FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible

Subject: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Wolfgang
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 03:34 PM

Many years before Edison the French Scott de Martinville worked with success on the recording of sound. Since he was only interested in recording and not in replaying what was recorded, his invention was forgotten. Researchers now have used the recording and found a method to make audible what was recorded.

What we can hear now is 20 years older than the until now oldest known recording. And it is the French folksong Au claire de la lune.

Article with an audio of the oldest folksong recording (The article is in German. You'll have to scroll to find the audio)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 03:37 PM

Gott in Himmel!

That's amazing.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 03:40 PM

Incredible...rather eerie sounding.

How did he know he was successful at recording, though, if he didn't want to play it back?

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: jeffp
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 04:06 PM

That's very cool! Thanks for alerting us to that, Wolfgang.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Gulliver
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 04:28 PM

Kat, the article explains that he was a man of the written, rather than spoken, word (he was a printer and proofreader), and influenced by Daguerre's technique of reproducing optical images on paper, he wanted to develop a graphical sound recording, a so-called "phono-autograph", or "sound-photo".

His device was cranked manually, which of course caused variations in the modern reproduction of the sound, but the team got over that by splitting their process into many individual steps.

Don

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: GUEST,Ken Brock
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 04:58 PM

It is also not generally known that there were experiments with primitive FAX technology (based on the telegraph) before the US Civil War of 1861-65.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Art Thieme
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 05:10 PM

Fascinating!

Mr. H., thank you once again.

Art

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: GUEST,john.feucht
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 05:35 PM

I have seen a phonoautograph of Abraham Lincoln. I wonder if it also is now playable?

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Big Mick
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 06:19 PM

Wow, is that cool!! To hear a voice from that long ago, and to listen to how the voicing was done......very cool.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Gervase
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 06:53 PM

Amazing - it puts up the hairs on the back of the neck to hear a voice from a time when my grandfather's grandfather was around, and from when otherwise all we have are black-letter broadsheets and the written word. Its fuzziness and tantalising inaudibility make it all the more fascinating, like a vision only half glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Thanks for that bit of time travel, Wolfgang.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 07:59 PM

Thanks, Don, that makes it even more amazing!

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Escapee
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 02:55 AM

Wow. It's like hearing a ghost. Thanks for sharing it with us.
SKP

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: mark gregory
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 03:46 AM

Au Clair de la Lune--French folk song (1860 Phonautogram)

The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio, and its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison.

Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered.

Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the French folksong "Au Clair de la Lune" on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Académie des Sciences in 1861. The existence of a tuning-fork calibration trace allows us to compensate for the irregular recording speed of the hand-cranked cylinder. The sheet contains the beginning line of the second verse-"Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit"-and is the earliest audibly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered.


listen to mp3

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Old Grizzly
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 04:46 AM

This is in fact an early April the first Joke.

In truth, it is a Public Service Announcement recorded at Victoria Station a couple of weeks back. ;O)

Dave

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Llanfair
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 06:39 AM

It was on radio 4 today programme this morning and caused Charlotte Green to have a fit of the giggles.

What is the beeb coming to!!!

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 07:37 AM

"...caused Charlotte Green to have a fit of the giggles.
How very peculiar.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 07:50 AM

Apparently one of her colleagues said, 'It sounds like a bee buzzing in a bottle', that was what caused her to 'corpse' on air.
Link here under picture of Charlotte.

G

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: SINSULL
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 08:13 AM

I played it aloud in the office and it really freaked people out. Something strange about the sound but also the fact that it was a voice from so long ago.
Thanks for sharing, Wolfgang

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 01:26 PM

This recording has evoked the same emotions in you as in me. If anyone finds a longer version I'd love to hear it.

English language article about it

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 01:29 PM

NYT article

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 01:39 PM

'caused Charlotte Green to have a fit of the giggles.
How very peculiar'

I had the same reaction

Charlotte (the view from Ma and Pa's piano stool)

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 02:41 PM

Yes but I bet you weren't reading out an obituary at the time!

