September 5, 2024 • 53 mins
This week, Clairsy & Lisa have been on a musical time machine, uncovering the fascinating evolution of recorded sound, thanks to our friends at the National Film & Sound Archive.
We spun the dial all the way back to the days of the phonographic cylinder, winding our way through the iconic eras of vinyl, cassettes, and CDs, before landing in today’s digital age.
Whether you’re a lover of crackling records or a champion of crystal-clear streams, this podcast will give you a front-row seat to the soundtrack of history!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a journey, this is pop up the valuele
Plesy releases The History of Sound.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Oh. This week we're going to look at the history
of sound and the National Film and Sound Archive of
Australia have currently teamed up with us to talk about it.
Today we're going right back to the start. We'll be
phonograph cylinder and welcome Torston Kating, the curator the National
Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Hallow Torston Sawston Welcome,
(00:28):
great to be with you. Thank you for joining us.
Now let's start with the first question. What is a
phonograph cylinder. That's a very good question.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Phonograph cylinder is the first really attempt at recording sound
that actually worked and was able to be played back.
If you think of the phonograph, if you think of
like a wooden box about the size.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Of a small sewing machine.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Onto that, you put a cylinder which is checked a
little bit like the inside of a toile. It roll
and originally they were made out of wax and you
put a needle on that and it'd be a huge
horn coming off it, and you did both record and
playback sound off of it.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Quite phenomenal. How how did the actual recording process work.
I mean, what's the magic.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The magic is is entirely acoustic, So the ris is
pre amplification, pre electricity, no microphones involved. Someone would go
up to the machine and they would yell or play
something down the horn, which would then move air down.
It would go onto a membrane which had a needle
on it. That needle would cut into the wax around
(01:43):
the cylinder, and when you wanted to play it back,
you put a different membrane and needle on it and
it would play back to sound out of that horn.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Wow, do you know what the first thing recorded on
one was by Keith Richards? I imagine possibly?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Possibly, No, that's a real big point of contention. Weren't wax.
They were actually made out of tinfoil, so those tin
foil ones don't survive, so we don't really know. And
claims it was him singing a nursery rhyme on it,
(02:24):
but we don't know for sure.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Edison was always putting his name up for his hand up.
What kind of crazy mind is this, you know, coming
to on that first? Who thought I'm going to make
a cylinder from tinfoil and we're going to record songs
on it. It's as incredible, you know it was.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
It wasn't mistaken. And to his credit, Edison did take
credit for a lot of things, but he was no, no,
but he was actually the first one to do that
hoarding sound. So that was around eighteen seventy seven, about
twenty years beforehand, they had were the first attempts at
(03:08):
recording sound, but they were using magnetic devices to do that,
but that never really came to fruition. So Edison eighteen
seventy seven, with his tinfoil tube was the first one.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Imagine his shared to Austin, what was the maximum length
of you know that you could record on them?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well, to start off with, when the first wax Cylanders
came out, because about ten years after the tinfoil they
moved to wax, which was much more robust. You're looking
at about two to three minutes. And that's no real
coincidence that the length of pop songs ever since it's
around about two to three minutes.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, Yeah, had the Beatles on.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
The right, yeah, no long die straight album tracks on
the road, that's the one. Yeah, And how many times
could you play them over? Especially the wax ones.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, when they first came out in the eighteen eighties
early eighteen nineties, you'd get a couple of dozen plays
because every time the needle went into the wax, it
just took a little bit of that wax out.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yes, but they were actually were designed initially for dictation,
and you could actually shave. Yeah, you could shave the
wax off and re record on them, which is.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
What people would do.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
But as they got better at the technology and moved
into away from wax and started to use an early
form of plastics nitrate. Yes, you could get hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of plays out of them, and we're
still able to play them today.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Oh, that is amazing. I did read that they may
have been used in some very early jukeboxes.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, there were lots of different ways that they were using,
but they really quite fragile. Oh yeah, and the cellulose ones,
so that never really worked as well as the flat discs.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, well, that's incredible. How much do people know about
this stuff? We're getting educated here today, but the people
obviously very curious about this kind of stuff, And do
people know much about it?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Tauston, There's lots of people that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Know a huge amount about cylinders, and they were sold
in huge quantities. By the end of their sort of run,
so we're talking about the early nineteen teens to nineteen fifteen,
they were sold in hundreds of thousands all around the world,
so they're still everywhere now. We still get offers of
(05:40):
people who are cleaning out garages and sheds who have
huge amounts of wax and cellulose cylinders that they want
to donate to us.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Gosh, they'd go up. There was a fire that Gamble
Price movie Tauston. Are they used in any way for
any reason today?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
No, they're really obsolete now. Yea once, once the flat
disc came in and took over from them, they were
used for quite a long time as for dictation. Ironically,
what Edison's originally had them for anyone who knows the
long running radio series Blue Hills, every episode of that
(06:24):
was the script was recorded on wax cylinders as as
a nictaphone. But nowadays no, it's just for the people
who are a little bit obsessed with them.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
We've we've re recorded music.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
On wax cylinders at the National Film and Sound Dark
Eye people like the Basics with with Gottcha did a
recording for us on wax.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Have done as well.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So yeah, people go to our website dot dot au
look up wax cylinders. You can actually go and listen
to those recordings and listen to how different acoustic recording
you is competed to amplified recording.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Incredible cylinder. I used to know, Yeah it was it
just a bit ginny was it two lady is?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
It's really interesting. Some instruments are really hard to record
because it's about pushing air.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Down that.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Horn, so things like guitars, violins really difficult, whereas brass
instruments that's the one. Marches and comic songs and brass
bands were really popular on cylinders because they all produced
enough air to move that needle and get a great soundback.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, fascinating. It's a lot easier to store music today
than this would have been a room full of cylinders.
Justin thank you for getting us away on the beginning
of our history of We're going to talk to you
again later in the week. Absolutely pleasure, Thank you bye.
Now I learned about it things, had no idea about
that clzy do we do? You have an example there
(08:11):
of a nineteen ten recording of the song that we
all know, of course on New Years it feels like
New Years, doesn't at all. You're freny sing along. It's
not it's it's not twenty twenty five year sottle bit
crackly my place. Oh god, god, wow, it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
That's nineteen ten, as you mentioned, yeah by Frank C.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Stanley Free First World War. That's amazing, isn't it. Well,
that is amazing.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Yeah, So we've learned a hell of a lot there,
but we will learn more throughout the week as we
go through.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, the time sequence with sound. You know you
always avoided getting your thumbprints on your vinylie. Yeah, yeah,
imagine putting your thumb on your wack. I mean it
just didn't catch.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, we'll mention the kids, melting them down to say
I was trying to make candle man.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
This is a journey.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It will pop up the value of crazy releases.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The history of sound. This week we are looking at
the history of sound and the National Film and Sound
Archive of Australia has kindly teamed up with us to
talk all about it. Today. We are looking at vinyl records.
I mean, who can forget doing this? That's a well
worn one. Is well sounded like that from the National
(09:40):
Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Crispian Windsor good morning, welcome.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Good morning, Yes, good to talk to you both, Thanks.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
For joining us. Now, when was the first vinyl record made?
Speaker 5 (09:53):
It was nineteen forty eight. That's when, so things start
to get a bit different than where shlack records up
to that point. But then they wind records to go
a bit longer and to be made of more of
a durable quality, and nineteen forty eight was the first
time that was done. And I think they were sold
in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Include seventy eight and forty five, and.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Well seventy eights. Forty five was slightly later, so it
was seventy eight still in nineteen forty eight. Yeah, they
were certainly around on sheillac but that was still the
standard in nineteen forty eight until they started to get
the bigger thirty three C three inches C three up
in sorry yeah, yeah, twelve inches seven inch discs witch
(10:34):
of forty five revolutions permittent correct.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Okay, so what's Can you explain what schillacke is for
status so we can know we're going from because I
think of a Shalakan in the forty's what was.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Yeah, well it was a much different sort of piece
of material where it was very very brittle, and the
sound wasn't that great either, but it was very easy
to break and it didn't take much further things to
for She'll act just to shatter this, and yeah, the
sound wasn't fantastic either, so something had to be done.
(11:05):
I think at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Why were there so many formats and recording lengths with
the vinyl album? There were a lot.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It took them a long time to come up with
the sort of a standardized size and format. There were
some the speeds at points sometimes it was a slow
at sixty revolutions per minute, and even as fast as
one hundred and thirty revolutions per minute, which is pretty fast.
(11:32):
It took a long time. They really didn't. The records
weren't standardized to seventy eight rpm until muchs later, and
then in nineteen forty eight is when there standardized more
into seventiesh discs and twelve inch discs.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
H absolutely move.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
We'll be into the second hand shop or spoken to
Nana and saying those really old heavy things they've built,
like yeah, they were very weighty, very sick, weren't they.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Absolutely, yeah, they're really heavy.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Yeah, I don't have any myself, but yeah, you can
still see them around in off tops and things like that.
At times.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I always used to be fascinated by the fact that
my albums just had the little hole to put, you know,
over the you know, onto the record player, and my
dad's old seventy eighths had like a big sort of
elaborate pattern in the middle that was cut out. Why
are the different cutouts, Well, that's a.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Very American thing, mainly with it was just the juke boxes.
So theah, yeah, we used to juke boxes. You can
still get them around, some people still make them with
a bigger hole, But basically it was the jukeboxes in
America primarily.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And as also, is that why they're measured in inches?
Just an American thing.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Totally, yeah, And for some reason that never changed when
it went around the World's always sayed changed yea seven
inch and.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Twelve inches because most of my twelve inch remix extended
versions that I waited six months to come to a
ride of those were coming from the UK. So yeah, yes, yes,
Christ that's the reason. What about rock and roll, I
mean rock and roll.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
You know, the music changed, and so did the way
that people, young people bought music so that they really
annoy their parents.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It did change. Did the distribution changed to It didn't.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
That, I really did, And I think a lot of
that was to do with the portability of record players
as well. You start to get really small one so
people could sort of take any words to anybody's houses.
And vinyl really was a big revolution that, especially the
forty the seven inch discs around that time. Singles start
to be extremely popular in the nineteen fifties from the
onset of rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
When did the first vinyl pressing plant open in Australia?
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Well, it was actually CBS Records later Sony in nineteen
fifty four. That was the first one, and there used
to be several, but now there's currently only three pressing
plants in Australia.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Oh wow, isn't it? It started to pick up again
in recent times, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
That's the thing it has?
