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This article explores how the reception of early Arabic radio broadcasts throughout the Arabian Peninsula was connected to global media markets and geopolitics leading up to the Second World War. Specifically, it uses British efforts to establish the BBC Arabic service to investigate the various radio stations and other technologies that defined the region’s global media landscape during the 1930s. It argues that, while the BBC broadcasts pushed colonial territories in Arabian Peninsula away from British India into the fold of Britain's Middle East administration, colonial officials had to acknowledge Arabia’s social, economic, and cultural ties to the Indian Ocean region in order to have the BBC successfully compete with German and Italian broadcasts among Arab and Muslim audiences worldwide. As such, the article also suggests that the Arabian Peninsula’s role in the history of early Arabic broadcasting is significantly more important than previously assumed in scholarship. Cet article explore la manière dont la réception des premières émissions de radio arabes dans toute la péninsule Arabique a été liée aux marchés des médias mondiaux et la géopolitique jusqu’à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Plus précisément, il met en évidence les efforts britanniques pour établir le service arabe de la BBC pour enquêter sur les différentes stations de radio et d’autres technologies qui ont défini le paysage médiatique mondial de la région au cours des années 1930. Il soutient que, alors que les émissions de la BBC repoussaient les territoires coloniaux dans la péninsule Arabique loin de l’Inde britannique dans le giron de l’administration britannique du Moyen-Orient, les fonctionnaires coloniaux ont dû reconnaître les liens sociaux économiques et culturels entre l’arabie et la région de l’océan indien afin que la BBC puisse concurrencer avec succès les émissions allemandes et italiennes parmi le public arabe et musulman du monde entier. En tant que tel, l’article suggère également que le rôle de la péninsule arabique dans l’histoire de début de la radiodiffusion arabe est beaucoup plus important que précédemment assumé dans la littérature consacrée au sujet.

Summary Objective Past literature indicates that vibrato measurements of singers objectively changed (i.e., vibrato rate decreased and vibrato extent increased) from 1900 to the present day; however, historical audio recording technology may distort acoustic measurements of the voice output signal, including vibrato. As such, the listener's perception of historical singing may be influenced by the limitations of historical technology. This study attempts to show how the wax cylinder phonograph system—the oldest form of mass-produced audio recording technology—alters the recorded voice output signal of modern-day singers and, thus, provides an objective lens through which to study the effect(s) of historical audio recording technology on vibrato measurements. Methods Twenty professional Western opera singers sang a messa di voce on the vowel [a] and on the pitch C4 for male singers and C5 for female singers, three times into a flat-response omnidirectional microphone and onto an Edison Home Phonograph simultaneously. The middle 1–3 seconds (6–10 vibrato cycles) of each sample was analyzed for vibrato rate, vibrato extent, jitter (ddp), shimmer (dda), and fundamental frequency for each recording condition (wax cylinder phonograph or microphone). Steady-state and frequency-modulating sinewave test signals were also recorded under the multiple recording conditions. Results Results indicated no significant effect of recording condition on vibrato rate (mean [standard deviation], cylinder: 5.3 Hz [0.5], microphone: 5.3 Hz [0.5]) and no significant difference was found for mean fundamental frequency (cylinder: 389 Hz [137], microphone: 390 Hz [137]). A significant main effect of recording condition was found for vibrato extent (cylinder: ±103 cents [30], microphone: ±100 cents [31]). Additionally, mean jitter (ddp) (cylinder: 1.22% [1.09], microphone: 0.24% [0.12]) and mean shimmer (dda) (cylinder: 9.40% [4.90], microphone: 1.92% [0.94]) were significantly higher for the cylinder recording condition, indicating more cycle-to-cycle variability in the wax cylinder recorded signal. Analysis of test signals revealed similar patterns based on recording condition. Discussion This study validates past scholarly inquiry about vibrato measurements as extracted from digitized wax cylinder phonograph recordings by demonstrating that measured vibrato rate remains constant during both recording conditions. In other words, vibrato rate as measured from historical recordings can be viewed as an accurate representation of the historical singer being studied. Furthermore, it suggests that the value of prior vibrato extent measurements from these acoustic recordings may be slightly overestimated from the original voice output signals produced by singers near the beginning of the 20th century (i.e., a narrow vibrato extent might have been numerically smaller on average). Increased jitter and shimmer in the wax cylinder recording conditions may be indicative of nonlinearities in the phonograph recording or playback systems

Tratando de usar únicamente metodologías que minimicen el impacto de la subjetividad o la experiencia del diseñador, el presente proyecto comprende el diseño y desarrollo de un tocadiscos de uso vertical, diseñado para ser colgado en una pared en el ámbito doméstico. El principal objetivo de este proyecto es dar lugar a un producto innovador, funcional, acorde a la normativa vigente y objetivamente viable en cuanto a costes y fabricabilidad. El resultado de este desarrollo es un documento acabado y definido que puede ser entregado a una marca de empresa que ponga en marcha la producción y comercialización del tocadiscos de pared. El proyecto se lleva a cabo de forma cronológica, comenzando por un estudio preliminar de la situación actual del mercado y los productos existentes que sienta las bases para definir los requisitos y funcionalidades del tocadiscos a desarrollar. Dichos requisitos son el hilo conductor del proyecto y la guía para elaborar una propuesta de forma global, definiendo los aspectos formales y funcionales del producto, así como aquellos de carácter técnico o ingenieril. Para llevar a cabo este proceso se hace uso de técnicas y metodologías profesionales, usadas en la industria actual para obtener datos y soluciones de forma objetiva y universal. This project covers the design and development of a vertical use turntable, designed to be hung on a wall in the domestic environment while trying to use only methodologies that minimize the impact of the designer's experience or subjectivity The main goal of this project is to give rise to an innovative, functional product which is in accordance with the current regulations and objectively feasible in terms of costs and manufacturability. The result of this development is a finished and well-defined document that can be delivered to a company brand willing to start up the production and marketing of this wall-mounted turntable. The project is carried out chronologically, beginning with a preliminary research of the current market situation and existing products that can lay the foundations for the definition of the requirements and functionalities of the turntable to be developed. These requirements are the connecting line of the project and the guide to prepare a global proposal, defining the formal and functional aspects of the product, as well as those of a technical or engineering nature. To carry out this process, professional techniques and methodologies used in the current industry are employed to obtain data and solutions objectively and universally.

