Old cylinder recordings (1890-1920) archive now online...

Another related deal:

The forgotten voices and neglected songs of old California live at the Southwest Museum in several hundred small, round containers that look like nothing more than miniature oatmeal boxes. Each container holds a minute or two of the past on an Edison cylinder, the earliest known field recordings of Spanish-language music made by an individual rather than a record company.

Each generation has tried to draw interest to these recordings since museum founder Charles F. Lummis made them, mostly between 1904 and 1906, but the projects have never realized their potential, largely because of the technical challenges of re-recording about 400 old, primitive cylinders, and the labor and expense of transcribing, translating and publishing so many songs.

Now, nearly 70 years after Times columnist Ed Ainsworth asked: "Why couldn't somebody get out successfully a book of old Spanish folk songs from the Lummis record collection?" samples from the cylinders will be put on display in "Sounds From the Circle," which will be on exhibit at the Southwest Museum from May 9 through July 5.

Four songs are linked plus some further general info.

Ummm... wouldn't that take, literally, hours??

― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, February 17, 2009 8:32 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

More like weeks, it seems. How long did it take, Adam?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, February 17, 2009 9:40 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

Took maybe an hour or so. I didn't literally get them all (its not like they are all zipped together as one huge file) but i did get something like 5 hours or so worth of music. Best stuff is the zany instrumental virtuoso performances. Plus the old-timey announcement "This is Edison records!"

Love me some Billy Murray

more stuff to dig through .... http://sounds.bl.uk/ good lord.

Fun story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/science/bismarcks-voice-among-restored-edison-recordings.html

Yeah! And Smithsonian Folkways downloads have been available for coveral years, I just keep forgetting. Also, new update on Alan Lomax's digital jukebox
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/arts/music/the-alan-lomax-collection-from-the-american-folklife-center.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&ref=general&src=me&adxnnlx=1328104816-rtBh/oqogHJVjISV0SqZwQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vqvq-f-UtU

more info on the optical digitizing process:

NEW HOPE FOR EARLY AUDIO:
IRENE Audio Preservation for Grooved Media Now Available at NEDCC!
The new IRENE Audio Preservation service at the Northeast Document Conservation
Center (NEDCC) is the culmination of a decade of research and development at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Library of Congress.

The IRENE technology uses a non-contact approach, which eliminates the possibility
of damage caused by mechanical contact of a stylus on fragile media. The process
creates ultra-high resolution images of the audio groove structures in either 2D or
3D, and the resulting image files are then processed through software that
translates them into an audio file.

NEDCC CURRENTLY WORKS WITH THE FOLLOWING FORMATS:
Wax cylinders, lacquer discs ("acetate" discs), aluminum transcription discs,
shellac discs, tin foils, and other rare formats (e.g., Dictabelt, Voice-O-Graph,
etc.), and can handle rare, fragile, or damaged media.
LEARN MORE:
About NEDCC IRENE:
https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/about

About the History of the of the IRENE IMLS Grant Project at NEDCC:
https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/history

(via my mom the archivist)

Couldn't find the other thread about old time recording devices so I am posting this link here:http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/gramophone/028011-3004-e.html

whoa, a lot to dig through there - the podcasts page looks like a great start, thanks!

New BBC series Sound Of Song is relevant to this thread, recreating old recording devices. Episode 1 is on iPlayer.

Other thread with related info is: What is Country?

with most important relevant link to here:
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/recording.technology.history/notes.html

Original link still works!

Sorry, wasn't thinking about original link just repurposing thread a little to be links to old time recording methods references, such as the Audio Engineering Society Recording Technology History page I just linked to, since I was not aware of some such other thread.

NY Times profile of WFMU's gramophone/cylinders specialist (and a high-school classmate of yrs truly) Mike Cumella:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/a-gramophone-dj-cranks-up-the-volume.html

And the original UCSB archive site has been updated.

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

also related, at IU-Bloomington:

http://news.iu.edu/releases/iu/2015/10/media-digitization-preservation-initiative-opening.shtml

Meantime, there's this -- Archeophone has a lot of good stuff in their catalog.

http://archeophone.com/catalogue/waxing-the-gospel/

No "A Day in a Country School" by George Graham :(
― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Thursday, November 17, 2005 12:09 AM (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Eureka! I have found it!

https://i78s.org/preview/6d691a230a67c765dd0998f8f30f48cd

This "monologue" or speech or whatever you want to call it is listed in Harry Smith's liner notes to the Anthology of American Folk Music as one of several Berliner discs that were a precursor to folk music. It "includes a unique recording of chanted mathematical problems." Great stuff, and from what I can discern through the static it sounds like he's using the word "five" as a synonym for "double".

Five one is two
Five two is four
Five four is eight
Five eight is sixteen
Five sixteen is thirty-two
Five thirty-two is sixty-four
Five sixty-four is... five sixty fours is... oh stop that nonsense never mind. Well that's good enough for today.

Ha!

People people, oh dear gentle ILX folk, I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS RECORDING FOR LITERALLY LIKE TWENTY YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is he saying "twice"?

Inventing the whole bit system!

Nice! Wish the site played on mobile. I'm having a go at doing a bit of careful restoration on the track, will see if I can make it any clearer.

Well it's clearer but the restoration is more drastic than careful, might have another go tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOh3iTlrLj8

Oh and this is the best (and most annoying) archive, it's not on this thread for some reason

https://www.russian-records.com