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Yeah, So there's one, there's two of one called Zennis
and one called program N. It's originally was called cord
that was around for a long time, but the program
is fairly new that's been about three or four years,
and there's also a fairly new one in Brisbane court
Suitcase Records.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
They are, of course, vinyl albums making a huge comeback.
What do you put it down to, Crispian.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
I think I think with when they were basically replaced
by CDs, they're very the artwork's very small on those,
and then when CDs start to go and be replaced
by digital. I think there's a lot of people, including myself,
which just loves the physical, physical product, and I think
vinyl with the size, you know, it's a real effort
(14:36):
to listen to vinyl in a way. Yeah, I think
a lot of people really love that, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, the learning experience all that. Yeah, the notes on
the album. You spent all day just lying there reading
that from beginning to end. Here the lyrics, the lyrics now.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Very important, Yeah, absolutely, And like I still remember lyrics
now just because I read them off vinyl back when
I the kids.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, hey christ and they were correct. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
This is want to go one of the clock back
to sort of like a sort of wartime, the First
and the Second World War and beyond that where servicemen
from the States would take blues records to the UK
and then eventually they ended up with a whole lot
of bands like the Stones and that with the British
invasion of the US, so it went all the way back.
But they were pretty pretty remarkable. So many people traveled
with records that didn't break.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think that was part of the
issue with Schilac originally. Yeah, got viny like that. Yeah,
I think that that was the reason why you're absolutely right.
I think a lot of people credit that's sort of
happening with Liverpool and the Beatles gainst so many records
because it was a port town there.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Of course, the main drawback of them, as we remember
was they would scratch and they would skip. Was there
were companies around the world trying the hardest to come
up with, you know, the magic answer to that, because
they would have made, you know, a mozza. Never no
one ever really did come up with an answer to it,
did they.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
No, they they didn't, they didn't. I think the only
thing you can get around it is cleaning records from
the get go. I clean all my records, whether they're
old or new. And the way that gets rid of
dust and dust is a part of the problem where
you start to get skipping and to the sixth sense, scratching.
It's hard to get rid of scratches, of course, but
you can get of dust and started quite easily.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
When you take it off, put it back in the bag,
don't just put it on the floorway put the next one.
To hear the end of that.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Exactly, Yeah, absolutely, I'm really poor on about all that stuff.
I don't have kids, so that probably helped.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Chrispian whether a couple of recent changes have been the
heavier vinyl. Can you explain what that means, because you know,
people spend seventy eight eighty ninety dollars on an album
now and in recent weeks we've given away these one
step albums that we gave away the last four weeks,
So what's the technology there, what's going on with those?
Speaker 5 (16:49):
I guess a lot of those will be to do
with virgin vinyl, so they're not recycled. It's the first
batch of vinyl. It's that technically, that should mean it's
the best quality and there's nothing else happening happening to them,
so it's version file. They are a lot heavier as
a result, and that's that's the way around. That is
just the better quality, technically, the best quality you can get.
(17:12):
But but that does make them expensive.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Of course. Do you play vinyl at home or are
you a stream?
Speaker 5 (17:21):
Oh no, no, I do stream as well, but I'm
very much final. I've got quite quite a large vinyl
collection and only DJ Vinyl was.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, what was your first vinyl record?
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Yeah, I think I think it's hard to say, but
I believe it might have been this whole house by
Shaking Stephens.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I think so well for the chief people here. Yeah,
it was a green door, let me go.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
It was like England's Elvis, wasn't he was?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
That's great, we're not judging, not that I have to say.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
It's not like I have it now.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
By the way, mine was probably ABBA's Arrival, so I
wasn't really idea. I played that to.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Death mine with Sherbert's How's that? Only because I made
my sister's bed for two weeks. She goes, I'll buy you,
and I reckon. I lasted about three days. You still
bought it for me.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Very sweet, great Christian, thank you so much for giving
us a bit more insight into the history of vinyl.
And it's good to know that there are still some
places in Australia pressing them.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah. Absolutely, And you can learn more about vinyl and
that Radio one hundred expression at an episode doc after
You're brilliant.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Excellent, Thanks Christian, Thanks very much. I can't believe you
know what are such a big amma fair everything ever,
I had so abber pillow case, a pillow case.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, you have a lunchbox? Oh probably, Yeah, I wouldn't
surprise me.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Have a T shirt the old beyond those albums.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
Can I be honest with you when I was a
little kid man, maybe a Beyorn Star guitar out of
wood he's pretty good. Would he made a wooden starget tape?
You couldn't play it had no strings. He had said
it on fire though you could say that wasn't really
every style was more more.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Lisa More podcast Soon.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
This is a journey in sound pop up, the value
of Lisa's The history of sound.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, well week we are looking at the history of
sound and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
have very kindly teamed up with us to talk about
the history of sound. Today, we're all about the cassette tape.
Welcome to Neil Hands from the National Film and Sound
Archive of Australia. Lo Toanil, Hey Toanil, Welcome, Hi, thanks
for having it.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
You any opportunity to talk about your sound.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Same So take us back to Neil who invented the
cassette tape.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Yeah, well a compact cassette or cassette tape, yes, was
invented by the leu Ottens in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Three for Phillips nineteen sixty three. Well yeah, but I
mean at the time I probably would have thought it
was even longer ago than that.
Speaker 7 (20:10):
It.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Dutch gave us the compact cassette as it used to
beat cassette and we ended up with a compact disc later.
But it was you know, the technology at the time
was probably pretty cool, although had its limitations.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
Absolutely. So you know, the tape as we know it
consists of two small spools of one in one a
magnetic tape which is enclosed in a plastic case and
it fits in the palm of your hand, and so
the tape has two sides. You have to take it
out and flip it to play it. And there's roughly
only about sixty to one hundred and twenty minutes of recording.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yes, and of course you had to fast forward now
the song you didn't lie.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
I'm tumbling around with it right now trying to get
a song on.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So was it designed for anything, for something specific other
than you know what we used it for.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
Mostly absolutely, So, you know, the origins of magnetic tape
are actually much earlier than the nineteen sixties. We've got
recordings on reels of wire in our collection that start
in the early nineteen hundreds and they were really intended
for field recordings or mostly on the domestic market for dictation, right.
(21:19):
But it was really you know, only as a lot
of companies began experimenting with tapes and with cartridges that
we got into a much cheaper, much smaller system. That
playing and recording became so much more accessible and so
you know, the first portable recorder available in Australia was
about eleven hundred dollars, which sounds like a lot, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
But it was.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
But all of a sudden, sound recording was being democratized.
I mean compared to a big studio system, parent having
a system in your house.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, the early computer it's very expensive. We were certainly
keen to lip that dictation in the bud were. Austin
said when we spoke to him on my day to Neil,
that that's what the phonograph cylinder was first. You know
four absolute dictation, right.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
I mean why it changed for us is that the
biggest innovation with tape as opposed to disc recording is
that with tape you can cut out sections, you can
splice sections together.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
So what we did was.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
We moved away from that dictation and the recording actuality
and you're able to construct a creative work.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
So what that meant is eventually we developed multi track
and stereo and lower distortion and it became a really cheap,
easy format for say, small underground acts in Australia. Yeah,
you've got perths the Triffids in the late seventies. Yes,
they had one hundred songs over their first two years
(22:49):
and they released six independent cassette tapes within two years
and they would sell them at gigs and that's how
they quickly distributed and became one of the most popular
bands and talk about them.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
It became It made the music more mobile as well,
didn't it. You could get out like my dad one
night went and saw Neil Diamond. I can't remember it
was soub Be Overall or the Whack and he recorded
the whole concert and the recording was awful because it
actually started wearing out. So the end of the game
like crunching out all this week us on his phone.
Yeah you could, yeah, but at least he got he
got a couple of songs. He got a couple at
the start of the gig that sounded a right. I
(23:21):
don't know if he ever played again, but we became
more mobile Momo with the music in.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
We definitely, I mean, and especially when the Walkman came
around in nineteen seventy nine, all of a sudden, you
had a player you could take anywhere, you can listen
to it by yourself, and you can custom make a
soundtrack for your own life.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Well this is I mean, The Walkman changed my life
because I was able to sit in the backseat of
the car on a road trip. This is on the
days where Mum and Dad chose the music and if
you didn't like it, I could sit in the back
and I could listen to David Bowie or whatever while
they've got Max Bargraves playing on their cassette tape in
the car sing along the mac and it was absolute.
(24:00):
It was freedom. Yeah, oh and that destiny pretty much choice.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
That's why it became the leading format from nineteen eighty
four to nineteen eighty two. I mean, the Walkman changed
everyone's lives, but we still had you know, there was
so much development and a real boom in cassette players.
We had them in cars from the nineteen sixty eight.
It really made it portable and enjoyable and it was
really picked up by surfers, you know, bringing them out
(24:30):
and playing them out the back of the vans and
blasting skyhooks and really did amazing things for the Australian industry.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yeah, they replaced the smaller cassettes, replacing the old eye
track because a lot of people are the eye tracks
in the curve something else.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Absolutely, that was you know, probably it wasn't the right thing,
but it was life changing. The cassettes was coming back
from Bali with a suitcase full of the dam things.
I mean, was this the very first example of pirating music.
I don't know if it's.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
The first example because we're kind of wily, but I
would say it definitely was a big concern for the
strain industry. They estimated that it was costing them about
four hundred and forty point eight million, and that's not
including just how easy tapes were to shop lift compared
to an LP.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah. I never gave that a pretty small slippy, but
I did pick them a few pirate copies.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Yeah, yeah, you might make them a mixtape so you
don't have to buy the album you know you album?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
No, I don't have to. Mixtapes were the first dating apps,
in my opinion, because we didn't know, we didn't have
social media to flirt. I found that the best. I
think if there was someone you liked, you made them
a mixtape. Oh really and that was the key to
their heart? Did you do that?
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Many looks.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
If you didn't make a mixtape for someone you cared
about it, I don't want to know you.
Speaker 8 (25:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
What at the revival?
Speaker 4 (26:00):
I mean it hasn't been as huge as as people
by going and buying vinyl, But there have been some
releases on cassettes in recent times, haven't they.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Absolutely.
Speaker 6 (26:07):
I think it has a large part to do with
no nostalgia. I think it's cheaper with an LP and labels.