Mitau, the former capital of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, became the Courland Governorate centre with the Governor’s residence in a palace on an island formed by the Driksa, the branch of the Lielupe River, and great changes have taken place in this city. Artist Alexander Aleksandrovich Strekavin, who born in Mitau on 17 September 1889, studied art history, read books, investigated documents in the museum, listened to people’s stories and completed materials about events and the development of his native city. His drawings introduce with the new iron bridge for traffic and technical innovations – bicycles, the first car in the Baltics and the first phonograph in Mitau, clothes of citizens during the 19th century and at the beginning 20th century. Since the 1950s, six notebooks in Latvian with memoirs recalling by Aleksander Strekavin and an illustrative appendix – a collection of his drawings “The Atlas of Notes on Ancient Mitau” are in the funds of Jelgava History and Art Museum of Ģederts Eliass. Research object: drawings of artist Alexander Strekavin. Research goal: analysis of changes in Mitau during the 19th century and at the beginning 20th century. Research problem: Strekavin’s drawings stored in the funds of Jelgava History and Art Museum have not been studied. Research novelty: analysis of information on technical innovations included in “The Atlas of Notes on Ancient Mitau”. Research methods: studies of published literature, cartographic materials and archive documents.

What do walking and music have in common? Other than relating them through dancing or making a pun involving songs about walking, there is very little to relate the technical and STS projects presented in this portfolio. However, there is a connection: they both center around my personal interest and inability to focus on only one topic when I have the opportunity to discuss both. Beginning with the technical report, my motivation lies within a personal passion for mobility devices. A member of my immediate family lost a leg due to cancer, but a prosthetic device allowed him the mobility back that he had once lost. My goal as a biomedical engineer is to provide the same service to other families like mine. In this case, I have the wonderful opportunity to help provide critical background research to go toward the creation of a motorized walker. This walker will help return some lost mobility to children with cerebral palsy without forcing them to sacrifice the energy of pushing a large object around. Even though I am not working on the walker itself, I know that my work will be used to make a difference in the lives of these children. It is difficult to create a seamless transition to a project centered around music distribution and consumption technology, but music is another passion of mine that I don’t often get the opportunity to explore in an academic manner. It is fascinating to see how people first consumed music during the age of the phonograph to the easy and accessible streaming that is used today. Since music is such an important part of my life, exploring its history helps to better understand why it works the way it does today and the effects of music technology on American society and culture. Both topics explore how technology can affect society from a child being able to walk to machinery that produces music. Discussing both topics within this portfolio helps me explore what I am passionate about and share the information with the readers. People often take the ability to walk for granted. What is such a natural activity to most everyone is not always available for children with cerebral palsy to the degree that children without a motor disorder would experience. The longitudinal goal of this project is to provide a motorized walker to children with cerebral palsy to minimize energy expenditure from pushing around a walker. This paper discusses a method of experimentation that will encompass just a portion of this massive endeavor. From pulleys to load cells, this project designs and implements a laboratory set-up that will provide a forward force to a person walking across the floor. This set-up will be used to test if providing a certain percentage of a person’s body weight as a forward force will reduce energy expenditure. This design begins as a proof of concept and then grows into a fully formed system that is adjustable to people of various weights during experimentation. If a force value can be confirmed, then the walker will be programmed to provide that force to the children to reduce their energy expenditure in day-to-day life. The results from this experimentation could also be generalized to other mobility devices so that people with motor disorders can walk in the way many others take for granted. Is it possible that the inventor of the phonograph could ever have foreseen a future filled with music streaming and at-home music production? The music industry itself has changed drastically since the phonograph – jumping from invention to invention that revolutionized how music was made, recorded, distributed, and consumed. This has, in turn, had an immeasurable effect on societies and cultures across the globe. This paper aims to answer the question: how has the changing technology used to consume and distribute songs impacted the music industry and society as a result, specifically in the United States? This goal will be accomplished using the actor network theory to conduct a thorough exploration of the music industry network at the time of a couple major technological advancement relating to music distribution and consumption. This paper provides crucial insight as to how different technologies have changed the industry, and in turn, changed society. By understanding this, engineers can better predict the effects and impacts of future music technologies. This knowledge will also illuminate the role that music has played on American culture to raise understanding on how music shapes culture. Artists and producers can use this information to better understand the possible impacts of their music on the world around them, and consumers would understand their role in a societal sense. By working on both of these projects simultaneously, I was able to stretch my thoughts past their normal application. In one project, I employed rational, logical thinking to problem solving. I spent time analyzing forces and physical concepts through an engineering and design lens. With my STS project, I was able to explore a more creative type of thinking to analyze how technologies play a role in society. I likely would have reached the same conclusions had I done the project separately, but by doing them together, I began to see how engineering can play a role in my passions. Had I done them separately, I likely would have still separated music and mobility devices as left and right brain topics that cannot mix. Completing these two projects simultaneously eradicated this assumption and challenged me to explore engineering outside the stereotypes I had previously held about my major.

