Supervisor: Dr. Kristin McGee (University of Groningen) Second Supervisor: Dr. Lutgard Mutsaers (University of Utrecht)

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Supervisor: Dr. Kristin McGee (University of Groningen)

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Bram Nigten

Recorded Reflections

Sonic Space in U.S. Popular Recordings During the Mono Era

(1877-‐1957), and its Occurrence in Three Recordings of

Studio Pioneer Bill Putnam

Master Thesis Arts, Culture and Media University of Groningen

Groningen 2014

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Acknowledgements

As a student, musician and aspiring guitar effects designer, I have always been fascinated by the evocative power of echo and reverb. The inspiration for this thesis stems from my own studio experience with producers Milan Ćirić, Klaas Pot and Corno Zwetsloot, as well as the work of Peter Doyle, Susan Schmidt Horning and many others. I would like to thank my supervisor, dr. Kristin McGee, for all her help and endless patience, and my second supervisor dr. Lutgard Mutsaers, for all her astute comments. Additionally I would like to express my gratitude towards Anna Berkhof, Dirk Nigten and Carla Nigten, for all of the support they have given me during the writing of this thesis.

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Index

1. Introduction 1.1 Harnessing Space 1

1.2 Definition of Spatiality 4

1.3 Recording Technology in the Mono Era 5

1.4 Spatiality in Mono Recordings 6

1.5 William Moylan’s Method of Spatial Analysis 9

1.6 Semantics of Sonic Space 13

1.7 High Fidelity 16

1.8 Outline 17

Part One: Space in Recorded Popular Music of the Mono Era

2. Towards Realism: 1877 – 1930

2.1 Spatiality in Music Before Edison 20

2.2 Capturing Space in the Acoustic Period 21

2.3 Electrified Fidelity 25

3. Outer, Inner and Disordered Space: 1930 – 1957

3.1 Acoustics and Outer Space 32

3.2 The Echo Chamber and Inner Space 36

3.3 Towards Disordered Space 40

Part Two: Space in the Recordings of Bill Putnam

4. Introducing Bill Putnam 45

5. The Harmonicats – “Peg O’ My Heart”

5.1 Background 50

5.2 Formal Spatial Analysis 51

5.3 Theoretical Spatial Analysis 57

6. Jane Turzy Trio – “Good Morning, Mr. Echo”

6.1 Background 64

7. Little Walter and his Night Cats – “Juke”

7.1 Background 77

8. Conclusion 92

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1. Introduction

1.1 Harnessing Space

On May 5th_{,
1925,
a
much-‐anticipated
Bessie
Smith
recording
session
took
place}

at Columbia’s Broadway and Fifty-‐Ninth Street Studio in New York. Upon arrival at the studio, Smith, whose recent recordings with Louis Armstrong were

increasingly growing in popularity, was not greeted by a small group of two to three musicians and a recording engineer like she had been on her previous sessions. Instead she met with bandleader Fletcher Henderson and his ‘Hot Six,’ several Columbia technicians as well as engineers from Western Electric. Even more out of the ordinary was the fact that the recording room, which normally contained a large recording horn, some chairs and some music stands, had been transformed into a large conical makeshift tent made out of monk’s cloth,

suspended from the ceiling and spreading to the corners of the studio (Albertson 2003, 97-‐98, Horning 2013, 43-‐44).

A month earlier Columbia had achieved the remarkable feat of recording a choir of thousands at the Metropolitan Opera House (Associated Glee Clubs of America, 1925). The number of performers featured on recordings had always been limited to small ensembles, due to the mechanical limitations of the

recording system used prior to 1925. These limitations were overcome to great extend when Western Electric, a subsidiary of the telephone company AT&T, presented a new electric recording system to Victor and Columbia in 1924. By February 1925 recording experiments at Columbia had started, and now for the first time Bessie Smith was to be recorded with the new system (Albertson 2003, 97-‐98; Horning 2013, 44).