While they're producing these digital releases, they'll often come with
a limited edition collectibook cassette and that comes with a
digital download with it. You know, the recent Barbie movie
released its soundtrack on a hot pink transparent cassette.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Oh my god, I love that one. First nostylegiap too,
isn't it. I do think they were sometimes the least
loved of all the forms, and yet they were the
one probably that did for me change so many things. Okay,
the quality might not have been as good as putting
on an album at home, but as I said it,
you know, I was on the move with it. But
(26:48):
when it got caught in the heads to take the
corner heads in your take was rubbish. How many you
trying to save your favorite? You've got the pencil, you're
trying to wind it that on and the moment you
get you that when you reached that moment where you think.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
No, it's gone, but do you recontinue? It's frustrating. I
can hear it in your voice.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
Oh absolutely, I mean I've done it myself, getting the
tape and getting it out and winding back with the
pencil and getting your own sticky tape and trying to
get it back together. Yeah, but do you know what
I don't think CDs fixed anything like that. They were
just I think they were more easily scratched and less
durable and more.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
When listening to them. Yeah, the skating kind of thing
on them.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Yeah, I think. I think cassetts are hard done by.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, they were sturdier. Well to Neil, thank you for
taking us through the history of the cassette today. It's
lovely to talk to you. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you by
so much.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Take care.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
This is a journey.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It pop up the value of releases, the history of sound.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Continuing our delve into the history of sound, we've moved
from the phonographic cylinder to vinyl, to cassette tapes to
arriving today a compact disc and joining us today. Assistant
Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia,
Nathan Smith.
Speaker 7 (28:06):
Good morning, good morning, Hey, how are you?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Thank you so much for joining us. No noble at
all who invented the earliest known version of the compact disc.
Speaker 7 (28:19):
Well, the early known version of compactist was created by
a guy named James T. Russell back in the sixties,
and he actually had a bit of a patent for
it in nineteen seventy. It wasn't until Sony and Phillips
actually kind of got a hold of the pattern and
actually really developed it into kind of what we know
(28:40):
it is today. But it took a little while for
James to kind of get his dues for creating the city,
but he actually did, and you know, I think they
ended up paying him back in the eighties. Yeah, well,
I actually think he's still I think he's like ninety
(29:01):
two or ninety three.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Well, yeah, how does the technology work? Make is these
shiny silver discs? And is the silver part important?
Speaker 7 (29:10):
Oh yeah, absolutely So. Obviously the disc was kind of creator,
so it's basically an evolution of like laser disc technology.
And then obviously, you know, the music is kind of
recorded as a digital kind of file, and this kind
of gets mastered and then it kind of essentially gets
etched onto the disc into like ones and zeros, and
(29:33):
then the laser is able to kind of pick up
those ones and zeros and kind of decode it back
into what we kind of know today. But the reason
why CDs kind of became so popular because it was
all about kind of the evolution of technology and you know,
kind of having like the better quality kind of files
(29:53):
of course, when James actually originally created the technology in
the sixties and seventies, he was actually classical music buff.
Yeah yeah, and he was just a little bit sick
and tired of the wear and tear on his CDs,
so he wanted kind of to kind of create something
that would kind of remove that wear and tear. So
(30:15):
we kind of created this like contactless type listening device.
Yeah yeah, so you so you were in theory you
would never have to touch a CD. CDs were kind
of kind of then presented to the public in you know,
the early eighties. I think they kind of first got
released in like nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. There's
a few different kind of theories as to kind of
(30:36):
what the actual first CDs were actually created, but some
of the really big popular ones that really popularized the
content was obviously Brothers and Arms like Distraits.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
They kind of got.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
Released in nineteen eighty two and went on to have
huge success.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
You mentioned Phillips and Sony joining together to get to
get this out. I mean, they were certainly were then
to absolute juggernauts of the audio world. They must have
they must have known they were absolutely one hundred onto
a winner.
Speaker 7 (31:10):
Oh, totally, absolutely, they were onto a winner. I mean,
obviously it was all about quality and just like the
evolution of kind of formats, which I mean, as you're
kind of previously discussed in the previous episodes, obviously starting
with cylinders and then going to vinyl and then going
to cassettes, and now we kind of found ourselves with
this shiny kind of compact disc which was actually really
(31:34):
cheap to kind of manufacture in only costs. The wholesale
cost of a CD back in the eighties was about
a dollar dollar fifteen, and they were selling I mean,
I don't know about you guys, but I remember CDs
being relatively expensive.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, they were like to buy.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Yeah, to buy a brand new CD back in the
nineties was twenty thirty dollars. They only cost about a
dollar maybe two dollars to make. Wow, So they were
making the most.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Absolutely, I still think that a lure of this the
shiny silver It was like a shiny.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Thing something from space nature. Yeah, yeah, shy distiness.
Speaker 7 (32:19):
But it was also too like having you know, like
it was like labor technology and it's cool. You know,
everybody wanted a CD player and they weren't that cheap either.
They were about one thousand dollars back in the eighties
for a really expensive viny was about fifteen hundred. Generally speaking,
they kind of decreased about three to five hundred dollars. Yeah, yeah,
(32:42):
and they kind of did get cheaper as kind of
time went on.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, I mean you think it's not a needle of
startus going into a groove of record vinyl record, but
they work without problems. If something got start cours skating,
they were driving crazy.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
For a while. Yeah, yeah, neither know.
Speaker 7 (33:04):
They didn't really like scratches, and they didn't like pinker print.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Now that's weird as an I yeah, skating around when
you're in the car, that movement, they didn't like that either.
Speaker 7 (33:13):
Yeah, which is a little ironicas I actually sold as
reasonably indestructible, as in you would buy a CD and
you would never have to kind of replace it because
it was like, you know, contactless kind of listening kind
of technology. But yeah, you're dead right the scratches and
(33:33):
then you know you could like you know, lose them
quite easily to because reasonably small as well.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, Nathan, I really feel like they were marketed to
us as just what you had to have like next
level sound quality because I slowly worked through my very
healthy record collection replacing everything with a CD. Because I
was one of these idiots, it was led to believe,
and I wasn't the only one that you know this,
(33:59):
you can't have better than this. I feel like we're
a little bit good we now when.
Speaker 8 (34:03):
You look back.
Speaker 7 (34:04):
Oh, totally, absolutely. I mean my format was during the
eighties and nineties was obviously SATIS and I literally had
thousands of years, yeah, quite so many, and I spent
a small fortune on them as well.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Over the years.
Speaker 7 (34:20):
And now I'm kind of going through the phase of
actually replacing my records with new vinyl copies.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I repeating my problem, Yeah, consumers. Yeah, but that's all right.
Speaker 7 (34:34):
It's kind of fun. And like you know, CDs are
still relevant to this day. People still release them. Like
my daughter, for example, him has been buying you know,
Taylor Swift CDs just so she can kind of, you know,
have something in her hand that she could kind of
connect with a little bit more physically.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
That we enjoyed about that, Yeah, absolutely, mate, And like
a lot of people didn't sell the records like at
least it did back in the day. But I'm finding
now even places like Facebook, Marketplace and that people selling CDs,
and then sometimes it's heartbreaking sea people selling two hundred
for fifty dollars, and you think, yeah, like what people
invested in those those discs when they were knew, Oh
(35:13):
my goodness.
Speaker 7 (35:14):
Yeah, absolutely, they do sell for kind of pretty cheap
these days, which is kind of a good thing and
a bad thing. I mean, at the end of the day,
we kind of pass things on, and you know, things
kind of change and technology changes and things are kind
of happening. But obviously, like the CDs was like the
basis for like other technology as well, Like they use
the CD format for like DVDs and Blu rays.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Going in the computer, and I was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And it.
Speaker 7 (35:40):
Wasn't just audio as well, Like obviously it was just
the idea of kind of storing data as well. So
in nineteen eighty five they created the CD ROM, which
was actually like which was actually a disc that would
kind of be read by your computer with data on it.
And then in nineteen ninety they actually created the cd R,
which is a rewriteable kind of dish that you could
(36:03):
kind of like make mixtapes and burn CDs and and
that changed everything yet again.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And I feel like the DVD replacing the VHS tape,
it was probably even a bigger, you know, huge. I mean,
it wasn't such a thing about it, but it was
probably an even bigger life changer for the LU media. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:27):
Yeah, I think we kind of forget how many CDs
were sold. I think there was estimations at the fortieth
anniversary of CDs in you know, I think it was
like two twenty four two hundred billion CDs were sold
during the life of its run.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
That's very very impressive, normal a lot considering how many
weren't necessarily just new things, but things that people were upgrading,
like like we all did from our value, that's right.
Speaker 7 (36:54):
And some of obviously the big successes was one of
the first big Australian releases to benefit from the CD
revolution was obviously John farn And with Wi Spring Jack
that was the really big one of the first commercially masked,
driven locally produced artists, and obviously other other artists like
Midnight Oil, Savage Garden, Kylie Minogue in excess, they all
(37:18):
benefited greatly from the advent of CDs, and they did
sell vinyl records are still around, but not in the
same quantity is that CDs were in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
And of course some benefiting for all the wrong reasons.
They were like the cassette tape. They were of course
hugely pirated. That was, yeah, it was too easy. So
you didn't get that with vital albums. You didn't come
back from Barley with a bunch of pirate albums.
Speaker 7 (37:48):
No, And you'd make mixtapes on CDs as well, mixtapes
that you would record off the radio with your your
certainly waiting for the record on until the song comes around.
You'd kind of do something kind of similar to CDs
and you exchange them. I remember kind of doing that.
You'd make me take for your friends and you'd say,
(38:09):
I'm listening to this at the moment, check this out
and go from there. And it was how we kind
of socialized. This is like what it was before social
media and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
So exactly, very very generating social ray Nathan, do you
remember what your first CD was?
Speaker 7 (38:30):
Oh, my goodness, I've got memories of buying a CDC's
The Rads Edge when I was about twelve years old.
The album that had understruck but it's so like it's
so hard for me to kind of choose what like
my favorite feed was. I spent so much effort and
(38:50):
I'm listening to them in the eighties of the nineties,
but get all the Cave records as well, and very
I was very pleased to hear that you bought Green
by Arin.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
First one we played play Orange Crush this morning. That
funny you got raise his edge by this. You probably
looked a bit like Angus at the time.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Sure, thank you for joining us this morning to take
our History of Sound series into its compact disc phase.
Speaker 7 (39:22):
No worries, good luck with tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yes, yes, yeah, we're going digital world.
Speaker 7 (39:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
By the way, before.
Speaker 7 (39:33):
I just want to say, for people that kind of
want to learn more about it, go to n f
S a dot dot are you. There's plenty of articles
and information on there and curated collection all kinds of
things you can dig yourself into. Please jump into the.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Brilliant more Clezy
more Lisa more podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
This is a journey pop up. The virual releases The
History of.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Sound and what a journey it's been this History of Sound.