The paper presents France Marolt’s endeavours spanning many years to acquire the recording devices that he planned to use for documenting folk music in the field, as well as for his research work and various forms of educational and cultural activities. The main focus is on researching the circumstances in which sound recordings on gramophone records were made in collaboration with Radio Ljubljana, and on the first sound collection of the Institute of Ethnomusicology ZRC SAZU, which consisted of these records. The records have a special documentary value and, combined with archival documents, convey Marolt’s view of folk music.

The Regordosa-Turull wax cylinder collection, held at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona, is unique among early recording collections. It contains 358 cylinders recorded by the textile industrialist Ruperto Regordosa, mostly at his Barcelona home, featuring prominent Spanish and non-Spanish singers of opera and zarzuela, as well as the composer Isaac Albéniz. This article aims to establish the significance of the collection for the study both of the amateur recording culture that existed alongside commercial phonograph recordings and of performance practices in opera and zarzuela. By examining the broader characteristics of the collection and textual sources from the period, and by closely analysing some of the cylinders, this article explores how Regordosa adopted (and in some cases adapted) certain generic conventions employed in commercial recordings of the time, and what the implications of this are when considering these early recordings as documents of performance practice.

The asphaltophone is a musical instrument consisting of (1) a specially designed road surface topology, (2) the tire's contact patch, and (3) the vehicle itself. Each of these components in the asphaltophone has an analogy in the phonograph, which is composed of (1) a record, (2) a stylus, and (3) an amplification device. Asphaltophones are an enjoyable and inexpensive method to keep drivers alert and develop tourism. In this paper, a simplified quarter-car model is proposed to study the effects of the asphaltophone on a vehicle. An analytical solution of the simplified quarter-car model to the most common asphaltophone profiles is derived. This analytical solution is used to determine the relationship between the asphaltophone's profile and the signal quality. An experimental installment is analyzed. The asphaltophone experiment was fabricated and installed on a college campus. The fabrication process used a laser cutter to cut predefined sections from a strip of asphalt marking tape. To the authors' knowledge, very little research has been pursued on this instrument.

Recent work at the intersection of literary history and sound studies has taught us to regard lyric poetry as a sonic medium in its own right, but what sort of medium is it? This article unfolds lyric's intrinsic intermediality by way of the American composer Harry Partch and his brief collaboration with William Butler Yeats. Rekindling Yeats's turn-of-the-century dream of a new art uniting word and music, Partch's experiments setting poetry to microtonal music involved notating the subtle melodies of speech with new scales and instruments–homemade lyres, in fact. Built to compete with the phonograph, these new-old media pressed lyric to its absolute limit as a symbolic medium, clarifying both lyric's intermediality and its sensitivity to technological change. When Partch, who spent several years as an itinerant “hobo” in the 1930s, transplanted his Yeatsian speech-music to the transient shelters of the Depression-era West and began notating migrant voices, this compositional practice heralded unprecedented possibilities for the literary inscription of speech.

A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing differ fundamentally from natural sounds and direct hearing. It is commonly claimed, for example, that the sounds we hear over the phone are not sounds emitted by the voice of our interlocutor, but the sounds reproduced by the phone’s loudspeaker. According to this view, hearing distant sounds through communication and audio equipment is at best indirect and at worst illusory. In what follows, I shall reject these claims and argue in favor of a transparent view of auditory media, including radio, telephone, phonograph, etc. According to this approach, the great gift of Scott de Martinville and Edison is not to have invented devices able to reproduce vanished sounds but rather to have created technological instruments literally able to store and transmit them to future and distant listeners.

While participatory culture has been of special interest to scholars for nearly three decades, much of the focus has centered on digitally networked contexts. The digital age has indeed transformed our approaches to listening to music and how we operate as fans of music; these approaches can weave together the new and the old, and are enacted among a variety of spaces, objects, and relationships. We explore how the re-emergence of one such object in the digital age — the LP — has produced social arrangements that perhaps excavate older listening practices but do so in ways that have been affected by the mediascape more generally. We offer the concept of phonography culture: a term that emphasizes the social practices of those who not only curate and collect vinyl records but communicate through them in participatory activities including listening parties, vinyl nights at local bars, Facebook groups, and sites of e-commerce. We share the case study of Record Nite, a semi-regular gathering of phonography culture participants, who take turns playing one side of an LP on a given theme, revealing in their fandom and reveling in and encouraging that of others. Over the course of an evening, ten to twenty friends connect over their own “noise” — their experiences, histories, and knowledge of artists, albums, and genres—while simultaneously listening to LPs together. These phonographic, cultural interactions are revelatory because they draw our attention away from individualized and digital listening, which isolate signal, and make space for social and aural noise. That noise is infused with fandom and participation, as well as elements of memory, meaning making, and nostalgia. NB: The article contains sound examples. In order to listen to embedded audio files, you must first download the pdf file and then open it with Adobe Acrobat.

