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This week has seen the passing of Geoff Emerick, who served as sound engineer on The Beatles’ Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums, starting at the age of just 20. His death hasn’t generated as much interest as those of George Martin or George Harrison, partly because his role was junior to other people working on the record, but mainly because even now most people are not fully aware of what the job of a sound engineer entails or why it is important. Songwriters have ideas, producers have a grand plan, musicians perform, but it’s the sound engineer who allows these things to come together to make a recording. They may view themselves as technicians, aiming to reproduce a sound accurately (though ‘accurately’ is one of those things that means very different things to different people) or they may be working to mould the sound in subtle, often barely audible ways. ‘Revolver’, for example, has been called a “concept LP about close-miking,” after Emerick insisted on breaking EMI rules to give the album that distinctively vibrant, intimate sound.

This tension between the technical and the creative has been there since the start. The father of sound engineering is a man called Fred Gaisberg, a piano player from New York who found himself working first for Berliner Gram-O-Phone, then its successor company, The Gramophone Company, later known as HMV. He viewed himself very much as outside the creative process, hoping to faithfully capture as many performances as he could with the limited time and materials available. Even with this approach, however, he managed to set up many of the standards which would be used by sound engineers for the rest of the acoustic era. Here is his description of the setup of a studio in New York, based on one of Gaisberg’s technical drawings

“Two recording horns are used, with the violins (which recorded least well) nearest to them. Squashed around them are the woodwind players, who would have been reinforcing the string parts. Behind them, but higher, were most of the brass, with the French horns facing backwards in order to direct the sound from their bells into the recording horn, the players following the conductor in a mirror. The conductor is pushed out of the way to the side where he can be seen but doesnâ€t obstruct the sound. Bassoons reinforce the ‘cellos, and a tuba and contrabassoon replace double basses, which would not have recorded adequately. Another surviving photograph shows Paderewski recording into a pair of horns and, unusually, it allows us to see something of the coupling mechanism. For a typical studio layout for a recording of voice with piano accompaniment, the horn is hung right in front of the singerâ€s mouth, and the upright piano is set above and behind the singer at a height that ensures that the maximum amount of piano sound enters the horn. Pianists were instructed to play fortissimo throughout. Singers, on the other hand, had to move towards the horn for quieter passages, and away for louder notes to avoid distortion. Inexperienced soloists were guided back and forth by an assistant, sometimes on a form of trolley!”

from “A Brief History of Recording to ca. 1950” by Roger Beardsley and Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music

We have already encountered Fred’s work in a few different forms. It was he who fought to standardise releases as shellac records to be played at 78rpm, and he who set out to travel the world, recording Alessandro Moreschi and the first discs by Caruso, and doing much to set in motion recording in Asia and South America. It’s due to him that this mix has such an international feel – not only in anthropological recordings, but in capturing exciting new kinds of music from Mexico, Cuba and Argentina. The third track in this mix, from the orchestra of Enrique Peña Sánchez, sounds for all the world like a frantic early jazz recording, a clear illustration of the Hispanic influence on what was not yet even called ‘jass’, and evidence for what Jelly Roll Morton later referred to as his music’s “Spanish tinge.” How directly it connected, however, we still cannot know, for though recordings were taking place all over the world, we still have nothing from dance bands in New Orleans.

That’s a minor quibble, though. In 1907 there is a lot to celebrate.

