Quincy Jones is one of the biggest names in production, working with everyone from Michael Jackson to Count Basie. Sometimes the producer will even overshadow the artist, and the singer or band that formerly hogged the limelight will be a secondary attraction to the producer. Timbaland produced some of the biggest hits of the 00s and released two albums under his own name. Read more about some of the most influential music producers of the 21st century HERE.
Honey, I shrunk the studio. The size of the technology needed to record successful albums has radically decreased over time. There is now no need for an elaborate studio, and artists can mix and even create music on laptops. DAWs Digital Audio Workstations rule the roost now, and put the laptop at the core of music production for the time being at least. Streaming is the main way in which we hear new music, and the internet is the main channel through which it is distributed.
But this may change sooner than we think…. Monday, 12th April, In , Digidesign released the first Pro Tools , which needed additional dedicated hardware to simultaneousely process up to four audio tracks. Pro Tools was also the reason for many professional recording studios to switch to a digital editing system.
During this time various other manufacturers also released hardware assisted DAWs for Windows and Mac. The software interface was modeled after analog mixing consoles that used additional external effect-racks — this layout of the interface soon got imitated by other DAW manufacturers.
At the same time the VST-protocol was introduced, which established itself as the quasi-standard for the programming of plugins. Another milstone in music production history happend in when the Frauenhofer Institute started to develop the MPEG-1 Audiolayer III Mp3 format — one of the most influental developments in music history. Devices such as the iPod and the advent of the internet fueled the success of the MP3 format.
Music production history has given rise to many groundbreaking inventions that make it easy nowadays to record music at home. Even with a small budget, high quality recordings can be produced in a small homestudio and, thanks to the internet, music can be made accessible to millions of listeners worldwide.
The first important component in every homestudio is a laptop, desktop PC or tablet that has enough computing power to simultanousely play back several audio tracks and their applied effects. Your computer should at least have a USB 2. The next crucial element is the audio-interface or soundcard. Depending on the connectivity options of your computer, you can use a USB 2. Each connection has certain advantages, which I will examine in a separate post.
In professional recording studios also PCIe interfaces are in use. The audio interface should at least have one microphone input with a preamp and one instrument input.
The microphone converts the vibrations of the air, that are generated by sound source, into electricity. At the moment of conversion the highest possible resolution is needed and therefor, the microphone needs to be high grade. Nowadays, there is a huge selection of affordable, high-quality microphones available. At the end of the signalchain the electrical voltage must be converted back into vibrations of the air.
This task is getting done by loudspeakers, so-called studio monitors , or good studio headphones no iPhone headphones. Similar to microphones, good monitors and headphones are also very affordable nowadays. Mixing-consoles and countless outboard gear are the tools of yesterday — nowadays the software defines the sound of your recordings and shapes your production workflow.
First, you will need a DAW to edit and later mix your recorded tracks. There are several DAWs available on the market, which all have similar capabilities but also have unique strengths and weaknesses. Every DAW comes with a set a stock-plugins, that cover a wide range of recording- and mixing-applications. There are also countless third-party manufactureres who develop plugins for special applications or offer emulations of vintage gear.
With this third-party plugins you can enhance every DAW and create and refine your own workflow. Software instruments virtual instruments are usually the cornerstone of productions of many songwriters and producers. They are often based on samples drums, piano, orchestra or are emulations of old hardware units synthesizers, drummachines.
DAWs like Cubase usually come with a small selection of software instruments, so you can start making music immediately. Like with plug-ins there is also a large number of third-party software available. In modern homestudios the technological breakthroughs of the last years are combined in just a few devices.
Composing and producing music is as easy as never before and with the knowledge of where this technologies originated, you can expand your own horizon as a producer and musician. It can also be a quite satisfying experience to delve into the music of different eras and discover something new for yourself. If you have other questions about homerecording feel free to browse through all my homerecording posts. Header-image: Google image search Sources: Wikipedia.
For people who are getting started with music, production terms like mixing, mastering, recording,…. Read more. The pre-production is the one part in music production that many musicians do not know much about. You've carefully recorded all your instruments with the best possible audio quality and you've put…. Thanks to modern technology, almost anyone can produce their music at home - even with a low-budget…. Nowadays songs get mixed on headphones, music is consumed via cellphone speakers but also played on….
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Chaliapin in a performance at Covent Garden, May Amazingly vivid sound from almost 80 years ago. Of these only two survive, neither of which was published, good though they are. Four days later came a milestone in opera history: the farewell performance of Dame Nellie Melba. A total of 11 sides were recorded including speeches by Lord Stanley and Dame Nellie herself.