Since the earliest times, humans have sought the ability to produce rhythms and tones using devices external to the human body. As technology developed, so too did the desire for this sound production to become automated. Initially peaking around the Industrial Revolution, traditional automated musical production devices went into a steep decline with the arrival of the phonograph. However, factors such as the ubiquitous acceptance of the microcontroller led to a resurgent interest in this field. This paper investigates the design considerations and development of the stringed chordophone and specifically the guitar. The challenge is to produce a mechatronic device capable of speedy and reliable note selection, string actuation, string damping and expressiveness. In the same manner that there is not one best way to play a guitar and no best guitar design, so too is there no “best” chordophone design. Rather, the competing factors of speed, precision, reliability, portability, expressiveness and timbral variation can be given different weightings and result in different designs. Therefore, rather than presenting a single chordophone development, this paper provides a multitude of design options providing an interested reader with the background and suggestions to create their own bespoke design. This paper concludes with the presentation of the authors' final design as an integration of the presented ideas and design techniques. We demonstrate that this chordophone introduces expressivity at a level not achieved before, is modular yet portable, is mechanically quiet and can play at a speed beyond that of even the best human player.

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the British New Guinea cylinders within the British Library’s Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection (C80). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between July 2019 and June 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection history, the numbering systems, and other collections (eg artefacts, photographs) related to the cylinder recordings. It also lists information about each cylinder, including metadata and a photo of the lid., UK

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the Torres Strait Islands cylinders within the British Library’s Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection (C80). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between August 2019 and August 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection content and history, and related collections (e.g. fieldnotes, photographs). It also includes a list of participants who are represented on the cylinder recordings., UK

The Slovenian philologist and folk song researcher Karel Štrekelj (1859–1812) was one of the first researchers in Slovenia to recognise the importance and usefulness of a new sound recording method. Based on a detailed study of archival documents and relevant literature, in this article I examine Štrekelj’s contribution to folk music research using a new technical device and introducing a new method of sound documentation to field research. By placing his plans and efforts in a broader context of folk song research, one concludes that Štrekelj was more ambitious and forward-thinking than many other researchers at the time.

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the Thomas Edge-Partington 1909-1914 British Solomon Islands Protectorate Cylinder Collection, which is part of the British Library’s Royal Anthropological Institute Cylinder Collection (C83). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between July 2019 and June 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection history, the numbering systems, and other collections (eg artefacts, photographs) related to the cylinder recordings. It also lists information about each cylinder, including metadata and a photo of the lid., UK

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the Eric Raff 1924 Efate, New Hebrides Cylinder Collection, which is part of the British Library’s Royal Anthropological Institute Cylinder Collection (C83). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between July 2019 and June 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection history, the numbering systems, and other collections (eg artefacts, photographs) related to the cylinder recordings. It also lists information about each cylinder, including metadata and a photo of the lid., UK

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the British Library’s WHR Rivers and Arthur M Hocart 1908, New Georgia group, British Solomon Islands Protectorate Cylinder Collection (C108). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between July 2019 and June 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection history, the numbering systems, and other collections (eg artefacts, photographs) related to the cylinder recordings. It also lists information about each cylinder, including metadata and a photo of the lid., UK

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the British Library’s Paul Montague 1914 Gondé, New Caledonia Cylinder Collection (C671). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between July 2019 and June 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection history, the numbering systems, and other collections (eg artefacts, photographs) related to the cylinder recordings. It also lists information about each cylinder, including metadata and a photo of the lid., UK

In this article I try to reconstruct the relationship between Porfirio Díaz Mori and Thomas Alva Edison, having as its central axis the uses and representations of phonographs. The links between both characters open a privileged door to access a history of diplomacy, the uses of sound technologies and business networks between Mexico and the United States. Through letters, journalistic news and contracts, I will go through various episodes of this relationship, which included the sending of talking machines and north music, the delivery of concessions and the signing of agreements for the Mexican postal service to be carried out on phonographic cylinders. En este artículo intento reconstruir las relaciones entre Porfirio Díaz Mori y Thomas Alva Edison, teniendo como eje central los usos y representaciones de los fonógrafos. Los vínculos entre ambos personajes abren una puerta privilegiada para acceder a una historia de la diplomacia, los usos de las tecnologías sonoras y las redes de negocios entre México y Estados Unidos. Mediante cartas, noticias periodísticas y contratos recorro diversos episodios de esta relación, que incluyó el envío de máquinas parlantes y música norteamericana, la entrega de concesiones y la firma de convenios para que el servicio de correos mexicano se llevara a cabo en cilindros fonográficos.

This research document contains the results of historical research conducted on the British Library’s John Layard 1914-1915 Atchin, New Hebrides Cylinder Collection (C177). This research was done as part of the True Echoes project between July 2019 and June 2022. The document contains information about the recording context and recording activity, the collection history, the numbering systems, and other collections (eg artefacts, photographs) related to the cylinder recordings. It also lists information about each cylinder, including metadata and a photo of the lid., UK

This report contains the results of a small-scale comparative listening study, conducted on December 09th, 2020, at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Stuttgart. It aimed to two interrelated research questions: (1) Does the perception of recorded performances in general change when played back on different gramophones? (2) If yes, to what extent are performed violin gestures affected as well? Three gramophone setups and a concert hall setting were simulated by digitally convolving a single input signal (a 2019 reenactment of Fritz Kreislers 1911 “Love's Sorrow“ recording) with their authentic impulse responses and played back consecutively to the participants, a homogenous group of trained music students. It was found that the participants interpreted changing playback devices as actual changes in performance practice, giving some new evidence to support Mark Katz' (1999 et seq.) theorem of the “phonograph effect“ from a psychoacoustical point of view., V1.2 includes the sound examples presented in this study., {"references":["Vollmer, F. & Bolles, B.-A. (2021). Liebesleid 1911 / 2019. Reenactment of Fritz Kreisler's 1911 \"Love's Sorrow\" Recording, Stuttgart: University of Music and Performing Arts. 10.5281/zenodo.5801785","Vollmer, F. & Bolles, B.-A. (forthcoming). In Search for the \"Phonograph Effect\": Performed violin gestures and their sound modification by early acoustic recording and reproduction devices (1901–1933)"]}