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Walkin’ Babies (From Home)” (Bessie Smith 1940), which had been recorded some months earlier by Alberta Hunter for the Gennett label. The band’s delivery of the upbeat song was a bit rough around the edges, but the new recording system made up for it by capturing the band and Smith’s exuberant vocal

delivery with detail unprecedented on her earlier recordings. The second song to be recorded was “Yellow Dog Blues” (Bessie Smith 1925). Although Smith had some problems remembering the lyrics, the session resulted in a beautiful example of a slow blues ballad typical of Bessie Smith’s repertoire (Albertson 2003, 98-‐99).

One can only wonder what the rest of the afternoon would have had in store, as the session came to an unexpected halt. Just after the second take of “Yellow Dog Blues” the wire that suspended the large tent from the ceiling snapped and the entire structure collapsed, resulting in a mess of musicians, engineers and equipment under a huge blanket of cloth. Smith’s manager Frank Walker remembered it as “the wildest scramble you ever saw,” leaving Bessie to mutter her favorite expression while trying to get out from underneath the tent: “I never heard of such shit!,” according to Bessie Smith biographer Chris

Albertson (Albertson 2003, 99; Avakian 1956).

The tent was put away never to be used again, but the two sides that were recorded that day remain. Listening back to these songs it is noticeable that the new electric recording system transferred more sonic information onto the recordings than the acoustic system that preceded it. This new level of sensitivity of the recording equipment increased the influence of the recording space on the overall sound of the recordings. But, as the Bessie Smith session illustrates, this space could be altered, resulting in a different outcome in sound, and in this case could result in a different outcome of the session itself. On the two recordings that were made during this session there is a high degree of separation between sound of the different instruments and Smith’s vocals. As a result from using the tent as a dampening tool, the instruments and Bessie’s voice do not significantly blend together but rather remain distinct from each other, giving a somewhat static, or “dry” quality to the recordings.

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and the rather crude technical reaction to this new system, influences the sound of a recording. It also shows the importance of the spatial qualities of recordings, as the engineers deemed it necessary to alter the space of the recording room in such a drastic way. Lastly it shows that engineers were not just there to capture the music, but also actively influenced the aesthetics of the sound of music on record.

It was the intention of Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph in 1877, that recordings should bear likeness to the original sound as much as possible. This meant that the space evoked in the mind of the listener when listening to a recording should resemble an actual performance space. However, during the first eighty years of music recording, the sonic space of recorded music underwent some drastic changes, moving away from Edison’s ideal. The goal of this thesis is to describe the development of sonic space in popular music recordings during the mono era. This period starts at the invention of the

phonograph in 1877. Although the end of the mono era is somewhat undefined, as stereophonic recordings and mono recordings co-‐existed for over a decade, I have chosen the year 1957, which saw the release of the first mass-‐produced stereo-‐recording, to limit the scope of this thesis. During this period, all popular music recordings were recorded monaurally, meaning that the sounds coming from one or multiple sound capturing devices were mixed together, stored on a medium, and played back through a single sound source.

My main focus is on how the spatial characteristics of popular music recordings were shaped in the recording studio, and how the listener makes meaning of the different forms of spatial characteristics. To limit the scope of this thesis, the development of the music industry will be mostly left out of the

equation. The technological innovations that occurred during this period, primarily the invention of the electric recording system, the use of echo

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such as acoustics, reverb and echo, of popular music recordings. Using Charles Sanders Peirce’s three categories of semantics, I will try to categorize the different cognitive functions of spatial characteristics in popular music recordings as they emerge during the above mentioned time period.

In order to get a deeper understanding of sonic spatiality on the level of individual recordings, especially those that were made at the end of the mono era, three chapters of this thesis will consist of in depth analysis of the

recordings of “Peg O’ My Heart” by the Harmonicats (1947a), “Good Morning, Mr. Echo” by the Jane Turzy Trio (1951) and “Juke,” by Little Walter and his Night Cats (1952), which were recorded by engineer and producer Bill Putnam. Bill Putnam (1920-‐1989), who is regarded to be the father of the modern

recording console, has an important place in the history of music recording, both because of his technological contributions and his development of new recording techniques. As he experimented with new recording technologies during the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, he came up with innovative ways of using spatial

characteristics on his recordings, which is why these three recordings will serve as a relevant case study.