Tracks

Enrico Caruso – Vesti La Giubba (I Pagliacci) 00:00 Unknown – Sunderland Home Cylinder 33 02:17 Vess L. Ossman – Maple Leaf Rag 02:23 Orquesta De Enrique Peña – Los Guajiros De La Yaya 05:01 Octavio Yáñez – Anita 06:27 Ángel Villoldo – El Negro Alegre 08:34 Orquesta De Pablo Valenzuela – Happy Hobbs 10:11 Steve Porter – Flanagan’s Troubles In A Restaurant 12:14 Edison Vaudeville Company – An Amateur Minstrel Rehearsal 14:25 Billy Murray – I’d Rather Two-Step Than Waltz, Bill 14:52 Peerless Trio – Three Rubes Seeing New York 15:56 Ada Jones And Len Spencer – Burying The Hatchet 17:52 Eddie Morton – That’s Gratitude 18:33 Peerless Quartet – The New Parson At The Darktown Church 21:03 Ada Jones And Billy Murray – Smile, Smile, Smile 21:34 Albert Whelan – The Miser 23:51 Arthur Pryor’s Band – The King Of Rags 24:14 Yolande Noble And Percy Clifton – Buying The Christmas Dinner 25:54 Zonophone Concert Band – The Smiler 26:22 Carl Lüdicke – Der Musikalische Clown 28:18 Edison-Orchester (Berlin) – Alarmierung Der Berliner Feuerwehr 29:57 Gustav Schönwald And Fraulein Vincent – Am Telephon 30:17 Steidl-Quartett – Katzenliebe 30:48 Gustav Schönwald – Nachtliches Abenteuer Eines Studenten 31:53 August Molinari – Street Piano Medley 32:41 Gilbert Girard And Len Spencer – The Vagabonds (Roger And I) 34:49 Antonio Scotti – Sortita D’amonasro 35:14 Emma Calve – Habanera from Carmen 36:01 Maria A. Mikhalova Acc. Boris S. Troyanovsky – Why Should I Live And Grieve Alone? 37:30 Dmitry Bogemsky – The Tossing Of The Steamer 39:30 Orchestra ‘Harmonia’, Conductor Vasily Varshavsky – Sighs 40:06 P. A. Strakhov – The Departure Of A Train 40:56 Chorus Of Terek And Kuban Cossacks Of The Guards Of The Governor Of His Imperial Majesty In Caucasus, Conductor Mikhail Kolotilin – Walking On Water 41:15 Choir Of Makvaneti – Naduri 42:09 Count Leo Tolstoy – Excerpt From ‘Guidelines For Everyday Living’ 43:46 Choir Of Tbilisi – Metiuri 43:54 Victor Orchestra – A Hunt In The Black Forest 44:43 Mme Rollini – Ne M’ Chatouillez Pas 46:59 Bérard – Chargez 48:32 John J. Kimmel – Cakewalk 49:14 Fréjol – C’ Que Tu M’as Fait 50:24 Unknown – Sunderland Home Cylinder 18 51:41 Vesta Victoria – It Ain’t All Honey And It Ain’t All Jam 52:10 Edison Vaudeville Company – At The Village Post Office 53:19 Florrie Forde – I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside 53:42 Ada Jones – I’m In Love With The Slide Trombone 55:30 Edith Helena – Cavalleria Rusticana. Intermezzo; Arr. 57:42 Edison Venetian Trio – Sonoma 59:36 Gramophone Orchestra, Conductor I. P. Arkadev – The Music Box 59:49 Picolines Duet – Two Little Finches 1:00:43 Arthur Pryor’s Band – The Lion Chase 1:01:35 Banda De Policía – Álbum Recreativo Variacones De Saxofón Soprano 1:04:55 Antonio Hidalgo – Un Meeting De Raza 1:06:48 Martin Silveira – Nueva York 1:07:15 Arturo De Nava – Décimas Del Sargento 1:08:31 Uncredited Ensemble – Khaek Lopburi 1:09:42 Albert Benzler – The Chapel In The Woods 1:11:11 Alice Shaw & Her Twin Daughters – Spring-Tide Revels 1:12:10 George Islon – Christmas Eve In The Old Homestead 1:12:57 Billy Murray – So What’s The Use? 1:13:23 Percy Clifton – Dick Whittington 1:16:27 Edward M. Favor – Theodore 1:16:47 Choir Of The Royal Court Opera With Orchestra And Church Bells, Acc. Harmonium, Bells – Silent Night, Holy Night 1:18:47