This paper maps the connection of Milton and Edison in the late Victorian imagination as examples of geniuses. I argue that their juxtaposition is rooted in the voice hearing etymology of the genius, but more importantly in the notion of what I call the phonographic author. Drawing on nineteenth-century periodicals and books, I will be comparing Edison’s own vision of the phonograph in authoring books and the Victorian popular imagination elaboration on the same, especially in Uzanne’s short story ‘The End of Books’ (1894) while showing Milton’s own role in making such an idea of the phonographic author feasible. Cet article montre comment John Milton et Thomas Edison furent érigés en génies dans l’imagination victorienne tardive. Ces deux hommes jouissaient semble-t-il d’une ouïe vocale exceptionnelle, et au dix-neuvième siècle, leurs lecteurs et commentateurs firent d’eux des « auteurs phonographiques ». À travers l’étude d’un corpus de publications nous pourrons comparer comment la conception par Edison du phonographe impacta sa rédaction de livres et comment l’imagination populaire victorienne se saisit de cette perméabilité entre le son et l’écrit, en particulier dans la nouvelle d’Octave Uzanne « La fin des livres » (1894), tout en soulignant le rôle attribué à Milton dans l’invention et la plausibilité de « l’auteur phonographique ».

One year after the publication of Dracula (1897), the English photographer Francis Barraud was commissioned a painting from his picture of a dog looking at and listening to a cylinder phonograph. His work, entitled His Master’s Voice, became one of the most famous logos in the world. Barraud’s painting was particularly meaningful for not only did it raise the issue of the amplified voice, but it also visualized the impact and effect that technological instruments had on the amplified voice. The phonograph shows how voices can become disconnected from the material body and raises the issue of what actually constitutes a voice. Among the modern technological devices mentioned in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the phonograph plays an important role, a presence which is both disconcerting and reassuring. The power and the uncanny effect of the disembodied voice is evident in Mina’s reaction to Dr Seward’s phonographic recording, a ‘wonderful’ and ‘cruel’ device as it records not only the speaker’s voice but also its tone, thus revealing bodily sounds which writing, instead, hides. In Dracula, the distinction between speech and writing is constantly under pressure: on the one hand, the characters’ urge to write (journals, letters, etc.), on the other there is an agency of oral interaction. From Renfield’s calling in of the vampire (a master who needs a servant to be welcomed in), to Dracula’s attempt at mastering oral English in order to conceal his foreignness, the novel proves to be an important example of how literature deals with sound devices. Un an après la publication de Dracula (1897), le photographe anglais Francis Barraud reçut une commande pour peindre un tableau à partir de son image d’un chien devant un phonographe à cylindre. Son œuvre, intitulée His Master’s Voice, est devenue l’un des logos les plus célèbres au monde. La peinture de Barraud est particulièrement significative car elle donne à voir non seulement l’objet par lequel la voix est amplifiée, mais également l’effet que produit cette voix amplifiée. Le phonographe montre comment les voix peuvent se déconnecter du corps matériel et soulève la question de ce qui constitue réellement une voix. Parmi les dispositifs technologiques modernes mentionnés dans le Dracula de Bram Stoker, le phonographe joue un rôle important, une présence à la fois déconcertante et rassurante. La puissance et l’effet troublant de la voix désincarnée sont évidents dans la réaction de Mina à l’enregistrement phonographique du Dr Seward, un dispositif « merveilleux » et « cruel » qui enregistre non seulement la voix du locuteur, mais aussi son ton, révélant ainsi des sons corporels que l’écriture cache. Dans Dracula, la tension entre la parole et l’écriture est constamment à l’œuvre car si les personnages sont de prolifiques auteurs de journaux et de lettres, ils n’en demeurent pas moins avides d’interaction orale. De l’appel de Renfield au vampire à la tentative de Dracula de maîtriser l’anglais oral afin de dissimiler ses origines étrangères, ce roman montre bien l’importance des dispositifs sonores dans la création littéraire.

