new performance for every batch of recordings. Not
exactly a promising business model.
Edison set this apparatus aside for over a decade, but he eventually went
back to tinkering with it, possibly due to pressure from the Victor Talking
Machine Company, which had come out with recordings on discs. Soon he felt
he’d made a breakthrough. In 1915, when Edison demonstrated his new version
of an apparatus that recorded onto discs, he was convinced that now, finally, playback was a completely accurate reproduction of the speaker or singer being captured. The recording angel, the acoustic mirror, had arrived. Well, hearing those recordings, we might now think that he was somewhat deluded about
how good his gizmo was, but he certainly seemed to believe in it, and he managed to convince others too. Edison was a brilliant inventor, a great engineer, but also a huckster and sometimes a ruthless businessman. (He didn’t even
really “invent” the electric light bulb—Joseph Swan in England had made them previously, though Edison did establish that tungsten would be the great long-lasting filament for that device.) And he usually managed to market and pro-
mote the hell out of his products, which certainly counts for something.
These new Diamond Disc Phonographs were promoted via what Edison
referred to as Tone Tests. There is a promo film he made called The Voice of the Violin (oddly, for something promoting a sound recorder, it was a silent film) that helped publicize the Tone Tests. Edison was marketing and selling the
DAV I D BY R N E | 77
Edison “sound” more than any specific artist. Initially he didn’t even put the names of the artists on the discs, but there was always a sizable picture of Edison himself.A He also held Mood Change Parties (!) in which the (naturally positive) emotional impact and power of recorded music was demonstrated. (No
NIN or Insane Clown Posse played at those parties, I guess.) Lastly, the Diamond Disc used proprietary technology; the Edison discs couldn’t be played on the Victor machines, and vice versa. We haven’t learned much in that respect, it seems—Kindles, iPads, Pro Tools, MS Office software—the list of proprietary insanity is endless. It’s a small comfort that such nonsense isn’t new.
The Tone Tests themselves were public demonstrations in which a famous
singer would appear on stage along with a Diamond Disc player playing a
recording of that same singer singing the same song. The stage would be
dark. What the audience heard would alternate between the sound of the disc
and the live singer, and the audience had to guess which they were hearing. It worked—the public could not tell the difference. Or so we’re told. The Tone
Tests toured the country, like a traveling show or an early infomercial, and audiences were amazed and captivated.
We might wonder how this could be possible. Who remembers “Is it
real or is it Memorex?” These early recorders had a very limited dynamic
and frequency range; how could anyone really be fooled? Well, for start-
ers, there was apparently a little stage trick-
A
ery involved. The singers were instructed to
try to sound like the recordings, to sing in
a slightly pinched manner and with a lim-
ited range of volume. It took some practice
before they could master it. (You have to
wonder how audiences fell for this.)
Sociologist H. Stith Bennett suggests
that over time we developed what he calls
“recording consciousness,” which means we
internalize how the world sounds based on
how recordings sound.3 He claims that the
parts of our brain that deal with hearing act
as a filter and, based on having heard lots
of recorded sound, we simply don’t hear
things that don’t fit that sonic template. In
78 | HOW MUSIC WORKS
Bennett’s view, the recording becomes the ur-text, replacing the musical
score. He implies that this development might have led us to listen to music more closely. By extension, one
exactly a promising business model.
Edison set this apparatus aside for over a decade, but he eventually went
back to tinkering with it, possibly due to pressure from the Victor Talking
Machine Company, which had come out with recordings on discs. Soon he felt
he’d made a breakthrough. In 1915, when Edison demonstrated his new version
of an apparatus that recorded onto discs, he was convinced that now, finally, playback was a completely accurate reproduction of the speaker or singer being captured. The recording angel, the acoustic mirror, had arrived. Well, hearing those recordings, we might now think that he was somewhat deluded about
how good his gizmo was, but he certainly seemed to believe in it, and he managed to convince others too. Edison was a brilliant inventor, a great engineer, but also a huckster and sometimes a ruthless businessman. (He didn’t even
really “invent” the electric light bulb—Joseph Swan in England had made them previously, though Edison did establish that tungsten would be the great long-lasting filament for that device.) And he usually managed to market and pro-
mote the hell out of his products, which certainly counts for something.
These new Diamond Disc Phonographs were promoted via what Edison
referred to as Tone Tests. There is a promo film he made called The Voice of the Violin (oddly, for something promoting a sound recorder, it was a silent film) that helped publicize the Tone Tests. Edison was marketing and selling the
DAV I D BY R N E | 77
Edison “sound” more than any specific artist. Initially he didn’t even put the names of the artists on the discs, but there was always a sizable picture of Edison himself.A He also held Mood Change Parties (!) in which the (naturally positive) emotional impact and power of recorded music was demonstrated. (No
NIN or Insane Clown Posse played at those parties, I guess.) Lastly, the Diamond Disc used proprietary technology; the Edison discs couldn’t be played on the Victor machines, and vice versa. We haven’t learned much in that respect, it seems—Kindles, iPads, Pro Tools, MS Office software—the list of proprietary insanity is endless. It’s a small comfort that such nonsense isn’t new.
The Tone Tests themselves were public demonstrations in which a famous
singer would appear on stage along with a Diamond Disc player playing a
recording of that same singer singing the same song. The stage would be
dark. What the audience heard would alternate between the sound of the disc
and the live singer, and the audience had to guess which they were hearing. It worked—the public could not tell the difference. Or so we’re told. The Tone
Tests toured the country, like a traveling show or an early infomercial, and audiences were amazed and captivated.
We might wonder how this could be possible. Who remembers “Is it
real or is it Memorex?” These early recorders had a very limited dynamic
and frequency range; how could anyone really be fooled? Well, for start-
ers, there was apparently a little stage trick-
A
ery involved. The singers were instructed to
try to sound like the recordings, to sing in
a slightly pinched manner and with a lim-
ited range of volume. It took some practice
before they could master it. (You have to
wonder how audiences fell for this.)
Sociologist H. Stith Bennett suggests
that over time we developed what he calls
“recording consciousness,” which means we
internalize how the world sounds based on
how recordings sound.3 He claims that the
parts of our brain that deal with hearing act
as a filter and, based on having heard lots
of recorded sound, we simply don’t hear
things that don’t fit that sonic template. In
78 | HOW MUSIC WORKS
Bennett’s view, the recording becomes the ur-text, replacing the musical
score. He implies that this development might have led us to listen to music more closely. By extension, one
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