FEATURE:
Music Technology Breakthroughs
IN THIS PHOTO: EMI BTR2 machines in a BBC recording room (12th November, 1961)
Part Ten: The Tape Recorder
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IN the tenth part…
of Music Technology Breakthroughs, I wanted to look an older and quite basic piece of technology that revolutionised music consumption. The tape recorder is obsolete and taken for granted now, but it was a game-changer. I have already covered compact discs and the Sony Walkman an in this feature. I think that, alongside them, the tape recorder was instrumental in changing how we view and listen to music. I will move on and bring in an article that discusses how magnetic tape has impacted music. Before then, an article from Wikipedia that provides some history and detail regarding the tape recorder:
“An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present-day form, it records a fluctuating signal by moving the tape across a tape head that polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the audio signal. Tape-recording devices include the reel-to-reel tape deck and the cassette deck, which uses a cassette for storage.
The use of magnetic tape for sound recording originated around 1930 in Germany as paper tape with oxide lacquered to it. Prior to the development of magnetic tape, magnetic wire recorders had successfully demonstrated the concept of magnetic recording, but they never offered audio quality comparable to the other recording and broadcast standards of the time. This German invention was the start of a long string of innovations that have led to present-day magnetic tape recordings.
Magnetic tape revolutionized both the radio broadcast and music recording industries. It gave artists and producers the power to record and re-record audio with minimal loss in quality as well as edit and rearrange recordings with ease. The alternative recording technologies of the era, transcription discs and wire recorders, could not provide anywhere near this level of quality and functionality.
Since some early refinements improved the fidelity of the reproduced sound, magnetic tape has been the highest quality analog recording medium available. As of the first decade of the 21st century, analog magnetic tape has been largely replaced by digital recording technologies”.
Magnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on the same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it. In August 1948, Los Angeles-based Capitol Records became the first recording company to use the new process.[25]
Within a few years of the introduction of the first commercial tape recorder, the Ampex 200 model, launched in 1948, American musician-inventor Les Paul had invented the first multitrack tape recorder, bringing about another technical revolution in the recording industry. Tape made possible the first sound recordings totally created by electronic means, opening the way for the bold sonic experiments of the Musique Concrète school and avant garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, which in turn led to the innovative pop music studio-as-an-instrument recordings of artists such as Frank Zappa, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.
Tape enabled the radio industry for the first time to pre-record many sections of program content such as advertising, which formerly had to be presented live, and it also enabled the creation and duplication of complex, high-fidelity, long-duration recordings of entire programs. It also, for the first time, allowed broadcasters, regulators and other interested parties to undertake comprehensive logging of radio broadcasts for legislative and commercial purposes, leading to the growth of the modern media monitoring industry.
Innovations, like multitrack recording and tape echo, enabled radio programs and advertisements to be pre-produced to a level of complexity and sophistication that was previously unattainable and tape also led to significant changes to the pacing of program content, thanks to the introduction of the endless-loop tape cartridge.
While they are primarily used for sound recording, tape machines were also important for data storage before the advent of floppy disks and CDs, and are still used today, although primarily to provide an offline backup to hard disk drives”.
Not only was the tape recorder used in music; it as utilised in politics, broadcasting and so many other spheres and industries. Some criticise cassettes and tape as a format, but they are still being used today. Despite the dreaded problem of tapes being caught in recorders and players, I think they are pretty sturdy and compact. I want to draw from an interesting article that charted the beginnings of the tape recorder and how it evolved and became more commonplace:
“When electrical equipment manufacturer AEG introduced the Magnetophon K1 in Berlin in 1935, more than five decades had passed since Thomas Edison's groundbreaking phonograph. Many had explored the idea of recording sound electromagnetically, however it was the development of a unique tape head, in concert with a plastic tape coated in iron powder, that proved the breakthrough.
Although the first recordings were noisy and didn't sound any better than shellac records, AEG and tape manufacturer IG Farben were encouraged by a new possibility: the ability to cut and splice. Recordings could thus be edited and altered unlike ever before. In 1936 the first-ever concert was committed to magnetic tape in Ludwigshafen: a recording of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Radio manufacturer Max Grundig soon recognized the potential of the tape recorder, namely on the mass market. In 1951, his company introduced the first affordable home tape recorder, the Reporter 500L. The innovation earned the admiration of the man known as the father of the German economic miracle and Finance Minister Ludwig Erhard, pictured here with Grundig (left).
The new tape recorder aimed at everyday consumers - the Telefunken Magnetophon 300, pictured here in 1963 - soon became battery powered and cable free, making it possible for people to enjoy their music anywhere, anytime.
With no commercial interests, music fans could now record concerts for repeated home listening, and then share the recordings with friends - like this young man at an open air festival at Burg Alsfeld in central Germany in the 1970s.
German pop star Nicole had a hi-fi reel-to-reel tape recorder in her living room. The Eurovision Song Contest winner from 1982 was able to listen to demo songs presented to her for consideration in the comfort of her own home.
Tape recording was now common place and other companies worldwide began to develop and manufacture their own equipment. In 1974 American singer Neil Sedaka planned to record in Frankfurt, however when the engineer played the piano accompaniment - recorded previously in the US - it sounded muffled and distorted, as the tape from the US was incompatible with the European device.
Meanwhile, digital recording supplanted the analogue tape machine. Even the digital audio tape (DAT) faded from studios and living rooms, as the CD and then MP3 took over - rendering the old "tape salad" to the attic and the history books”.
Magnetic tape and the tape recorder developed through the years. I think it directly lead to the MP3 and more portable forms of music listening that we use widely today. I guess this sort of ties in with my examination of the compact disc and the Sony Walkman. They are evolutions of the tape recorder and the cassette/magnetic tape. The tape recorder not only changed music and the way we digested it, but it provided so many people and industries…
SO many possibilities.