Dame Nellie Melba two weeks later with her farewell speech. No acoustic recording system could have captured that. Just over a week later, the engineers turned their attention to the then greatest living Otello, Giovanni Zenatello. With his huge voice, the result must have been totally unusable. The four surviving sides show the extraordinary progress the engineers had made. The Western Electric system, good though it was, did have a cost. For each record sold and made by that process, a royalty was payable.
The system itself was leased rather than sold outright. All the major record companies therefore made serious attempts to develop their own systems that did not infringe WE patents but that would result in equally good or better recordings. Columbia engineers in the UK, led by Holman and Blumlein, were streets ahead in the race. When the Gramophone Co. The WE system used a moving-iron cutter head that was heavily damped to prevent the inherent resonances: the Blumlein cutter was a moving coil type which used feedback to damp the movement.
The recordings made with it tend to have a freedom that could sometimes be missing from the WE system. More importantly for EMI, it was free of royalty payments. Blumlein himself went on to develop stereo recording on disc and film before getting involved in secret radar work for the Government. He was killed whilst testing airborne radar when his plane was shot down during the war. The Blumlein lathe.
As might be expected, the Americans were trying to do exactly the same thing — to circumvent the WE patents. It was certainly capable of producing loud records, and RCA wasted no time in exploiting that feature. RCA Victor often abused their system! Lucrezia Bori in Loud and a terrible balance. It is likely that a vocal booth was used for the soloist. Giovanni Martinelli, Pagliacci Spacious sound, well recorded. Even at the slower linear speed, the frequency response is more than adequate.
Considering its date, and slow speed, the results are remarkable, and far better than the contemporary sound-on-film systems, although much more cumbersome of course. Such a format was never going to be suitable for home music reproduction. These first LPs were not an unqualified success.
America was in the middle of a depression and money was scarce. The new records needed specialist replay equipment that was not sold cheaply — a mistake Columbia did not make when post-war LP was introduced.
Even for those who did invest, the promises of high quality with long playing time did not quite work out. Too often the quality was poor, and in fact most of the LPs were actually dubbings from 78s. It was recorded on the 7th April both on 10 standard 78 rpm sides and on 5 LP sides. The results were very variable. An American transcription lathe. A press for 16 inch transcription discs.
Here the sound is good, however the other side is not. The reverse side demonstrates what happens when it went wrong — a distorted and wiry sound which characterised many of this series.
Although pre-war LP was not a commercial success, it did hang on until the late s. Not hi-fi, but because what was there was clean and undistorted it sounded very good, and so obviously had improved during the decade.
Gigli — Aprile ] mp3 file. More, however, was to come with the ability to store a much wider range of frequencies - up to 14,Hz and more - on disc. This came about with the need by various government agencies to be able to record higher frequencies for a variety of secret purposes, including anti-submarine warfare. National Symphony Orchestra, Sargent. Halina —Stefanska, Chopin. Although first invented in , magnetic recording needed sophisticated electronics and a reliable medium.
While some work was carried out in the US and Britain, it was the Germans who really made it all work. When the Allies requisitioned German radio stations in , tape recording was found to have advanced way beyond pre-war capabilities. Compared to performances on contemporary 78rpm disc it is truly remarkable.
Half-hour tapes could accommodate whole movements of a symphony. But then came the scissor and sticky tape boys, and nothing has been the same ever since.
The ability to edit seamlessly was the final piece in the jigsaw for the Long Playing Record. So it was that by the time the recording industry began to recover after the War all the technology was available to produce long-playing discs with a much better frequency response, carrying recordings that had been edited to give the cleanest possible performance.
This is not the place for a history of recording from LP onwards. There are plenty already on the shelves. Suffice it to say that for all its convenience replaced of course by the CD , the LP lacks the immediacy and that partial illusion of a live performance that characterises the By the early s, all 78s were purely transfers from tape, and in that form held on for a few years before being completed ousted by the LP.
This has been a brief look at the history of recording, principally on disc. Of necessity, some technical explanations have had to be simplified and much of the chronology compressed. For further reading, the following will repay their study. Courtney Bryson. The Gramophone Record. An exhaustive study of the manufacture of gramophone records at that time. Roland Gelatt. The Fabulous Phonograph. A good general history.
Fred Gaisberg. The Music Goes Round. Romanticised version of the history to , with many inaccuracies, but entertaining and useful nonetheless. Joseph Batten. Rockliff Another useful work, especially as seen from the Columbia perpective. Geoffrey Jones. The Gramophone Company: an Anglo-American multinational, Business History Review , Vol. Contacts Sitemap. Sound Files Sound Files Search. A Brief History of Recording to ca.
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