necessary
Politicians were being less that
forthcoming about how bad the war
was
If the system is broken
Change the way you see the world (with
drugs)?
Change the way you form bonds (free
love)?
Change the way you live in society (not
the way your parents generation says)?
The High Point: Woodstock
Woodstock was great, So lets do it again
The countercultures good times
were propped up with
A separation from responsibility
Drugs
An anti-authority attitude
That cant last.

Altamont Free Concert

Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels
Hired as security
Hells Angels were paid in beer
Four people died
End of an Era
Inherent Vice is a recent movie that
looks at the end of this era of good
feelings
What does the narrator say is
running the day?
Besides the Golden Fang (which isnt
real), what are people worried
about?
What is running sunny southern
California?
What does the narrator say Doc can
do for his generation?