100 Years Ago Recording Studios Got a New Tool: Microphones
One of the most significant innovations in recorded music took place a century ago in New York City. On Feb. 25, 1925, Art Gillham, a musician known as 'the Whispering Pianist' for his gentle croon, entered Columbia Phonograph Company's studio to test out a newly installed electrical system. Its totem was positioned in front of him, level with his mouth: a microphone.
This was the moment when the record industry went electric. By the end of the year, a writer for the Washington, D.C. newspaper the Evening Star marveled at 'the capitulation of the world's leading musical artists to the power of the microphone.' (Hollywood's sound revolution with 'talkies' wasn't far behind.) Today, a performer's microphone technique can help define their sound. Yet no plaque marks the spot where Gillham made history with the first commercially released electrical recording.
Archivists at the oldest label in the world, now owned by Sony Music, cannot confirm the studio's exact location. The best guess is a site now occupied by the Rose Theater, the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue in Midtown Manhattan where Columbia's offices once stood. The current building, a vast glass complex in Columbus Circle, is also home to the recording studio for Jazz at Lincoln Center's in-house label, Blue Engine Records.
Todd Whitelock, an award-winning engineer who runs the studio, called the advent of the microphone the most important technological development in recorded music. 'It's got to be the top of the pyramid,' he said in an interview from his home studio in Cranford, N.J.
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, and the period until 1925 is known as the acoustical era. A conical recording horn would capture the music being performed; sound waves caused a stylus to cut grooves into a rotating wax disc, marking it with audio information.
Whitelock collects antique 78 rpm records, which he plays on a windup Victrola phonograph. 'Acoustical recordings are magnificent, but there's no dynamic range,' he said. 'It all stays at the same volume. Be it pianissimo or mezzo piano or forte, it's all one dynamic.'
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