A Brief History Of Recorded Music — Part 2

The Magnetic Revolution!

1943 — Magnetic Tape And Stereo

A german audio engineer named Fritz Pfleumer invents recording onto magnetic tape. A small electromagnet is fed electricity from a microphone and leaves a magnetic trail onto cellophane tape coated with iron particles. Glue two electromagnets side-by-side, feed them from different microphones, and you now have music in beautiful stereo.

Basic audio content editing becomes possible. Radio shows no longer need to be performed live. Bing Crosby is the first performer to pre-record his shows, complete with interstitial advertising.

Some artists use tape cutouts from unrelated performances and glue them together creatively: the birth of sampling. They even make beat loops! But musicians will soon find many more creative uses for tape recorders in the studio.

Reel-to-reel tape technology will enjoy a long life. In fact it’s still around today. While not affordable for the average consumer, it’s been arguably one of the best music formats ever.

1947 — The First Vocal Overdub

Patti Page and sound engineer Bill Putnam are first to record a song where the same singer can be heard singing two complementary vocal performances together. This new technique called overdub enables the singer to contribute multiple performances to a song by synchronizing several recorders together.

Overdubbing will vastly extend thereafter the expressive range of artists in the studio, not just for singers. While technically challenging at the time, new recording machines are coming to make overdubbing much easier. It will soon becomes a mainstay of modern song recording.

Early 1950’s — Multi-Track Recording

A California company called Ampex produces an 8 tracks tape recorder. The crucial new feature of the machine is the ability to record an individual track while listening to the others in perfect synchronization. The famed country songwriter named Les Paul invents the modern multi-tracks song recording process.

This seminal innovation opens a whole new world of creativity for music. Musicians can experiment, overlay different performances and build complex harmonies. They can do so from a different studio, even from a different era altogether.

Les Paul has many innovations to his name such as the first solid-bodied electric guitar (Gibson Les Paul). He goes on to invent the first loop pedal prototype enabling him to build up layered orchestrations live in front of an audience, much like Ed Sheeran decades later.

1957- Digital Recording

Max Mathews of Bell Telephones invents digital sound recording with a computer. The computer measures the electric signal from a microphone thousands of times per second and records its amplitude as a series of binary numbers. Magnetic tape is then used to save the numbers. The tape quality doesn’t matter as long as the numbers can be read back. This allows for copies to be made forever without any loss in audio quality.

Humanity is now technically capable of preserving its masterpieces for posterity. Moreover, sound treated as numbers enables the processing of audio mathematically. This will be useful later for special effects, audio editing and mp3 compression.

Max Mathews goes on to work on speech synthesis and makes a computer sing. The idea of computer-based music is born.

1962-Audio Cassette

Philips cleverly miniaturizes bulky reel-to-reel tape by encasing it into a small convenient package. This makes magnetic tape easy to use for the average consumer. It also enables mass production of smaller, more affordable players.

The TEAC O’Casse seen above is actually a variant from the 80’s, but its open concept illustrates clearly the audio cassette lineage from reel-to-reel.

Audio cassettes provide a fair sound quality, though not quite as good as records or reel-to-reel. Still, the music industry is concerned that consumers will make copies of records for friends due to the wide availability of cassette recorders. Some governments even impose a tax on blank cassettes.

Meanwhile consumers find a creative outlet in taping selections of songs according to their moods and thematic arcs. The art of the mix tape is born.

1978- Peak Vinyl

The music industry reaches a height in revenue of 15.5 billion dollars (US, adjusted for inflation). This is the commercial crescendo of vinyl technology. Interest in music starts to wane the following year. It will take a new technology to reignite consumer passion for music in the next decade.

1979 — Sony Walkman

Masaru Ibuka of Sony tasks his engineers to invent a way to listen to his music on business trips. The famous portable cassette player is born. People can now take their music with them on the go.

The 80’s are almost here and listening habits of consumers are changing. People are more mobile, their attention is more divided. New entertainment technologies invade homes, such as game consoles, early computers and VHS video players.

In Part 3 we’ll explore the digital revolution. The upcoming Compact Disc will rekindle consumer passion for music with a vengeance.

In Part 1 we heard the first recording ever in soot, followed by wax and vinyl.

About The Author

Pierre is a software engineer for a major computer maker based in Cupertino. He likes to speculate about innovations in various domains such as aviation, cloud computing, AI and next-generation music streaming.

All opinions and speculations presented here are strictly his own, and are unrelated to his day job and employer.