This week certainly has.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
We've gone some really archaic stuff going back to those
cylinders playing music and you know, all kinds of audio
in the early days came on a milo tenness. This
is so bizarre really, but I've been doing a bit
more like I know, quite bizarre. And then we moved
into things where that were made of various things including
plastics and stuff, you know, cassettes and eight tracks, and
(40:28):
we talked about vinyl records. Today we're moved into the
current day and we're delving today into the digital world
of streaming and downloading and so much more. And from
the curator, one of the curators at the National Film
and Sound Archive of Australia to talk about it, Joe McMahon.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Joe, welcome, Hi, great to be here, Joe, Joe. So
we've just talked about all the formats that we've already
gone through. When was the point where everything changed, Well, really.
Speaker 8 (40:55):
The nineteen nineties was when the technology came in that
you could download music to your computer, you could use
your computer for storage. But at the time in the nineties,
CDs were absolutely booming, so they were the most profitable
medium for the recorded sound industry. So the industry at
the time wasn't very interested in going digital, and most
(41:16):
of the kind of digital music sharing around the nineties
was illegal. And then yeah, exactly, and then the big
game changer was iTunes. So the iPod and iTunes came
in in two thousand and one, and then a couple
of years later the iTunes store started, and you know,
(41:37):
you could buy a song for it was nine nine
cents in America and I think a dollar sixty something here,
which is a reasonably small amount. So that really boomed
legally paying for music in a download format, and that
kind of steeply grew like CDs had, but then only
lasted actually a couple of years. That music download format
(42:00):
has been the kind of reigning supreme over the recorded industry.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Don't think I'll ever forget watching Steve Jobs holding up
you know, those amazing launches that they used to do
and holding up that tiny little little box and saying
you will have this minute. And I'm thinking, get out ere,
you've seen my record collections. You lost your mind? So
what what exactly was an MP three or is an
(42:28):
MP three?
Speaker 5 (42:30):
So?
Speaker 2 (42:30):
MP three is a.
Speaker 8 (42:31):
File type and audio file type and it was released
officially in the early nineties, so around ninety two. And
what it does is it compresses music files so they're
smaller in size, but you still get the audio quality
that's quite similar to the original source. So it means
that because they're compressed files there take up a lot
(42:52):
less room and you can store a lot more because
obviously your computer in the nineties and early two thousands
for storing a lot less than it can today. So
really compressing those files made music very portable and transferable.
You could file share MP three so you could rip
them off CDs, you could burn them back onto CDs
(43:15):
and give to a friend, So it really changed the
game m P three's in terms of music sharing.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Well, we thought music had become portable when we got
a discman with a catte player in it, and we
thought that was the coolest thing ever. So you can
imagine for those of us who lived through it to
find out that we can take our entire collection with
us when we leave the house. It's just so game changing.
It really is incredible. Yeah, yeah, and then oh yes, no, no,
(43:46):
you keep going, keep going, it's good. Oh.
Speaker 8 (43:48):
I was just thinking today we have even more access
to a big collection through streaming, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
That is exactly millions of songs. I'm sure we'll get
there your collection anymore.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
Anything, This really did change the game music industry, didn't it,
But not always in a good way. Even now, the
artists still up in arms about the tiny percentage of
royalties I get compared to the recorded music in other
ways in the old days. But you know, when Napster
and Limeline that came in, there was a whole lot
of people. It was pirrating, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
Napster came in in the late nineties, in nineteen ninety nine,
and that was a dramatic drop in CD sales. So
the music industry did not like that, and they actually
retaliated with quite a lot of lawsuits. And interestingly, it
wasn't just the industry that was doing legal battles, and
it was also bands and producers. I think Metallica and
(44:38):
Doctor Dre were amongst those suing over illegal downloads. Yeah,
and so those peer to peer kind of services where
you could stile share were hotly contested by the music industry,
but it didn't stop them from coming about.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
You had Napster and then.
Speaker 8 (44:57):
Also LimeWire and pirate Bay, and so there was really
a decade of those services being really widely used, and
actually a lot of the legal battles kind of gave
a bit more publicity ironically to those services. I think
that's got a lot more members after the legal battles
because people found out about it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
It's not true, Joe. Another way digital changed everything is
the way that the music even gets to us from
the musicians. For a lot of them, they're able to
just cut out the middle guy, and all of a sudden,
muso's are recording, especially young ones, are recording things in
their bedroom and then distributing it. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (45:39):
Absolutely, and I think that's been one of the most
interesting and fantastic changes over the last twenty years or so.
And that came about through both the distribution methods, but
also we're able to access a lot of the recording
technology that would have been you know, gate kept by
big production studios or previously. You can download able to
(46:01):
be a similar software to a laptop and create something
at home, and so we're kind of and then also
obviously move that you know, distribute your own files through
something like Spotify. So you're moving from going straight from
artists to audience, which has been a total change in
how things are done, and I think social media actually
(46:23):
was an extremely important forerunner for that. I think about
how for years MySpace was the place where you discovered music,
and that was musicians uploading their their content to MySpace
and people discovering. So it's definitely kind of cutting out
the middleman, which has been a really interesting development.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Something that happened ten years ago would never have happened before,
and that is you two's Songs of Innocence all of
a sudden landing in your eye shoes in twenty fourteen, and.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
People were really pissed. I was happy.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
And that's with this because in ninety sixty eight, the
biggest band in the world, the Rolling Stones of the Beetles,
didn't come to your house and put an album and
you let they just without asking you two just drop
them into your iTunes.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
People weren't happy, were they? I completely forgot about that. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (47:07):
I don't think people liked being told what to or
you actually had a lot of dis roll over your
library then too. You've changed the pictures and the song
yet rather and things, so having someone enforced the way
it looked was probably not very good.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Yeah. I think also another thing that we should mention
that the digital developments have given us is in addition
to our music and everything, is the rise of the podcast.
We wouldn't have all these podcasts if it wasn't for
the way that we get our audio and everything now.
Speaker 8 (47:45):
Yeah, absolutely, and they've diversified what we listened to completely.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Podcasts were they came about out of audio.
Speaker 8 (47:54):
Blogging, internet radio, you know MP three file development and
that same time the late nineties and early two thousands,
and in two thousand and four we actually got the
term podcast and by two thousand and five iTunes were
supporting it as a format and that become absolutely massive.
Today the majority of Australians listen to podcasts and they're
(48:16):
a huge medium that give us a whole wide range
of voices that we might not have necessarily heard in
traditional media.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
Yeah, you've also got the other digital world allows you
to do really cool stuff Like I'm in a shop
the other day at the carron Oup shops and I
hear the start of a song and I know this song.
I know this song, but I just excuse me. I
just hit Shazam and it tells me I wish zaming
to work out. People still it was big jet playing
by Magus and Julia Steiner when of course it wats
you know, but it just makes you lazy. But it's
very cool that that identifies the song.
Speaker 8 (48:48):
Just like that, And if you say, absolutely, that's totally
changed the way we find music as well, so you
do identifying music and find music through like algorithms and
different ways of searching. You know, it's yeah, completely changed
the game. And as I said before, social media as well,
you know, songs getting big off social media or coming
(49:11):
back into playlists and very very different from the days
of just the top one hundred chart.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yes, yeah, the only thing I feel that some people
miss out on, and I do mean a lot of
younger people might buy songs or stream songs or whatever
and they're not getting albums anymore. And you know, don't
still get albums because quite often the best tracks that
you're going to get from that person is you know,
(49:38):
on the album and not the song that you heard
on the radio and then started streaming and everything. So yeah,
never turn you back on the album.
Speaker 8 (49:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think the alb because albums, you know,
coming in with vinyls, there was of.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
The album for a lifelime, saving it yeah.
Speaker 8 (49:54):
Yeah, And then I think about like, you know, buying
a single song off iTunes and that coming back in
of the song being the like the viable thing is
the song right the album where you find album on
CD and vinyl and now we buy a song or
listen to a certain song. But pre vinyl, you know,
when you could only keep on recorded sound a couple
(50:18):
of minutes worth of audio, the song was supreme and
pre recorded sounds, the music itself like sheet music, and
the song itself was also ray and supreme. So it
does seem to EBB and Flower Little Yeah albums.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
It does go a little circle of things.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
Yes, although good the digital world means we missed out
on that romantic thing if you're not going and buying
vinyl or CDs or whatever. It might be in the
record store experience of the elders. But that's just the
way it is.
Speaker 8 (50:48):
Joe and I think that's why we're seeing the resurgence
in vinyl.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Absolutely want that exactly so, and that whole tangible thing.
There seems to be two main camps these days when
it comes to music streaming services spun Fire or Apple Music.
Is there a reason to be in one or the other.
Are they just is it just a matter of you know,
which one you ended up going with? Is one better
than the other for any reason?
Speaker 8 (51:10):
Or I think it's a matter of which one someone
will share a family account with you.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
All right, Well, we've come to the end of our
history of sound. I'm sure that there's going to this
will be ever evolving. Joe will be all over it
because she is a curator of the National Film and
Sound Archive of Australia. And your website is n f
s A, isn't it dot com? And there's and lots
(51:48):
to learn there. It's really interesting stuff. Joe. Thank you
so much for joining us this morning.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Nora, it's been great for your expertise and all of
the people who've helped us this week from Film and
Sound Archive.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Something that you couldn't have done twenty years ago. You'll
be able to hear this whole thing on other podcasts.
You will digitalization.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
I think we've away at the end of the strym
telling you something really embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Are you ready? I'm always up for you to embarrass this.
I was paying for Apple streaming for a while before
I even realized that ben I could get any song
I wanted at any time own my iTunes I have.
(52:34):
I went through a big thing of burning all of
my CDs onto my iTunes out and storing it in
there and so I could take it in my pocket
because that was the best thing that I thought it
ever happened. And then I didn't realize that I was
because I have Apple on the TV, so I didn't
realize I was actually paying for an Apple you know, subscription,
without realizing that that meant that I could go on
(52:55):
there and just ask for any song I wanted at
any time. I was still just playing everything from your
collection that was recorded in there. That is called being old.
That's hilarious too. But now I'm hip to the whole
scene and I'm streaming like a streaming thing. You just
said hip and then you click down. Thanks for confessing though.
(53:16):
That was that was good. That was big of you.