1.2 Definition of Spatiality

The spatial characteristics of music recordings lie within the sound waves themselves, which are altered by the physical properties of the space in which the sound is made. As the waves travel away from their source they interact with the objects they encounter. These objects, such as walls or damping material, can make the waves bounce off of their surface, resonate when being hit by the waves or absorb the waves. As materials have different resonant frequencies, the way a space will affect a sound will differ over the frequency range. The

amplitude or volume of a sound will also affect how much the sound will be influenced by the space in which it is made.

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microphone is distant to the source, or not aimed directly at it, the recorded sound will have a quality of depth or farness. Different positions of the microphone in a space can also alter the spatial qualities of a sound, as

resonation, damping or reflection of the room will vary with different positions. Two dimensions of spatiality are particularly relevant for this thesis. One is the dimension of depth, or the varying degrees between sounds that are near and that are far. The second is the degree of reverberance of a sound. This reverberance, caused by the reflections of space, can vary between a very “wet” sound, in which case the reflections or reverb of the sound can be louder than the original sound itself, and a “dry” sound, in which case the sound waves are absorbed rather than reflected, resulting in no reverb at all. Reverb will color the sound in different ways, as the degree of reflectivity and resonant frequencies vary per space. Within this dimension echo is a special case, as it consists of one or more distinct reflections, generating a repetition of sound.

Using Peter Doyle’s terminology, these dimensions of space in recorded music can be described as paramusical acoustic spatial indicators, invoking a sense of space in the listener’s mind through the sonic information of the records (Doyle 2005, 14). As the recordings that will be discussed are recorded

monaurally, the left-‐right dimension of stereophonic recordings will not be taken into account. In the case of synthetic reverb and echo, these spatial indicators do not have to originate from the same space where the original sound was made.

1.3 Recording Technology in the Mono Era

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Recording (2004), the emphasis lies on the recording technology. Other notable authors who have written on recording technology are Michael Chanan (1995), Tom Lubin (1996), Mark Katz (2004), Doug Jones and Dale Manquen (2008) and Roey Izhaki (2008).

Susan Horning’s book Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture & the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP (2013) offers insight in the technology and culture specific to the recording studio. It describes the history of the studio and the role of the producer in great detail, providing a valuable source of information for the historic chapters of this thesis. I have found few studies that focus specifically on the technology and techniques used to shape the sonic space of recordings. Emily Thompson’s The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-‐1933 (2004). Even though the subject only concerns a small part of her book and her book is limited to the first half of the mono era, her account of the history of acoustics of the recording studio during that period helps to understand how engineers developed ways of manipulating the studio space to shape the spatial characteristics of recordings. For more detailed insight in specific technical advancements, information can be found in industry journals during the time these technologies were in development. In contrast to the above-‐mentioned studies, these articles are primarily written for engineers working in the recording industry. Examples are The Bell System Technical Journal (Maxfield and Harrison 1926), the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (Kellogg 1930) and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Morris and Nixon 1936; Green and Dunbar 1947).

1.4 Spatiality in Mono Recordings

Moving away from the technological realm into the field of popular musicology, it becomes evident that up until recent years little has been written about

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further analysis. In Music, Sound and Space, edited by Georgina Born, only the contribution by Eric F. Clarke (2013) deals with sonic spatiality of popular music recordings. In his chapter “Music, space and subjectivity,” Clarke analyzes two popular recordings, using theories of ecological perception and conceptual metaphors, to identify modes of subjectivity.

In The Poetics of Rock, Albin Zak III (2001) describes how the recording industry’s goal shifted from making a record of a music performance, thus preserving the music, to shaping the sound of a recording. In his explanation of how subtle sonic differences in recordings can bring fourth strong musical effect, Zak describes the spatial tropes of echo and reverb. His approach is rather

descriptive, and he refrains from explaining what the use of these sonic devices implies within a broader socio-‐cultural context. In his 2010 book I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (2010), Zak does go into greater detail, explaining how the aesthetic use of spatial characteristics by producers in the 1950s helped create a specific sound. He juxtaposes this sound against the high fidelity movement that arose in the early ‘50s, which will be discussed shortly.