Thanks for posting this, Wolfgang - it is SOOOOOOO neat

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 05:00 PM

One of my compatriots compared it to a squadron of water bugs farting in unison in a shallow tin plate. Whatever it was, it may add to the mounting evidence that Edison was even better at self-promotion and adaptation than at actual invention.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 05:13 PM

He was obviously better at self-promotion than Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Thompson
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 06:45 PM

At some stage it will undoubtedly be photoshopped and appear as a normal recording.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Mar 08 - 05:22 PM

So that's what Charlotte Green looks like; another of life's little illusions shattered!

Choice stuff on both counts though; Au Clare de la Lune & Charlotte cracking up on air - my day, as they say, is made. Thanks to all concerned.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Gene Burton
Date: 29 Mar 08 - 05:41 PM

Just listened. That's quite...something else. A remarkable achievement both on the part of de Martinville and whoever worked on making the recording playable. Thanks for putting that out, Wolfgang.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 12:47 PM

'It sounds like a bee buzzing in a bottle'

Well, I suppose anyone might have a fit of the giggles at such a hilarious comment...

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 12:50 PM

Yeah, and that death announcement. A real scream.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 03:29 PM

Bonnie - no it wasn't, and the BBC have tried to distinguish between the reasons for Charlotte's corpsing and the item she was trying to read out at the time.

Kitty

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: frogprince
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 03:41 PM

Some of my favorite lp's from about 1960 sound about like that now...

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 03:48 PM

I was joking, Kitty!

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 04:41 PM

Yes, Bonnie, but just in case there's anyone litigious out there...!

Matthew Parris played Charlotte's Today corpsing item on Pick of the Week today, too! (along with the disparaging comment about the ghastliness of folk music....)

Kitty

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Gulliver
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 11:52 AM

Is anyone familiar with the story that was going the rounds that scientists had managed to reproduce ancient Roman sounds from pottery? They allegedly picked up the background noise from a pottery from the grooves in the pots that were fashioned by hand on the potter's wheel.

Turns out it was an urban myth.

Don

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 11:54 AM

Love to see the Monty Python team get their hands on that one!

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: autolycus
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 03:25 PM

frogprince,

you can clean your LPs and get rid of an amazing amount of the crackle.

There was a thread about it recently -

I've been going to sleep recently -= WAIT for the punchline,q - to one of a couple of Blooper tapes put out by the british Wireless for the Blind Fund.

they have much esteeemed corpsing


Ivor

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: terrier
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 06:53 PM

Gulliver wrote:
...Is anyone familiar with the story that was going the rounds that scientists had managed to reproduce ancient Roman sounds from pottery? They allegedly picked up the background noise from a pottery from the grooves in the pots that were fashioned by hand on the potter's wheel...

A couple of years ago, there was a news item where scientists working with audio production extracted a couple of words from the Turin Shroud! They didn't say what the words were.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Captain Ginger
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 06:37 AM

"Sciocco D'Aprile", I imagine!

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 12:44 PM

How lo-fi can you go?

Surely only a matter of time before someone invents a plugin that can make any audio sound like that.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: johnross
Date: 02 Apr 08 - 12:55 AM

I was at the ARSC conference where the presentation was made. The members of the team described both the original process and the recovery in detail, and they played both the version that was distributed around the world and the same recording with some modern noise reduction and filtering. The cleaned-up version was even more impressive as a window to a long-ago time and place.

Quite an amazing accomplishment.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 02 Apr 08 - 05:04 AM

It would be fascinating to hear the cleaned-up one. Does anyone know if it's online anywhere?

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: autolycus
Date: 03 Apr 08 - 01:48 AM

I'm sorry to discover that we haven't been given the improved version.
Very.

   Ivor

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 03 Apr 08 - 02:07 PM

Does our audio/computer capability know no bounds? The Shroud of Turin, ancient pottery shards - what's next? I expect we will soon hear of vocal emanations captured from striations on meteorites. Now THAT would be noteworthy.

Subject: RE: FolksongRecording from 1860 made audible
From: Gulliver
Date: 05 Apr 08 - 12:40 PM

No, I think it's our imagination and sense of humour that knows no bounds.

Don