Thank you to the National Films I'm Australia for all
their help this week went absolutely illuminating. Hip to the
group just said, I said, to the whole scene, and
then I went he did crazy
Speaker 1 (53:34):
And Lisa ninety six
This is a journey, this is pop up the valuele
Plesy releases The History of Sound.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Oh. This week we're going to look at the history
of sound and the National Film and Sound Archive of
Australia have currently teamed up with us to talk about it.
Today we're going right back to the start. We'll be
phonograph cylinder and welcome Torston Kating, the curator the National
Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Hallow Torston Sawston Welcome,
(00:28):
great to be with you. Thank you for joining us.
Now let's start with the first question. What is a
phonograph cylinder. That's a very good question.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Phonograph cylinder is the first really attempt at recording sound
that actually worked and was able to be played back.
If you think of the phonograph, if you think of
like a wooden box about the size.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Of a small sewing machine.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Onto that, you put a cylinder which is checked a
little bit like the inside of a toile. It roll
and originally they were made out of wax and you
put a needle on that and it'd be a huge
horn coming off it, and you did both record and
playback sound off of it.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Quite phenomenal. How how did the actual recording process work.
I mean, what's the magic.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The magic is is entirely acoustic, So the ris is
pre amplification, pre electricity, no microphones involved. Someone would go
up to the machine and they would yell or play
something down the horn, which would then move air down.
It would go onto a membrane which had a needle
on it. That needle would cut into the wax around
(01:43):
the cylinder, and when you wanted to play it back,
you put a different membrane and needle on it and
it would play back to sound out of that horn.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Wow, do you know what the first thing recorded on
one was by Keith Richards? I imagine possibly?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Possibly, No, that's a real big point of contention. Weren't wax.
They were actually made out of tinfoil, so those tin
foil ones don't survive, so we don't really know. And
claims it was him singing a nursery rhyme on it,
(02:24):
but we don't know for sure.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Edison was always putting his name up for his hand up.
What kind of crazy mind is this, you know, coming
to on that first? Who thought I'm going to make
a cylinder from tinfoil and we're going to record songs
on it. It's as incredible, you know it was.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
It wasn't mistaken. And to his credit, Edison did take
credit for a lot of things, but he was no, no,
but he was actually the first one to do that
hoarding sound. So that was around eighteen seventy seven, about
twenty years beforehand, they had were the first attempts at
(03:08):
recording sound, but they were using magnetic devices to do that,
but that never really came to fruition. So Edison eighteen
seventy seven, with his tinfoil tube was the first one.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Imagine his shared to Austin, what was the maximum length
of you know that you could record on them?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well, to start off with, when the first wax Cylanders
came out, because about ten years after the tinfoil they
moved to wax, which was much more robust. You're looking
at about two to three minutes. And that's no real
coincidence that the length of pop songs ever since it's
around about two to three minutes.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, Yeah, had the Beatles on.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
The right, yeah, no long die straight album tracks on
the road, that's the one. Yeah, And how many times
could you play them over? Especially the wax ones.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, when they first came out in the eighteen eighties
early eighteen nineties, you'd get a couple of dozen plays
because every time the needle went into the wax, it
just took a little bit of that wax out.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yes, but they were actually were designed initially for dictation,
and you could actually shave. Yeah, you could shave the
wax off and re record on them, which is.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
What people would do.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
But as they got better at the technology and moved
into away from wax and started to use an early
form of plastics nitrate. Yes, you could get hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of plays out of them, and we're
still able to play them today.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Oh, that is amazing. I did read that they may
have been used in some very early jukeboxes.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, there were lots of different ways that they were using,
but they really quite fragile. Oh yeah, and the cellulose ones,
so that never really worked as well as the flat discs.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, well, that's incredible. How much do people know about
this stuff? We're getting educated here today, but the people
obviously very curious about this kind of stuff, And do
people know much about it?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Tauston, There's lots of people that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Know a huge amount about cylinders, and they were sold
in huge quantities. By the end of their sort of run,
so we're talking about the early nineteen teens to nineteen fifteen,
they were sold in hundreds of thousands all around the world,
so they're still everywhere now. We still get offers of
(05:40):
people who are cleaning out garages and sheds who have
huge amounts of wax and cellulose cylinders that they want
to donate to us.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Gosh, they'd go up. There was a fire that Gamble
Price movie Tauston. Are they used in any way for
any reason today?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
No, they're really obsolete now. Yea once, once the flat
disc came in and took over from them, they were
used for quite a long time as for dictation. Ironically,
what Edison's originally had them for anyone who knows the
long running radio series Blue Hills, every episode of that
(06:24):
was the script was recorded on wax cylinders as as
a nictaphone. But nowadays no, it's just for the people
who are a little bit obsessed with them.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
We've we've re recorded music.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
On wax cylinders at the National Film and Sound Dark
Eye people like the Basics with with Gottcha did a
recording for us on wax.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Have done as well.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So yeah, people go to our website dot dot au
look up wax cylinders. You can actually go and listen
to those recordings and listen to how different acoustic recording
you is competed to amplified recording.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Incredible cylinder. I used to know, Yeah it was it
just a bit ginny was it two lady is?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
It's really interesting. Some instruments are really hard to record
because it's about pushing air.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Down that.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Horn, so things like guitars, violins really difficult, whereas brass
instruments that's the one. Marches and comic songs and brass
bands were really popular on cylinders because they all produced
enough air to move that needle and get a great soundback.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, fascinating. It's a lot easier to store music today
than this would have been a room full of cylinders.
Justin thank you for getting us away on the beginning
of our history of We're going to talk to you
again later in the week. Absolutely pleasure, Thank you bye.
Now I learned about it things, had no idea about
that clzy do we do? You have an example there
(08:11):
of a nineteen ten recording of the song that we
all know, of course on New Years it feels like
New Years, doesn't at all. You're freny sing along. It's
not it's it's not twenty twenty five year sottle bit
crackly my place. Oh god, god, wow, it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
That's nineteen ten, as you mentioned, yeah by Frank C.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Stanley Free First World War. That's amazing, isn't it. Well,
that is amazing.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Yeah, So we've learned a hell of a lot there,
but we will learn more throughout the week as we
go through.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, the time sequence with sound. You know you
always avoided getting your thumbprints on your vinylie. Yeah, yeah,
imagine putting your thumb on your wack. I mean it
just didn't catch.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Yeah, we'll mention the kids, melting them down to say
I was trying to make candle man.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
This is a journey.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It will pop up the value of crazy releases.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The history of sound. This week we are looking at
the history of sound and the National Film and Sound
Archive of Australia has kindly teamed up with us to
talk all about it. Today. We are looking at vinyl records.
I mean, who can forget doing this? That's a well
worn one. Is well sounded like that from the National
(09:40):
Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Crispian Windsor good morning, welcome.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Good morning, Yes, good to talk to you both, Thanks.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
For joining us. Now, when was the first vinyl record made?
Speaker 5 (09:53):
It was nineteen forty eight. That's when, so things start
to get a bit different than where shlack records up
to that point. But then they wind records to go
a bit longer and to be made of more of
a durable quality, and nineteen forty eight was the first
time that was done. And I think they were sold
in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Include seventy eight and forty five, and.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Well seventy eights. Forty five was slightly later, so it
was seventy eight still in nineteen forty eight. Yeah, they
were certainly around on sheillac but that was still the
standard in nineteen forty eight until they started to get
the bigger thirty three C three inches C three up
in sorry yeah, yeah, twelve inches seven inch discs witch
(10:34):
of forty five revolutions permittent correct.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Okay, so what's Can you explain what schillacke is for
status so we can know we're going from because I
think of a Shalakan in the forty's what was.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Yeah, well it was a much different sort of piece
of material where it was very very brittle, and the
sound wasn't that great either, but it was very easy
to break and it didn't take much further things to
for She'll act just to shatter this, and yeah, the
sound wasn't fantastic either, so something had to be done.
(11:05):
I think at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Why were there so many formats and recording lengths with
the vinyl album? There were a lot.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
It took them a long time to come up with
the sort of a standardized size and format. There were
some the speeds at points sometimes it was a slow
at sixty revolutions per minute, and even as fast as
one hundred and thirty revolutions per minute, which is pretty fast.
(11:32):
It took a long time. They really didn't. The records
weren't standardized to seventy eight rpm until muchs later, and
then in nineteen forty eight is when there standardized more
into seventiesh discs and twelve inch discs.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
H absolutely move.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
We'll be into the second hand shop or spoken to
Nana and saying those really old heavy things they've built,
like yeah, they were very weighty, very sick, weren't they.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Absolutely, yeah, they're really heavy.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Yeah, I don't have any myself, but yeah, you can
still see them around in off tops and things like that.
At times.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I always used to be fascinated by the fact that
my albums just had the little hole to put, you know,
over the you know, onto the record player, and my
dad's old seventy eighths had like a big sort of
elaborate pattern in the middle that was cut out. Why
are the different cutouts, Well, that's a.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Very American thing, mainly with it was just the juke boxes.
So theah, yeah, we used to juke boxes. You can
still get them around, some people still make them with
a bigger hole, But basically it was the jukeboxes in
America primarily.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And as also, is that why they're measured in inches?
Just an American thing.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Totally, yeah, And for some reason that never changed when
it went around the World's always sayed changed yea seven
inch and.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Twelve inches because most of my twelve inch remix extended
versions that I waited six months to come to a
ride of those were coming from the UK. So yeah, yes, yes,
Christ that's the reason. What about rock and roll, I
mean rock and roll.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
You know, the music changed, and so did the way
that people, young people bought music so that they really
annoy their parents.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It did change. Did the distribution changed to It didn't.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
That, I really did, And I think a lot of
that was to do with the portability of record players
as well. You start to get really small one so
people could sort of take any words to anybody's houses.
And vinyl really was a big revolution that, especially the
forty the seven inch discs around that time. Singles start
to be extremely popular in the nineteen fifties from the
onset of rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
When did the first vinyl pressing plant open in Australia?
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Well, it was actually CBS Records later Sony in nineteen
fifty four. That was the first one, and there used
to be several, but now there's currently only three pressing
plants in Australia.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Oh wow, isn't it? It started to pick up again
in recent times, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
That's the thing it has?
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Yeah, So there's one, there's two of one called Zennis
and one called program N. It's originally was called cord
that was around for a long time, but the program
is fairly new that's been about three or four years,
and there's also a fairly new one in Brisbane court
Suitcase Records.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
They are, of course, vinyl albums making a huge comeback.