In Radio, Rudolf Arnheim (1936) describes the practice and aesthetics of radio making in the ‘30s, using his background in Gestalt psychology to describe how various radio techniques are perceived by the listener. One chapter deals specifically with the use of spatiality in radio, and describes the origin of some of the recording techniques dealing with spatiality that would later be adopted by the record industry. In From Tin Foil to Stereo, Walter Welch and Oliver Read (1976) describe how after the electric recording system was introduced in 1925, the acoustics of the studio started to become an important factor in the aesthetic decision making of the studio engineers and the record companies they worked for. According to the authors, recordings featuring the spatial characteristics of an acoustically dry room evoked a different sense of space in the listener’s mind compared to recordings that featured the spatial characteristics of a reverberant concert hall or auditorium.

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is covered in her previously mentioned book, her article “The Sounds Of Space, Studio as Instrument in the Era of High Fidelity” deals exclusively with the spatial characteristics employed in studios between the mid 40s and mid 60s. Horning describes what the impact of the evolution of studio technology had on the both the spatiality on recordings and the role of the recording engineer, but does not describe the impact these new forms of spatiality had on the listening experience of the audience.

Peter Doyle’s Echo and Reverb: Fabricating Space in Popular Music Recording 1900 – 1960 (2005) is the only book that has spatiality in popular recordings as its principal subject. Doyle examines the history of acoustically imagined space in popular music recording in the mono era. Doyle’s focus is not so much on the sonic information of the recordings themselves, but rather investigating what effect these spatial characteristics have on the mind of the listener. Doyle uses the concepts of “territorialization,” “deterritorialization,” and “reterritorialization,” adapted from Deleuze and Guattari, throughout his book to analyze the effect the sonic information has on the imagined space of the listener. Doyle uses these terms in his analysis of both physical space and ‘inner’ space, but not in his analysis of the spatial markers in the recordings themselves. In his book, Doyle does not go into great detail on the technological background of the spatial characteristics of the recordings, but rather uses a large hermeneutic framework to analyze the cultural meaning of the use of echo and reverb in popular recordings during this period. His analysis of the evolution of sonic space during the mono era from ‘ordered’ to ‘disordered’ is very astute, and is one of the main inspirations for this thesis.

Allan Moore presents a different approach to analyzing space in popular music in his book Rock, the Primary Text (1993). With his notion of the ‘sound-‐ box’, he presents a tool with which the spatial efforts of the producer can be analyzed intratextually. According to Moore, these spatial aspects fall under the category ‘texture,’ which compromises three levels: that of spatial depth, a sense of horizontal location and a vertical axis, representing the register of the

different sounds. The vertical axis however does not represent any spatial element of the sounds, but is merely a conceptualization of pitch. As the

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axis remains. Although his three levels of spatial depth -‐ foreground,

middleground and background -‐ can serve a purpose in the analysis of space in mono-‐recordings, the distinction is rather crude and does not cover specific spatial elements such as echo. Moore’s sound-‐box is specifically designed to analyze stereo recordings, and does not provide much insight when used to analyze spatiality in mono recordings.

1.5 William Moylan’s Method of Spatial Analysis

For the formal analysis of the spatial characteristics of the three recordings of Bill Putnam, I will use William Moylan’s method of spatial analysis, as presented in his book Understanding and Crafting the Mix: The Art of Recording (2007), and in his chapter “Considering Space in Music” in The Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field (2012). Even though Moylan’s method of analysis is designed for the analysis of stereophonic recordings, it can be used equally well for mono recordings. His method is part of larger analytic method that covers the various elements of record producing. Its primary goal is mapping out the spatial aspects of a specific recording as they are evoked in the mind of the listener.

Moylan makes a distinction between the overall sound of a recording and the individual sound sources that are featured on the recording. He uses two concepts to describe the spatial elements of the song as a whole: the “perceived performance environment” and the “sound stage.” The perceived performance environment, or PPE, is “the overall space where the ‘performance,’ that is the music ‘recording,’ is heard as taking place. […] This environment binds all sound sources and their separate environments into a single performance area, with its own global environmental characteristics” (Moylan 2012, 164).