Submitted by Joabe Guilherme Oliveira (joabe.guilherme@unesp.br) on 2021-11-19T22:56:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Fon-fon - texto da defesa.pdf: 7585205 bytes, checksum: 2f6c5288e2c0a9fb4696a15d8da775db (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by Laura Mariane de Andrade null (laura.andrade@ia.unesp.br) on 2021-12-03T13:04:16Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 oliveira_jg_me_ia.pdf: 7585205 bytes, checksum: 2f6c5288e2c0a9fb4696a15d8da775db (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2021-12-03T13:04:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 oliveira_jg_me_ia.pdf: 7585205 bytes, checksum: 2f6c5288e2c0a9fb4696a15d8da775db (MD5) Previous issue date: 2021-09-22 Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) Transformações acontecem ao seu tempo e modo com o desenrolar dos processos históricos. A tese que aqui será abordada, de que de que as tecnologias musicais difundidas e comercializadas na capital do Brasil, no início do século XX, tenham contribuído para a transformação da escuta, se constrói, de maneira geral, nos relatos que poderemos observar e analisar, através dos textos e propagandas sobre as tecnologias musicais, veiculados pela revista Fon-Fon, uma das revistas ilustradas mais populares de sua época. A partir desse ponto, duas linhas de pensamento se constroem: a primeira, voltada para os aspectos macro da recepção desses aparelhos, observando as mudanças marcadas pela assimilação da modernidade que se estabelecia no tecido social; e a segunda, voltada para os aspectos micro dessa recepção, da natureza dos sons engendrados por essas máquinas. Disso se segue a justificativa desta dissertação, que é a de fornecer discussões e reflexões sobre uma parte da história da gravação e reprodução, visto que, em tempos atuais, temos um estreitamento intenso entre tecnologias musicais, indivíduos e sociedade. Transformations happen in their own time and way with the development of historical processes. The thesis that will be defended here, that the musical technologies disseminated and marketed in the capital of Brazil, in the beginning of the 20th century, have contributed to the transformation of listening, is conceived, in general, in the reports that we will be able to observe and analyze, through texts and advertisements about musical technologies, published by Fon-Fon magazine, one of the most popular illustrated magazines of its time. From this point onwards, two lines of thought are built: the first, focused on the macro aspects of reception of these devices, observing the changes marked by the assimilation of modernity that was established in society, and the second, focused on the micro aspects of this reception, of the nature of the sounds coming from these machines. From this follows the justification of this dissertation, which is to provide discussions and reflections on a part of the history of recording and reproduction, since, in current times, we have an intense closeness between musical technologies, individuals and society. Código de Financiamento 001

Through analysis of the zarzuela El fonógrafo ambulante (1899; music by Ruperto Chapí, libretto by Juan González), this article discusses how the arrival of recording technologies in Spain (1877–1900) was influenced by and in turn influenced discourses concerning modernity, regional difference and interregional mobility. With recent critical accounts of the early history of recording technologies having emerged mostly from the study of technologically advanced countries, this article is also a reminder of the role of cultural context: the study of the arrival of the phonograph in Spain indeed reveals how early users of recording technologies related their experiences to broader discourses of modernity and identity that had often been taken for granted elsewhere. Intended to entertain large contingents of people across a variety of social classes, El fonógrafo ambulante portrayed an aspect of late nineteenth-century life in Spain that its audiences would have been familiar with, that is, the travelling phonographs paraded through Spanish cities, towns and villages during the 1890s. The work also embodies views on sound-recording technologies which would have resonated with its audience – in accordance with zarzuela’s defense of an integrative, progressively industrialized, urban, somewhat relaxed in terms of social mores, yet still ideologically conservative Spain. In fact, whereas the arrival of a phonograph in an Andalusian village at the beginning of the zarzuela is initially presented as a potential danger to social practices, reservations are quickly overcome when it becomes clear that mobile recording technologies can make the Spanish pueblo thrive by encouraging mutual understanding between Spanish regions and ensuring the preservation of gender roles. However, El fonógrafo ambulante shies away from defending transformative uses of phonography that other, more regeneracionista sectors of the population anticipated; in doing so, it ultimately presents a sceptical view of modernity as the path to national regeneration.

Based on historical documents, press, museum collections, and academic publications, the early introduction of the phonograph in Mexico and its late incorporation into anthropology is the ...

From the phonograph of the 19th century to the iPod today, music technologies have typically isolated the auditory dimension of music, filtering out nonacoustic information and transmitting what most people assume is the essence of music. Yet many esteemed performers over the past century, such as Judy Garland and B.B. King, are renowned for their dramatic use of facial expressions (Thompson, Graham, & Russo, 2005). Are such expressions merely show business, or are they integral to experiencing music?In the investigation reported here, we considered whether the facial expressions and head movements of singers communicate melodic information that can be “read” by viewers. Three trained vocalists were recorded singing ascending melodic intervals. Subjects saw the visual recordings (without sound) and rated the size of the intervals they imagined the performers were singing

Phonographs, tapes, stereo LPs, digital remix - how did these remarkable technologies impact American writing? This book explores how twentieth-century writers shaped the ways we listen in our multimedia present. Uncovering a rich new archive of materials, this book offers a resonant reading of how writers across several genres, such as John Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs, and others, navigated the intermedial spaces between texts and recordings. Numerous scholars have taken up remix - a term co-opted from DJs and sound engineers - as the defining aesthetic of twenty-first century art and literature. Others have examined modernism's debt to the phonograph. But in the gap between these moments, one finds that the reciprocal relationship between the literary arts and sonic technologies continued to evolve over the twentieth century. A mix of American literary history, sound studies, and media archaeology, this interdisciplinary study will appeal to scholars, students, and audiophiles.

Kyle Barnett’s Record Cultures: the transformation of the U.S. recording industry explores the music business during its volatile interwar period. A lengthy introduction, ‘Phonograph Boom: the expa...