What do you put it down to, Crispian.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
I think I think with when they were basically replaced
by CDs, they're very the artwork's very small on those,
and then when CDs start to go and be replaced
by digital. I think there's a lot of people, including myself,
which just loves the physical, physical product, and I think
vinyl with the size, you know, it's a real effort
(14:36):
to listen to vinyl in a way. Yeah, I think
a lot of people really love that, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, the learning experience all that. Yeah, the notes on
the album. You spent all day just lying there reading
that from beginning to end. Here the lyrics, the lyrics now.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Very important, Yeah, absolutely, And like I still remember lyrics
now just because I read them off vinyl back when
I the kids.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, hey christ and they were correct. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
This is want to go one of the clock back
to sort of like a sort of wartime, the First
and the Second World War and beyond that where servicemen
from the States would take blues records to the UK
and then eventually they ended up with a whole lot
of bands like the Stones and that with the British
invasion of the US, so it went all the way back.
But they were pretty pretty remarkable. So many people traveled
with records that didn't break.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think that was part of the
issue with Schilac originally. Yeah, got viny like that. Yeah,
I think that that was the reason why you're absolutely right.
I think a lot of people credit that's sort of
happening with Liverpool and the Beatles gainst so many records
because it was a port town there.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Of course, the main drawback of them, as we remember
was they would scratch and they would skip. Was there
were companies around the world trying the hardest to come
up with, you know, the magic answer to that, because
they would have made, you know, a mozza. Never no
one ever really did come up with an answer to it,
did they.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
No, they they didn't, they didn't. I think the only
thing you can get around it is cleaning records from
the get go. I clean all my records, whether they're
old or new. And the way that gets rid of
dust and dust is a part of the problem where
you start to get skipping and to the sixth sense, scratching.
It's hard to get rid of scratches, of course, but
you can get of dust and started quite easily.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
When you take it off, put it back in the bag,
don't just put it on the floorway put the next one.
To hear the end of that.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Exactly, Yeah, absolutely, I'm really poor on about all that stuff.
I don't have kids, so that probably helped.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Chrispian whether a couple of recent changes have been the
heavier vinyl. Can you explain what that means, because you know,
people spend seventy eight eighty ninety dollars on an album
now and in recent weeks we've given away these one
step albums that we gave away the last four weeks,
So what's the technology there, what's going on with those?
Speaker 5 (16:49):
I guess a lot of those will be to do
with virgin vinyl, so they're not recycled. It's the first
batch of vinyl. It's that technically, that should mean it's
the best quality and there's nothing else happening happening to them,
so it's version file. They are a lot heavier as
a result, and that's that's the way around. That is
just the better quality, technically, the best quality you can get.
(17:12):
But but that does make them expensive.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Of course. Do you play vinyl at home or are
you a stream?
Speaker 5 (17:21):
Oh no, no, I do stream as well, but I'm
very much final. I've got quite quite a large vinyl
collection and only DJ Vinyl was.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, what was your first vinyl record?
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Yeah, I think I think it's hard to say, but
I believe it might have been this whole house by
Shaking Stephens.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I think so well for the chief people here. Yeah,
it was a green door, let me go.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
It was like England's Elvis, wasn't he was?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
That's great, we're not judging, not that I have to say.
Speaker 5 (18:02):
It's not like I have it now.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
By the way, mine was probably ABBA's Arrival, so I
wasn't really idea. I played that to.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Death mine with Sherbert's How's that? Only because I made
my sister's bed for two weeks. She goes, I'll buy you,
and I reckon. I lasted about three days. You still
bought it for me.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Very sweet, great Christian, thank you so much for giving
us a bit more insight into the history of vinyl.
And it's good to know that there are still some
places in Australia pressing them.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah. Absolutely, And you can learn more about vinyl and
that Radio one hundred expression at an episode doc after
You're brilliant.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Excellent, Thanks Christian, Thanks very much. I can't believe you
know what are such a big amma fair everything ever,
I had so abber pillow case, a pillow case.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, you have a lunchbox? Oh probably, Yeah, I wouldn't
surprise me.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Have a T shirt the old beyond those albums.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
Can I be honest with you when I was a
little kid man, maybe a Beyorn Star guitar out of
wood he's pretty good. Would he made a wooden starget tape?
You couldn't play it had no strings. He had said
it on fire though you could say that wasn't really
every style was more more.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Lisa More podcast Soon.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
This is a journey in sound pop up, the value
of Lisa's The history of sound.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, well week we are looking at the history of
sound and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
have very kindly teamed up with us to talk about
the history of sound. Today, we're all about the cassette tape.
Welcome to Neil Hands from the National Film and Sound
Archive of Australia. Lo Toanil, Hey Toanil, Welcome, Hi, thanks
for having it.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
You any opportunity to talk about your sound.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Same So take us back to Neil who invented the
cassette tape.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Yeah, well a compact cassette or cassette tape, yes, was
invented by the leu Ottens in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Three for Phillips nineteen sixty three. Well yeah, but I
mean at the time I probably would have thought it
was even longer ago than that.
Speaker 7 (20:10):
It.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Dutch gave us the compact cassette as it used to
beat cassette and we ended up with a compact disc later.
But it was you know, the technology at the time
was probably pretty cool, although had its limitations.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
Absolutely. So you know, the tape as we know it
consists of two small spools of one in one a
magnetic tape which is enclosed in a plastic case and
it fits in the palm of your hand, and so
the tape has two sides. You have to take it
out and flip it to play it. And there's roughly
only about sixty to one hundred and twenty minutes of recording.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yes, and of course you had to fast forward now
the song you didn't lie.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
I'm tumbling around with it right now trying to get
a song on.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So was it designed for anything, for something specific other
than you know what we used it for.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
Mostly absolutely, So, you know, the origins of magnetic tape
are actually much earlier than the nineteen sixties. We've got
recordings on reels of wire in our collection that start
in the early nineteen hundreds and they were really intended
for field recordings or mostly on the domestic market for dictation, right.
(21:19):
But it was really you know, only as a lot
of companies began experimenting with tapes and with cartridges that
we got into a much cheaper, much smaller system. That
playing and recording became so much more accessible and so
you know, the first portable recorder available in Australia was
about eleven hundred dollars, which sounds like a lot, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
But it was.
Speaker 6 (21:44):
But all of a sudden, sound recording was being democratized.
I mean compared to a big studio system, parent having
a system in your house.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, the early computer it's very expensive. We were certainly
keen to lip that dictation in the bud were. Austin
said when we spoke to him on my day to Neil,
that that's what the phonograph cylinder was first. You know
four absolute dictation, right.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
I mean why it changed for us is that the
biggest innovation with tape as opposed to disc recording is
that with tape you can cut out sections, you can
splice sections together.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
So what we did was.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
We moved away from that dictation and the recording actuality
and you're able to construct a creative work.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
So what that meant is eventually we developed multi track
and stereo and lower distortion and it became a really cheap,
easy format for say, small underground acts in Australia. Yeah,
you've got perths the Triffids in the late seventies. Yes,
they had one hundred songs over their first two years
(22:49):
and they released six independent cassette tapes within two years
and they would sell them at gigs and that's how
they quickly distributed and became one of the most popular
bands and talk about them.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
It became It made the music more mobile as well,
didn't it. You could get out like my dad one
night went and saw Neil Diamond. I can't remember it
was soub Be Overall or the Whack and he recorded
the whole concert and the recording was awful because it
actually started wearing out. So the end of the game
like crunching out all this week us on his phone.
Yeah you could, yeah, but at least he got he
got a couple of songs. He got a couple at
the start of the gig that sounded a right. I
(23:21):
don't know if he ever played again, but we became
more mobile Momo with the music in.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
We definitely, I mean, and especially when the Walkman came
around in nineteen seventy nine, all of a sudden, you
had a player you could take anywhere, you can listen
to it by yourself, and you can custom make a
soundtrack for your own life.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Well this is I mean, The Walkman changed my life
because I was able to sit in the backseat of
the car on a road trip. This is on the
days where Mum and Dad chose the music and if
you didn't like it, I could sit in the back
and I could listen to David Bowie or whatever while
they've got Max Bargraves playing on their cassette tape in
the car sing along the mac and it was absolute.
(24:00):
It was freedom. Yeah, oh and that destiny pretty much choice.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
That's why it became the leading format from nineteen eighty
four to nineteen eighty two. I mean, the Walkman changed
everyone's lives, but we still had you know, there was
so much development and a real boom in cassette players.
We had them in cars from the nineteen sixty eight.
It really made it portable and enjoyable and it was
really picked up by surfers, you know, bringing them out
(24:30):
and playing them out the back of the vans and
blasting skyhooks and really did amazing things for the Australian industry.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
Yeah, they replaced the smaller cassettes, replacing the old eye
track because a lot of people are the eye tracks
in the curve something else.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Absolutely, that was you know, probably it wasn't the right thing,
but it was life changing. The cassettes was coming back
from Bali with a suitcase full of the dam things.
I mean, was this the very first example of pirating music.
I don't know if it's.
Speaker 6 (25:02):
The first example because we're kind of wily, but I
would say it definitely was a big concern for the
strain industry. They estimated that it was costing them about
four hundred and forty point eight million, and that's not
including just how easy tapes were to shop lift compared
to an LP.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah. I never gave that a pretty small slippy, but
I did pick them a few pirate copies.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Yeah, yeah, you might make them a mixtape so you
don't have to buy the album you know you album?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
No, I don't have to. Mixtapes were the first dating apps,
in my opinion, because we didn't know, we didn't have
social media to flirt. I found that the best. I
think if there was someone you liked, you made them
a mixtape. Oh really and that was the key to
their heart? Did you do that?
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Many looks.
Speaker 6 (25:53):
If you didn't make a mixtape for someone you cared
about it, I don't want to know you.
Speaker 8 (25:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
What at the revival?
Speaker 4 (26:00):
I mean it hasn't been as huge as as people
by going and buying vinyl, But there have been some
releases on cassettes in recent times, haven't they.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Absolutely.
Speaker 6 (26:07):
I think it has a large part to do with
no nostalgia. I think it's cheaper with an LP and labels.