Moylan lists six specific environmental characteristics that make up the PPE (2012, 164):

1. Any frequency alterations to the overall sound of the recording (incorporating bass ratio)

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3. Reverb time and density

4. Pre-‐delay and the spacing of reflections in the early time field 5. Ratio of direct to reverberant sound

6. Unfolding dynamic relationships between the direct sound and reflections/reverberation

The first two characteristics determine what the frequency response of the envisioned overall space is, and in case of a changing PPE, how the frequency response changes over time. The third characteristic is the overall reverb length and intensity. The fourth deals with pre-‐delay, i.e. the time between the original dry sound and the first reflections of this sound, and the spacing thereof. The last two characteristics deal with the ratio of the direct to reverberant sound, and how this relationship changes during the course of the recording. These aspects of the PPE can be established by looking at the spatial characteristics applied to all the sound sources and/or the spatial characteristics of individual sound sources within the recording (Moylan 2012, 164).

Moylan describes the PPE as being a static point of reference against which the individual sound sources or groups of sounds can be understood. He does acknowledge that for some recordings the PPE can be subject to change over the course of the song. In some rare cases when a recording has sections with strikingly different characters, this recording can establish more than one PPE. Moylan uses “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles as an example of a recording with multiple PPEs (Moylan 2012, 180).

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The second concept for determining the overall spatial characteristics of a recording is the “sound stage.” The sound stage, according to Moylan, is the area within the perceived performance environment on which the individual sound sources and groups of sounds are distributed. Again, this sound stage does not necessarily have anything in common with the position of the musicians at the time of recording, but is based on the placing of the individual sound sources and groups of sound sources as perceived by the listener. The dimensions of this sound stage and the proximity of the listener to the sound stage are dependent on multiple factors. In a stereo configuration the width of the stage depends on the individual sounds panned the furthest to either side on the left-‐right axis (Moylan 2012, 164). As my analysis will be dealing exclusively with mono recordings, the left-‐right axis, or width of the sound stage, will be left out of the equation.

The perceived front and rear boundaries of the sound stage are

determined by the closest and most distant individual sound source locations, with the former also determining the proximity of the sound stage to the listener (Moylan 2006, 188-‐189). As this is the only dimension of the sound stage used in the analysis of mono recordings, it is important to briefly examine how distance location of sound sources can be determined. The distance location of a sound source cannot be measured by the amplitude of the sound it creates, but rather by the amount of timbral information and detail of the sound. Moylan states: “Timbre differences between the sound source as it is remembered in an unaltered state and the sound as it exists in the recording primary determine distance localization. The listener is aware of how timbres are altered over various distances. It is through the perception of these changes that we identify the distance of a source from our listening location“ (Moylan 2006, 190).

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Both the dimensions of the sound stage and the characteristics of the PPE are shaped by the spatial characteristics of the individual sound sources or groups of sound sources. When analyzing the individual sound sources Moylan employs four categories: distance location, image size (width), lateral location and environment characteristics. The distance location, as previously mentioned, will be used to place the individual sounds on the sound stage of the recording. The second and third categories do not apply to mono recordings (Moylan 2012, 164-‐166). Regarding the fourth category, sound sources and groups of sound sources are often placed within their own environment, which aren’t necessarily realistic when combined with those of other individual sound sources. Although this illusion of space within space, as Moylan calls it, might not resemble a real environment, the listener will still combine the different environments of the individual sound sources to create a single overall environment. Therefore it is important to discuss the PPE as a whole, the perceived environment of the

individual sound sources within the PPE and their relation to each other (Moylan 2006, 203-‐204).

Using Moylan’s method for my formal analysis has two advantages. Firstly, because it deals with perceived space rather than actual space it allows for a purposeful analysis, as it is often impossible to exactly determine the spatial characteristics of the recording space, a feat that becomes especially difficult when the producer starts to manipulate the spatial characteristics. Using a model such as this will make the discrepancies between an actual performance

environment and the perceived performance environment directly evident. Secondly, as the method only deals with the sonic information of a recording, the outcome of such an analysis can be juxtaposed against a theoretical analysis that uses information outside of the sonic information of the recording, such as lyrical content, the title, historic background, technical background and cultural

conventions.

