History of Recorded Sound

Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Nessuna parte di questa pubblicazione potrà essere riprodotta, archiviata in sistemi di ricerca e trasmessa in qualunque forma elettronica, meccanica, fotocopiata, registrata o altro senza il permesso dell'editore, degli autori e del curatore.

Over the past hundred years, philosophers of music have debated the nature of, and relations that hold between, musical works and their performances. The gradual proliferation of recording and reproduction technologies over the same period further complicated such debates, encouraging some contemporary philosophers to consider similar relations between musical works and their recordings. In recent years, profound changes in the nature of such technologies have resulted in a new phenomenon, in which recordings of the past have been transferred from their original medium into the digital domain. Responding to this phenomenon, thisarticle assesses the relations that hold between musical works, recordings and their digitisations. It starts by surveying existing theories that relate works and performances, paying particular attention to the realist notion of types and tokens. It goes on to consider three possibilities in which this notion might be employed and adapted in order to account for existence of recordings and their digitisations. The final of these three possibilities, which is viewed as the most plausible, does not merely offer a revisionist account of ongoing philosophical debates. Rather, it argues for a radical expansion of our understanding of musical works, and addresses the complex network of relations that they enter into with regard to recordings and digitisations.

Since the invention of recording, the impact of this area of technology on musical practices and how we consume them has been profound and only increases with each passing decade. The catalogue of equipment to assist in the task of music production is now almost endless, and the link between the two fields is inextricable now, in the 21st century - to the point that styles of modern ‘popular’ styles under the umbrella of electronic music could not be created without a digital audio workstation (DAW). As well as the impact on the way music is made, this has also altered how music is received by audiences, in a world where most music is now not witnessed live with a group of people, but recorded, and often, individually. I will outline some areas of  technology and their uses within (and impact on) musical practices, including microphones, vinyl and other means of mass producing, and sound processing and effects.

The following is an unpublished outline for the "Australian Discographic Reissue Project" - an unrealised venture that would have seen Australia's entire recorded output of 78rpm recordings (from 1925-1958) digitised, remastered, researched and reissued through a combination of physical CDs and digital outlets like iTunes and Spotify.