Edison’s 1877 invention of sound recording, the phonograph, may have been his most extraordinary feat: he seemingly pulled it out of thin but vibrating air. In this case there was no competitor, no other inventor who was close to coming up with a practical means for recording and playing back sound, although there had been efforts to record sound as a visible pattern in order to study its nature, as described in Chap. 28. Edison’s invention consisted of a transducer that turned changes in air pressure into a record of sound’s waveform on a deformable medium, originally tin foil wrapped on a spinning cylinder (Geduld, 1975). Sound was recorded by creating grooves in the foil using vibrations transmitted from a sound-collecting horn to a diaphragm to move a stylus (needle) in an up-and-down direction, which came to be known as the hill-and-dale method. These deformations on the moving surface of a cylinder create a pattern analogous to the original waveform (Frayne, 1976). Gramophone disks, on the other hand, are made with a side-to-side or lateral groove. The sound recorded on Edison’s cylinder was played back by means of the inverse process, which resembled (or in fact could be) the one used for recoding. Edison was known as a master of electrical inventions but the phonograph, at least in its first incarnation and for years thereafter, used a spring-wound rotating cylinder and purely mechanical transduction without electronic amplification, which had yet to be invented.

Printer and bookseller Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville’s French Patent 19,457, of March 25, 1857, describes his phonautograph, which conceivably is the first attempt to record sound but de Martinville had no thought of playing back what he recorded, rather he was seeking to study the nature of the sounds made by the voice by visualizing their vibrations in air. His phonautograph used the mechanical advantage provided by a series of levers connected to a pig bristle stylus for scratching away lampblack coated on a moving sheet to record an analog of sound’s waveform (Sponable, 1947). This is the recording of sound by physically deforming a surface, just as Edison was to do with the phonograph. de Martinville’s method for scribing material on a moving surface was also the precursor of the Philips-Miller sound recording system, which was used by the BBC prior to the Second World War, as described below. In one version of de Martinville’s device, the carbon-coated paper was attached to the surface of a cylinder driven by a clockwork motor or rotated by handcranking, another similarity with Edison’s phonograph.

Often describing him as a force of nature, Rilke observes with utmost reverence the way that Rodin produces. This idealized figure of Rodin captures what Rilke calls an “ancient preserved gesture,” through which an artwork can reach out to viewers across the ages. Like we immediately understand the meaning of a wave from a friend, a true artwork gestures in this manner, communicating a “life from afar,” endowing us with new energy to create. In Rodin Rilke finally recognizes an artist who can create like the phonograph he puzzled about as a child, without a thought to mediate between spirit and the hand.

[ES] El proyecto a realizar, en colaboración con el Departamento de Restauración y Conservación de Bienes Culturales de la Facultad de Bellas Artes consistirá en la digitalización y procesado de audio de la colección de cilindros de cera de fonógrafo con grabaciones de 1900-1910 que posee el Museo de la Telecomunicación Vicente Miralles Segarra. Las grabaciones incluyen tanto locuciones como música. Se hará uso de un fonógrafo funcional y se utilizará el equipamiento del estudio de grabación de la ETSIT. Una vez realizada la digitalización se procederá a su procesado para restaurar el registro de audio digitallmente. La labor de catalogación y difusión en la web se llevará a cabo en un proyecto paralelo realizado en la Facultad de BBAA., [EN] The project to be carried out, in collaboration with the Department of Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Assets of the Faculty of Fine Arts, will consist in the digitization and audio processing of the collection of cylinders of phonograph wax with 1900-1910 recordings that the Museum possesses. of the Telecommunication Vicente Miralles Segarra. The recordings include both locutions and music. A functional phonograph will be used and the equipment of the ETSIT recording studio will be used. Once the digitization is done, it will be processed to restore the digital audio record. The work of cataloging and dissemination on the web will be carried out in a parallel project carried out in the Faculty of BBAA.

This chapter is a close reading of Rilke’s “Primal Sound” essay. It derives imagery that will be used as a model for creative labor for the rest of the book. In his childhood science classroom, Rilke builds a phonograph out of simple things found around the room. They record themselves and listen, which creates a synesthetic moment for the young Rilke: he sees the scratches in the wax and hears them producing sound. It is also an early instance in his life of hearing a Thing speak, this time literally and not poetically. This inspires him for his later project, which is to allow Things to speak through poetry. Furthermore, Rilke wants to be like the phonograph, picking up vibrations around him and letting them flow through his pen.

A neurologist conducts her first “house call” during the Covid-19 pandemic: the quaint nostalgia of a bygone era and seeming anachronism meet the conveniences of modernity and uncover the timeless qualities of medicine. The phrase “house call” conjures up nostalgia for an era most of us have never experienced, painted with cheerful and tender Norman Rockwell-style strokes. The avuncular physician, likely a man, clad in a crisp suit, with a capacious leather satchel filled with tinctures of now-illegal substances clinking in glass bottles. The cherubic child clad in a white nightgown, tucked under a patchwork quilt, curls against the pillow, clutching a beloved doll. The worried parent, likely a woman, hovering over the bedside with a cool compress against the fevered forehead. While I have only sepia photos and phonograph recordings to inform me of such a time, my patient Mary actually lived through it. She was born in the thick of such a period, in the 1930’s, an era when 40% of physician encounters were house calls. When I had established care for dementia in her 80’s, she still had a razor wit, mischievous grin, and twinkling blue eyes. I could tell she had been a kind, but firm, schoolteacher, likely not one to have put up with tomfoolery.

Phonograph record is an analog sound storage medium that has played an important part in sound history. Modulated spiral groves on the disc are usually inevitably damaged by scratches and dust, which lead to noises with different statistical characteristics. Among those different type of noises, there is one common click-shape noise that have some degree of correlation between channels. Its origins have been explained as a deviation of the probe needle means it shifts closer to one wall but further from another with similar distances. Our aim is to restore this type of noises on dual mono audio signals with a statistical method. There are previous researches on restoring single-channel noisy data based on generative models. However multi-channel noisy data contain more audio information than single-channel data, due to its channel correlation. To exploit this property, we propose multivariate Gaussian models for both signal and noise models. Then we derive the Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimation of the underlying data. Additionally, we also use the Maximum Likelihood method to optimize model parameters. In the end we compare the restoration performances between our model and the baseline model on both synthetic and real-life noisy music data.