1.6 Semantics of Sonic Space

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interpretations are subjective, my goal is to determine how the different uses of spatial characteristic within popular recordings signify on a primary level that will work for most listeners in the Western world. Rather than referring to my own interpretation in my analysis of the functioning of sonic space, I will use the term ‘the listener,’ as I try to approach a level of spatial interpretation which is shared amongst most of the Western audience, both in my formal analysis in the case study and in my analysis of the semantics of spatial characteristics.

Although this term might be somewhat misleading, I am not implying that there is something like a universal listener. I am merely using this term as a rhetoric tool in my investigation to gain insight in how the sonic information of these recordings evoke a perceived performance space in the average Western listener on a semantic level at the time the recording was released.

The listener’s perception of the spatial characteristics of a recording will be influenced by the setup of their playback device and listening space. As my investigation deals with the spatial characteristics in the sonic text of the popular recordings, the incorporation of the spatial aspects of the listening space in the interpretation of the assumed listener will make matters unnecessarily

complicated. The assumed listener will therefore have a theoretical perfect playback device and an acoustically neutral listening environment that does not affect the listener’s perception of the spatial characteristics of a recording.

In order to get a better understanding of how a listener gives meaning to the spatial characteristics of a monaural recording, I will use Charles Sanders Peirce’s categorization of signs, which he divides into the ‘icon,’ ‘index,’ and ‘symbol.’ Peirce’s papers that embody his theory of semiology have been subject to various different interpretations. In the beginning of his essay “Icon, Index, and Symbol,” Arthur W. Burks (1949) provides a basic understanding of Peirce’s categories, before developing his own interpretation of the indexical sign.

Peirce’s theory of semantics states that a sign is something that represents or signifies an object to some interpretant (Burks 1949, 673). According to Peirce, signs can be divided into three categories, based on how the sign denotes the object it signifies.

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sign is a portrait that signifies the depicted person. The indexical sign has an existential connection with its object. It can be a fragment of the object it signifies, or it can be connected with its object trough causality (Burks 1949, 647). A symbolic sign signifies an object using conventional rules that the interpretant has to apply to make meaning (Burks 1949, 647). For example, a noun is symbolic of the object it stands for. The meaning of a symbol is based on rules that are established within a society.

In Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture, Andrew Goodwin (1992) applies Peirce’s semantic categories in his analysis of popular music videos. He provides a basis for using Peirce’s

categories in the analysis of signs in music. According to Goodwin, a sign in the musical text can work iconically, not through visual resemblance but through aural resemblance, for example when guitars emulate police sirens (Goodwin 1992, 58). Musical elements can also signify indexically, when for instance the listener connects the sound of scratching to the act of scratching by a DJ, through their causal relationship (Goodwin 1992, 59). A symbolic relationship exists when the listener makes meaning of a sign, using knowledge of musical

conventions. Goodwin uses the example of listeners connecting certain kinds of scales to non-‐Western “otherness” (Goodwin 1992, 58).

In my thesis I will be concerned with the spatial characteristics of the recorded sounds, which is somewhat different from Goodwin’s analysis of al musical signs. Most importantly, a special role is reserved for the indexical relationship spatial characteristics have with the recording space. On a basic level, the spatial characteristics of a sound are defined by the space in which the sound is made. Therefore, the most basic signifying that takes place is on an indexical level, as the spatial characteristics signify the recording space as they have an existential relationship with this particular space. In my chapters

concerning the history of spatiality in popular recordings during the mono era, I will use all of Peirce’s categories to establish my own categories of spatial semantics as they occur chronologically during this time period.

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1.7 High Fidelity

The use of spatial characteristics in popular music recordings is closely related to the concept of ‘high fidelity.’ The high fidelity movement started amongst

audiophiles at the beginning of the 1950s, as a result of the rapidly advancing recording and playback technology. The core concept behind high fidelity was the aesthetic notion that a recording should recreate musical performances in the natural sounding world as accurately as possible. In order to achieve this goal, recording engineers had to use the most advanced equipment to capture the full frequency response, natural dynamics and distortion-‐less sound of the original performance. Naturally, only the best reproduction equipment could be used to achieve the illusion of the live performance in one’s own home (Zak III 2010, 150).