While they're producing these digital releases, they'll often come with
a limited edition collectibook cassette and that comes with a
digital download with it. You know, the recent Barbie movie
released its soundtrack on a hot pink transparent cassette.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Oh my god, I love that one. First nostylegiap too,
isn't it. I do think they were sometimes the least
loved of all the forms, and yet they were the
one probably that did for me change so many things. Okay,
the quality might not have been as good as putting
on an album at home, but as I said it,
you know, I was on the move with it. But
(26:48):
when it got caught in the heads to take the
corner heads in your take was rubbish. How many you
trying to save your favorite? You've got the pencil, you're
trying to wind it that on and the moment you
get you that when you reached that moment where you think.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
No, it's gone, but do you recontinue? It's frustrating. I
can hear it in your voice.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
Oh absolutely, I mean I've done it myself, getting the
tape and getting it out and winding back with the
pencil and getting your own sticky tape and trying to
get it back together. Yeah, but do you know what
I don't think CDs fixed anything like that. They were
just I think they were more easily scratched and less
durable and more.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
When listening to them. Yeah, the skating kind of thing
on them.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Yeah, I think. I think cassetts are hard done by.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, they were sturdier. Well to Neil, thank you for
taking us through the history of the cassette today. It's
lovely to talk to you. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you by
so much.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Take care.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
This is a journey.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It pop up the value of releases, the history of sound.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Continuing our delve into the history of sound, we've moved
from the phonographic cylinder to vinyl, to cassette tapes to
arriving today a compact disc and joining us today. Assistant
Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia,
Nathan Smith.
Speaker 7 (28:06):
Good morning, good morning, Hey, how are you?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Thank you so much for joining us. No noble at
all who invented the earliest known version of the compact disc.
Speaker 7 (28:19):
Well, the early known version of compactist was created by
a guy named James T. Russell back in the sixties,
and he actually had a bit of a patent for
it in nineteen seventy. It wasn't until Sony and Phillips
actually kind of got a hold of the pattern and
actually really developed it into kind of what we know
(28:40):
it is today. But it took a little while for
James to kind of get his dues for creating the city,
but he actually did, and you know, I think they
ended up paying him back in the eighties. Yeah, well,
I actually think he's still I think he's like ninety
(29:01):
two or ninety three.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Well, yeah, how does the technology work? Make is these
shiny silver discs? And is the silver part important?
Speaker 7 (29:10):
Oh yeah, absolutely So. Obviously the disc was kind of creator,
so it's basically an evolution of like laser disc technology.
And then obviously, you know, the music is kind of
recorded as a digital kind of file, and this kind
of gets mastered and then it kind of essentially gets
etched onto the disc into like ones and zeros, and
(29:33):
then the laser is able to kind of pick up
those ones and zeros and kind of decode it back
into what we kind of know today. But the reason
why CDs kind of became so popular because it was
all about kind of the evolution of technology and you know,
kind of having like the better quality kind of files
(29:53):
of course, when James actually originally created the technology in
the sixties and seventies, he was actually classical music buff.
Yeah yeah, and he was just a little bit sick
and tired of the wear and tear on his CDs,
so he wanted kind of to kind of create something
that would kind of remove that wear and tear. So
(30:15):
we kind of created this like contactless type listening device.
Yeah yeah, so you so you were in theory you
would never have to touch a CD. CDs were kind
of kind of then presented to the public in you know,
the early eighties. I think they kind of first got
released in like nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. There's
a few different kind of theories as to kind of
(30:36):
what the actual first CDs were actually created, but some
of the really big popular ones that really popularized the
content was obviously Brothers and Arms like Distraits.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
They kind of got.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
Released in nineteen eighty two and went on to have
huge success.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
You mentioned Phillips and Sony joining together to get to
get this out. I mean, they were certainly were then
to absolute juggernauts of the audio world. They must have
they must have known they were absolutely one hundred onto
a winner.
Speaker 7 (31:10):
Oh, totally, absolutely, they were onto a winner. I mean,
obviously it was all about quality and just like the
evolution of kind of formats, which I mean, as you're
kind of previously discussed in the previous episodes, obviously starting
with cylinders and then going to vinyl and then going
to cassettes, and now we kind of found ourselves with
this shiny kind of compact disc which was actually really
(31:34):
cheap to kind of manufacture in only costs. The wholesale
cost of a CD back in the eighties was about
a dollar dollar fifteen, and they were selling I mean,
I don't know about you guys, but I remember CDs
being relatively expensive.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, they were like to buy.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Yeah, to buy a brand new CD back in the
nineties was twenty thirty dollars. They only cost about a
dollar maybe two dollars to make. Wow, So they were
making the most.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Absolutely, I still think that a lure of this the
shiny silver It was like a shiny.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Thing something from space nature. Yeah, yeah, shy distiness.
Speaker 7 (32:19):
But it was also too like having you know, like
it was like labor technology and it's cool. You know,
everybody wanted a CD player and they weren't that cheap either.
They were about one thousand dollars back in the eighties
for a really expensive viny was about fifteen hundred. Generally speaking,
they kind of decreased about three to five hundred dollars. Yeah, yeah,
(32:42):
and they kind of did get cheaper as kind of
time went on.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, I mean you think it's not a needle of
startus going into a groove of record vinyl record, but
they work without problems. If something got start cours skating,
they were driving crazy.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
For a while. Yeah, yeah, neither know.
Speaker 7 (33:04):
They didn't really like scratches, and they didn't like pinker print.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Now that's weird as an I yeah, skating around when
you're in the car, that movement, they didn't like that either.
Speaker 7 (33:13):
Yeah, which is a little ironicas I actually sold as
reasonably indestructible, as in you would buy a CD and
you would never have to kind of replace it because
it was like, you know, contactless kind of listening kind
of technology. But yeah, you're dead right the scratches and
(33:33):
then you know you could like you know, lose them
quite easily to because reasonably small as well.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, Nathan, I really feel like they were marketed to
us as just what you had to have like next
level sound quality because I slowly worked through my very
healthy record collection replacing everything with a CD. Because I
was one of these idiots, it was led to believe,
and I wasn't the only one that you know this,
(33:59):
you can't have better than this. I feel like we're
a little bit good we now when.
Speaker 8 (34:03):
You look back.
Speaker 7 (34:04):
Oh, totally, absolutely. I mean my format was during the
eighties and nineties was obviously SATIS and I literally had
thousands of years, yeah, quite so many, and I spent
a small fortune on them as well.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Over the years.
Speaker 7 (34:20):
And now I'm kind of going through the phase of
actually replacing my records with new vinyl copies.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I repeating my problem, Yeah, consumers. Yeah, but that's all right.
Speaker 7 (34:34):
It's kind of fun. And like you know, CDs are
still relevant to this day. People still release them. Like
my daughter, for example, him has been buying you know,
Taylor Swift CDs just so she can kind of, you know,
have something in her hand that she could kind of
connect with a little bit more physically.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
That we enjoyed about that, Yeah, absolutely, mate, And like
a lot of people didn't sell the records like at
least it did back in the day. But I'm finding
now even places like Facebook, Marketplace and that people selling CDs,
and then sometimes it's heartbreaking sea people selling two hundred
for fifty dollars, and you think, yeah, like what people
invested in those those discs when they were knew, Oh
(35:13):
my goodness.
Speaker 7 (35:14):
Yeah, absolutely, they do sell for kind of pretty cheap
these days, which is kind of a good thing and
a bad thing. I mean, at the end of the day,
we kind of pass things on, and you know, things
kind of change and technology changes and things are kind
of happening. But obviously, like the CDs was like the
basis for like other technology as well, Like they use
the CD format for like DVDs and Blu rays.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Going in the computer, and I was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And it.
Speaker 7 (35:40):
Wasn't just audio as well, Like obviously it was just
the idea of kind of storing data as well. So
in nineteen eighty five they created the CD ROM, which
was actually like which was actually a disc that would
kind of be read by your computer with data on it.
And then in nineteen ninety they actually created the cd R,
which is a rewriteable kind of dish that you could
(36:03):
kind of like make mixtapes and burn CDs and and
that changed everything yet again.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And I feel like the DVD replacing the VHS tape,
it was probably even a bigger, you know, huge. I mean,
it wasn't such a thing about it, but it was
probably an even bigger life changer for the LU media. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:27):
Yeah, I think we kind of forget how many CDs
were sold. I think there was estimations at the fortieth
anniversary of CDs in you know, I think it was
like two twenty four two hundred billion CDs were sold
during the life of its run.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
That's very very impressive, normal a lot considering how many
weren't necessarily just new things, but things that people were upgrading,
like like we all did from our value, that's right.
Speaker 7 (36:54):
And some of obviously the big successes was one of
the first big Australian releases to benefit from the CD
revolution was obviously John farn And with Wi Spring Jack
that was the really big one of the first commercially masked,
driven locally produced artists, and obviously other other artists like
Midnight Oil, Savage Garden, Kylie Minogue in excess, they all
(37:18):
benefited greatly from the advent of CDs, and they did
sell vinyl records are still around, but not in the
same quantity is that CDs were in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
And of course some benefiting for all the wrong reasons.
They were like the cassette tape. They were of course
hugely pirated. That was, yeah, it was too easy. So
you didn't get that with vital albums. You didn't come
back from Barley with a bunch of pirate albums.
Speaker 7 (37:48):
No, And you'd make mixtapes on CDs as well, mixtapes
that you would record off the radio with your your
certainly waiting for the record on until the song comes around.
You'd kind of do something kind of similar to CDs
and you exchange them. I remember kind of doing that.
You'd make me take for your friends and you'd say,
(38:09):
I'm listening to this at the moment, check this out
and go from there. And it was how we kind
of socialized. This is like what it was before social
media and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
So exactly, very very generating social ray Nathan, do you
remember what your first CD was?
Speaker 7 (38:30):
Oh, my goodness, I've got memories of buying a CDC's
The Rads Edge when I was about twelve years old.
The album that had understruck but it's so like it's
so hard for me to kind of choose what like
my favorite feed was. I spent so much effort and
(38:50):
I'm listening to them in the eighties of the nineties,
but get all the Cave records as well, and very
I was very pleased to hear that you bought Green
by Arin.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
First one we played play Orange Crush this morning. That
funny you got raise his edge by this. You probably
looked a bit like Angus at the time.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Sure, thank you for joining us this morning to take
our History of Sound series into its compact disc phase.
Speaker 7 (39:22):
No worries, good luck with tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yes, yes, yeah, we're going digital world.
Speaker 7 (39:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
By the way, before.
Speaker 7 (39:33):
I just want to say, for people that kind of
want to learn more about it, go to n f
S a dot dot are you. There's plenty of articles
and information on there and curated collection all kinds of
things you can dig yourself into. Please jump into the.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Brilliant more Clezy
more Lisa more podcasts.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
This is a journey pop up. The virual releases The
History of.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Sound and what a journey it's been this History of Sound.