Los cilindros de fonógrafo contienen los registros de sonido más antiguos atesorados por fonotecas y archivos sonoros españoles. Casi todos ellos son grabaciones musicales comerciales que documentan el inicio de la industria discográfica, pero también se encuentran algunas impresiones particulares, realizadas en el ámbito familiar o privado sin ánimo artístico.Las grabaciones familiares y privadas ofrecen en muchos casos interesantes mensajes cuyo significado actual trasciende en mucho la intención trivial original que motivó el registro de voces. La escasez de estos cilindros de cera de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX convierten los mensajes que contienen en documentos relevantes para el estudio de las costumbres, el lenguaje y, en general, la sociedad y su comunicación en un momento de la historia.Estas piezas representan un patrimonio cultural importante que debe ser preservado, estudiado y difundido puesto que pueden contener tradiciones orales, cantos regionales o registro de eventos históricos. Su escasez, antigüedad y fragilidad obligan a actuar urgentemente. Se propone una metodología para el estudio de esos materiales. Se presentan los resúmenes y conclusiones del estudio de tres colecciones originales de cilindros de cera entre 1898 y 1905 que incluyen algunos cilindros domésticos con contenido sonoro interesante. Phonograph cylinders contain the most antique sounds treasured by Spanish sound libraries. Almost all of them are commercial music recordings that keep record of the early development of the phonographic industry, but we also find some personal recordings, made in a family or private environment without any kind of artistic intention.Family and private recordings contain, in many cases, interesting messages whose current meaning transcends by far the original banal (ordinary?) intention that motivated the recording of voices. The shortage of these wax cylinders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make the messages they contain important documents for the study of customs, language and, in general, the communication and society at a moment in history.These assets stand for an important cultural heritage that must be conserved, valued and disseminated, because they contain oral tradition, regional songs and records of historical events. A methodology is proposed for the analysis of that records. The conclusions of the study of three original wax cylinder collections between 1898 and 1905 that include some domestic cylinders with interesting sound content are summarized

Cet article s’attache à étudier la façon dont la littérature victorienne persiste dans la culture française et est réinventée, grâce aux adaptations radiophoniques contemporaines, à travers de nouveaux formats et des techniques sonores innovantes. Les exemples analysés sont les adaptations de Jane Eyre, sous forme de feuilleton produit par France Culture en 2015, et le « concert-fiction » de Dracula : un format original imaginé par Radio France en 2014. Ces exemples de fictions radiophoniques contemporaines démontrent que la littérature victorienne stimule de nouvelles formes de création. Cette approche intermédiale considère les intrigues linéaires victoriennes, faciles à simplifier et adapter, comprenant des éléments nécessaires à la stimulation de l’attention des auditeurs et contribuant à la création de nouveaux formats radiophoniques. L’attrait de la fiction victorienne pour des auditeurs français et le processus de transmédiation interculturelle reposent en outre sur la résonance contemporaine de certains thèmes victoriens, sur une proximité culturelle et littéraire, mais aussi sur une certaine nostalgie du passé victorien. L’intimité de l’expérience d’écoute liée au médium radiophonique renforce la proximité et l’identification entre les personnages et les auditeurs. L’immersion et le dépaysement des auditeurs dans des ambiances et atmosphères victoriennes sont ainsi intensifiés par les outils sonores modernes. “He placed me in a comfortable chair, and arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up, and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause. […] I put the forked metal to my ears and listened” (Dracula, Chapter 17). Such a simple gesture as putting on headphones has become usual nowadays. The representation of this gesture in Dracula however suggests how important sounds were in the Victorian era. The Industrial Revolution led to the enhancement of sound technology, through the invention and the use of the telephone and the phonograph, and such improvements had an impact on Victorian authors and their narratives, though the sound features of their novels tend to be overlooked. This essay focuses on how Victorian literature persists in French culture and how it is reinvented through contemporary radio drama. It explores the main strategies of transmediation needed when adapting a novel to the radio. The essay thus reflects on the popularity of Victorian fiction in France and on its easiness to adapt. It considers how French radio reinvents Victorian literature through new formats and modern sound techniques. The examples analyzed from contemporary radio are the production of Jane Eyre as a serial by France Culture in 2015 and the production of Dracula as a “concert-fiction”—a specific format created by Radio France. These models from contemporary radio demonstrate that Victorian literature fosters new forms of creation.

In this chapter, the author discusses the absence of sound in contemporary accounts of media consumption and the social science disciplines’ consequent failure to understand the complexity of proximity, distance, and mobility in forms of media consumption. He then offers an alternative, “historically” informed analysis of sound experience by looking at three iconic moments of sound consumption in Western culture. The exclusion of the aural in media accounts of the experience of proximity and distance has led many media sociologists to neglect or misinterpret the historically situated meanings attached to these terms. Whereas notions of media-generated “distance” remain to be adequately explained, the meanings attached to “proximity” have recently been recognized, if not the specifically “sound” nature of that proximity. Odysseus’s success is dependent upon both the Sirens and his own guile, whereas Fitzcarraldo relies on the technology of the phonograph and the voice of Caruso.