Audio equipment manufacturers welcomed the term with open arms, and soon high fidelity was indistinguishably tied to consumer grade audio

equipment. In Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music, Greg Milner explains that high fidelity soon became a widespread term to promote the

quality of any product (2009, 138). In 1951 High Fidelity magazine was founded, in which both audio technology and recordings were discussed. The magazine predominantly reviewed classical music recordings, as these were deemed to be of higher quality (Zak III 2010, 150-‐151).

In I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America (2010), Albin Zak III explains that although realism in recordings was the overall goal, aesthetic decisions had to be made by the engineers to achieve what they thought this realism entailed: “Turning musical performance into durable artifact required electronic sleight of hand, which was bound to be shot through with aesthetic decision making. If the alchemy was to be practically inaudible, as the doctrine of hi fi had it, this only heightened the sophistication of the artifice” (Zak III 2010, 151). Zak continues to juxtapose the high fidelity movement, predominantly dealing with classical music, against the popular recordings of the time, which, rather than looking for transparency, were increasingly aiming to achieve a sound of their own.

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recording in 1925. It was Edison’s long time goal to make his recordings sound as real as possible, and using his ‘tone tests,’ which I will describe in more detail in chapter two, he managed to plant this ideal into the minds of the consumer and the industry. Although the notion of high fidelity is mentioned in several of the studies discussed thus far, the intrinsic link between fidelity and spatial characteristics of recorded music is rarely made explicit. If the spatial

characteristics of a recording are not realistically evoking a performance space in the mind of the listener, the high fidelity ideal cannot be achieved. The ideal of realism therefore had a big impact on the music industry’s notion of what spatial characteristics in recordings should represent.

1.8 Outline

In order to get a better understanding of how spatial characteristics in popular music during the mono era function, the primary goal of this thesis will be to address the following research questions:

How did the spatial characteristics of recorded popular music during the mono era (1877-‐1957) evolve? What was the role of various new

technologies and studio techniques in the evolution of the use of spatial characteristics by the recording engineer? Finally, what effect did these different uses have on the process of meaning making by the listener?

The first part of the thesis consists of two chapters dealing with the history of spatiality in recorded popular music in the mono era, using the history of the technological innovations that changed the sonic space on these

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the semantic functioning of spatial characteristics will be categorized

chronologically, thus providing a theoretic framework to better understand how the listener can make meaning out of specific spatial characteristics.

The second part of this thesis will consist of a case study in which I analyze three recordings of Bill Putnam. This case study will be spread out over chapters four, five, six and seven. Putnam was a pioneer in the field of popular music recording, and his experiments with shaping the space of the recordings have been pivotal in the history of space in recorded popular music. During the late ‘40s and early ‘50s Putnam experimented with new ways of using

technologies, such as the echo chamber and tape echo, on some of his recordings. By analyzing three of his recording from this period, I aim to obtain a more detailed understanding how these new forms of spatiality function within a specific recording of this time period.

Chapter four will consist of a short biography of Bill Putnam. Chapter five will deal with the recording of “Peg O’ My Heart” by the Harmonicats (1947a), chapter six with the recording of “Good Morning, Mr. Echo” by the Jane Turzy Trio (1951) and chapter seven with the recording of “Juke” by Little Walter and his Night Cats (1952). Each of these chapters will be divided into three parts, starting with background information on the recording, followed by a formal analysis of its spatial characteristics and finishing with a theoretical analysis, putting the formal analysis in cultural-‐historical context and investigating the techniques and technology used to achieve their spatial characteristics.

Authors that have discussed the use of spatial characteristics in the mono time frame have mostly focused on the cultural aspect of these recordings. By using William Moylan’s method of spatial analysis, I will try to provide a very detailed account of the spatial aspects of the sonic information of these three recordings, before theorizing the function of the spatial characteristics in a broader cultural context. To aid the formal spatial analysis, a visual

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Part One: Space in Popular Recordings of the Mono Era

2. Towards Realism: 1877 -‐ 1930

2.1 Spatiality in Music Before Edison

Space and acoustics have played a major role in shaping our creation and perception of music. In Western culture making and listening to music has existed in both the private and the public realm. Public spaces often exhibited different acoustics than the private household. As Raymond Murray Schafer (1977) explains in The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, one of the sonic territories that are of key importance to our experience of music, even up to this day, is that of the religious and sacred building.