This week certainly has.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
We've gone some really archaic stuff going back to those
cylinders playing music and you know, all kinds of audio
in the early days came on a milo tenness. This
is so bizarre really, but I've been doing a bit
more like I know, quite bizarre. And then we moved
into things where that were made of various things including
plastics and stuff, you know, cassettes and eight tracks, and
(40:28):
we talked about vinyl records. Today we're moved into the
current day and we're delving today into the digital world
of streaming and downloading and so much more. And from
the curator, one of the curators at the National Film
and Sound Archive of Australia to talk about it, Joe McMahon.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Joe, welcome, Hi, great to be here, Joe, Joe. So
we've just talked about all the formats that we've already
gone through. When was the point where everything changed, Well, really.
Speaker 8 (40:55):
The nineteen nineties was when the technology came in that
you could download music to your computer, you could use
your computer for storage. But at the time in the nineties,
CDs were absolutely booming, so they were the most profitable
medium for the recorded sound industry. So the industry at
the time wasn't very interested in going digital, and most
(41:16):
of the kind of digital music sharing around the nineties
was illegal. And then yeah, exactly, and then the big
game changer was iTunes. So the iPod and iTunes came
in in two thousand and one, and then a couple
of years later the iTunes store started, and you know,
(41:37):
you could buy a song for it was nine nine
cents in America and I think a dollar sixty something here,
which is a reasonably small amount. So that really boomed
legally paying for music in a download format, and that
kind of steeply grew like CDs had, but then only
lasted actually a couple of years. That music download format
(42:00):
has been the kind of reigning supreme over the recorded industry.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Don't think I'll ever forget watching Steve Jobs holding up
you know, those amazing launches that they used to do
and holding up that tiny little little box and saying
you will have this minute. And I'm thinking, get out ere,
you've seen my record collections. You lost your mind? So
what what exactly was an MP three or is an
(42:28):
MP three?
Speaker 5 (42:30):
So?
Speaker 2 (42:30):
MP three is a.
Speaker 8 (42:31):
File type and audio file type and it was released
officially in the early nineties, so around ninety two. And
what it does is it compresses music files so they're
smaller in size, but you still get the audio quality
that's quite similar to the original source. So it means
that because they're compressed files there take up a lot
(42:52):
less room and you can store a lot more because
obviously your computer in the nineties and early two thousands
for storing a lot less than it can today. So
really compressing those files made music very portable and transferable.
You could file share MP three so you could rip
them off CDs, you could burn them back onto CDs
(43:15):
and give to a friend, So it really changed the
game m P three's in terms of music sharing.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Well, we thought music had become portable when we got
a discman with a catte player in it, and we
thought that was the coolest thing ever. So you can
imagine for those of us who lived through it to
find out that we can take our entire collection with
us when we leave the house. It's just so game changing.
It really is incredible. Yeah, yeah, and then oh yes, no, no,
(43:46):
you keep going, keep going, it's good. Oh.
Speaker 8 (43:48):
I was just thinking today we have even more access
to a big collection through streaming, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
That is exactly millions of songs. I'm sure we'll get
there your collection anymore.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
Anything, This really did change the game music industry, didn't it,
But not always in a good way. Even now, the
artists still up in arms about the tiny percentage of
royalties I get compared to the recorded music in other
ways in the old days. But you know, when Napster
and Limeline that came in, there was a whole lot
of people. It was pirrating, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
Napster came in in the late nineties, in nineteen ninety nine,
and that was a dramatic drop in CD sales. So
the music industry did not like that, and they actually
retaliated with quite a lot of lawsuits. And interestingly, it
wasn't just the industry that was doing legal battles, and
it was also bands and producers. I think Metallica and
(44:38):
Doctor Dre were amongst those suing over illegal downloads. Yeah,
and so those peer to peer kind of services where
you could stile share were hotly contested by the music industry,
but it didn't stop them from coming about.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
You had Napster and then.
Speaker 8 (44:57):
Also LimeWire and pirate Bay, and so there was really
a decade of those services being really widely used, and
actually a lot of the legal battles kind of gave
a bit more publicity ironically to those services. I think
that's got a lot more members after the legal battles
because people found out about it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
It's not true, Joe. Another way digital changed everything is
the way that the music even gets to us from
the musicians. For a lot of them, they're able to
just cut out the middle guy, and all of a sudden,
muso's are recording, especially young ones, are recording things in
their bedroom and then distributing it. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (45:39):
Absolutely, and I think that's been one of the most
interesting and fantastic changes over the last twenty years or so.
And that came about through both the distribution methods, but
also we're able to access a lot of the recording
technology that would have been you know, gate kept by
big production studios or previously. You can download able to
(46:01):
be a similar software to a laptop and create something
at home, and so we're kind of and then also
obviously move that you know, distribute your own files through
something like Spotify. So you're moving from going straight from
artists to audience, which has been a total change in
how things are done, and I think social media actually
(46:23):
was an extremely important forerunner for that. I think about
how for years MySpace was the place where you discovered music,
and that was musicians uploading their their content to MySpace
and people discovering. So it's definitely kind of cutting out
the middleman, which has been a really interesting development.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Something that happened ten years ago would never have happened before,
and that is you two's Songs of Innocence all of
a sudden landing in your eye shoes in twenty fourteen, and.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
People were really pissed. I was happy.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
And that's with this because in ninety sixty eight, the
biggest band in the world, the Rolling Stones of the Beetles,
didn't come to your house and put an album and
you let they just without asking you two just drop
them into your iTunes.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
People weren't happy, were they? I completely forgot about that. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (47:07):
I don't think people liked being told what to or
you actually had a lot of dis roll over your
library then too. You've changed the pictures and the song
yet rather and things, so having someone enforced the way
it looked was probably not very good.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Yeah. I think also another thing that we should mention
that the digital developments have given us is in addition
to our music and everything, is the rise of the podcast.
We wouldn't have all these podcasts if it wasn't for
the way that we get our audio and everything now.
Speaker 8 (47:45):
Yeah, absolutely, and they've diversified what we listened to completely.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Podcasts were they came about out of audio.
Speaker 8 (47:54):
Blogging, internet radio, you know MP three file development and
that same time the late nineties and early two thousands,
and in two thousand and four we actually got the
term podcast and by two thousand and five iTunes were
supporting it as a format and that become absolutely massive.
Today the majority of Australians listen to podcasts and they're
(48:16):
a huge medium that give us a whole wide range
of voices that we might not have necessarily heard in
traditional media.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
Yeah, you've also got the other digital world allows you
to do really cool stuff Like I'm in a shop
the other day at the carron Oup shops and I
hear the start of a song and I know this song.
I know this song, but I just excuse me. I
just hit Shazam and it tells me I wish zaming
to work out. People still it was big jet playing
by Magus and Julia Steiner when of course it wats
you know, but it just makes you lazy. But it's
very cool that that identifies the song.
Speaker 8 (48:48):
Just like that, And if you say, absolutely, that's totally
changed the way we find music as well, so you
do identifying music and find music through like algorithms and
different ways of searching. You know, it's yeah, completely changed
the game. And as I said before, social media as well,
you know, songs getting big off social media or coming
(49:11):
back into playlists and very very different from the days
of just the top one hundred chart.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yes, yeah, the only thing I feel that some people
miss out on, and I do mean a lot of
younger people might buy songs or stream songs or whatever
and they're not getting albums anymore. And you know, don't
still get albums because quite often the best tracks that
you're going to get from that person is you know,
(49:38):
on the album and not the song that you heard
on the radio and then started streaming and everything. So yeah,
never turn you back on the album.
Speaker 8 (49:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think the alb because albums, you know,
coming in with vinyls, there was of.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
The album for a lifelime, saving it yeah.
Speaker 8 (49:54):
Yeah, And then I think about like, you know, buying
a single song off iTunes and that coming back in
of the song being the like the viable thing is
the song right the album where you find album on
CD and vinyl and now we buy a song or
listen to a certain song. But pre vinyl, you know,
when you could only keep on recorded sound a couple
(50:18):
of minutes worth of audio, the song was supreme and
pre recorded sounds, the music itself like sheet music, and
the song itself was also ray and supreme. So it
does seem to EBB and Flower Little Yeah albums.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
It does go a little circle of things.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
Yes, although good the digital world means we missed out
on that romantic thing if you're not going and buying
vinyl or CDs or whatever. It might be in the
record store experience of the elders. But that's just the
way it is.
Speaker 8 (50:48):
Joe and I think that's why we're seeing the resurgence
in vinyl.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Absolutely want that exactly so, and that whole tangible thing.
There seems to be two main camps these days when
it comes to music streaming services spun Fire or Apple Music.
Is there a reason to be in one or the other.
Are they just is it just a matter of you know,
which one you ended up going with? Is one better
than the other for any reason?
Speaker 8 (51:10):
Or I think it's a matter of which one someone
will share a family account with you.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
All right, Well, we've come to the end of our
history of sound. I'm sure that there's going to this
will be ever evolving. Joe will be all over it
because she is a curator of the National Film and
Sound Archive of Australia. And your website is n f
s A, isn't it dot com? And there's and lots
(51:48):
to learn there. It's really interesting stuff. Joe. Thank you
so much for joining us this morning.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Nora, it's been great for your expertise and all of
the people who've helped us this week from Film and
Sound Archive.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Something that you couldn't have done twenty years ago. You'll
be able to hear this whole thing on other podcasts.
You will digitalization.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
I think we've away at the end of the strym
telling you something really embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Are you ready? I'm always up for you to embarrass this.
I was paying for Apple streaming for a while before
I even realized that ben I could get any song
I wanted at any time own my iTunes I have.
(52:34):
I went through a big thing of burning all of
my CDs onto my iTunes out and storing it in
there and so I could take it in my pocket
because that was the best thing that I thought it
ever happened. And then I didn't realize that I was
because I have Apple on the TV, so I didn't
realize I was actually paying for an Apple you know, subscription,
without realizing that that meant that I could go on
(52:55):
there and just ask for any song I wanted at
any time. I was still just playing everything from your
collection that was recorded in there. That is called being old.
That's hilarious too. But now I'm hip to the whole
scene and I'm streaming like a streaming thing. You just
said hip and then you click down. Thanks for confessing though.
(53:16):
That was that was good. That was big of you.
Thank you to the National Films I'm Australia for all
their help this week went absolutely illuminating. Hip to the
group just said, I said, to the whole scene, and
then I went he did crazy
Speaker 1 (53:34):
And Lisa ninety six
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