Temples and mausoleums were built to impress, and in trying to do so size mattered. The dimensions of these sacred places combined with the use of different stone materials often resulted in an impressive reverb. This reverb proved to be useful. Every utterance made by a visitor was magnified to a great extend, imposing one to remain quietly in awe, allowing only one voice to be heard at the same time: that of the deity or its spokesperson (Doyle 2005, 42). This effect, also found in places of secular power such as palaces, court houses and legislatures, must have had tremendous connotative power, especially in times of a more ‘pure’ and less diffused sonic landscape. It

connected the sonic quality of reverb, normally only found in desolate places like caves, with something that existed outside the realm of the commoner, be it of magical, religious or kingly proportions. When people started to make music in these places of God, it became apparent that it was not just the behavior and mindset of the visitors that were affected by their acoustics.

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unintelligible (Bagenal and Wood 1931, 364).

Because of the sonic character of the churches and cathedrals, the words were spoken slowly and around the resonant pitch of church, often the note of A or A-‐flat. The drone-‐like speech would be amplified by the church’s acoustic properties, giving the words great carrying power. It seems only natural that these sermons and prayer recitations evolved into chants, and spoken psalms into plainsongs. As it became apparent that the resonant church could function as an instrument, like a droning note, it allowed for more than one vocal melody to go on at the same time, leading to the birth of polyphony in religious music (Bagenal and Wood 1931, 364-‐365).

As the architecture of the Christian churches evolved, so did the music. Reformation, based on a new understanding of the scriptures, needed a church that allowed the scriptures to be explained vigorously. Instead of building cathedrals that would reach to the heavens, most reformation churches were made with a different ratio of atmosphere density to size of the congregation, which resulted in less reverb and a sermon that could be understood. As a side benefit, not having to deal with the sympathetic note of the Cathedral and its immense reverb, there was room for more complicated music. Hope Bagenal and Alexander Wood (1931, 364-‐365) argue that it was the acoustics of the reformed church that allowed for new forms of religious music, such as cantatas and fugues, to come to exist. Spatial characteristics played an important role in the evolution of sacred music. In this evolution a specific spatial characteristic, that of reverb, is connected to an institution that was, and still is, of great influence on everyday life. The power of connotation is so strong that most modern artificial reverb devices have a cathedral setting amongst their presets.

2.2 Sonic Space in the Acoustic Period

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the 18th_{century,
had
paved
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way
for
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vibrations of sound, electromagnetic energy and mechanical energy into a device that could detect and transpose sound to a different medium (Steffen 2005, 21). It was the 1877 invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison that would change sound forever. It initiated a gradual but drastic change in both the Western sonic landscape as well as the cognitive perception of sound in the West. Edison, who was looking to improve the speed of the telegraph, stumbled upon a peculiar sound when he ran paper tape, indented with dots and stripes, against a metal spring at high speeds. With this discovery Edison and his team took on a different path and started to try to make an inverted version of this phenomenon. Edison would shout into a telephone speaker connected to a stylus, while a paraffin-‐coated paper tape ran underneath it. Not only did the stylus indent the tape when Edison shouted, when the tape was run underneath the stylus for a second time a faint but audible reproduction came out of the speaker. Sound was recorded and played back for the first time in history (Steffen 2005, 23-‐24).

In November 1877 the first patented recording device was made, which later has become known as the tin-‐foil model. Edison had made some

improvements over his first experiments, using a tin-‐foil covered cylinder that could be manually rotated with a crank. It was music, in the form of Edison singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” that had the privilege of being the first tin-‐foil recording (Steffen 2005, 25). This first recording session was a precursor of the relationship the record industry would develop with music, as popular music was to be recorded most.

With the invention of the phonograph, sound was artificially split from its resonating origin. As the sound was captured on a medium, so were the spatial characteristics of the recorded sound. However, due to the technical