Early 20th Century Listening Music Technology Early 20th Century Listening

Early 20th Century The 5 styles we are going to cover in this section are: Blues Swing Jazz Country Music Ragtime

Jazz is an umbrella term for different styles of music. SCAT SWING BLUES RAGTIME

Jazz First created by Black Americans in the early 20th century. Usually played by a Jazz group that often consists of: Drum kit Bass Piano Saxophone Trumpet Improvisation, Syncopation and Walking bass are strong features of Jazz music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyTTX6Wlf1Y

Black Keys Improvisation Walking Bass in L.H Syncopation in R.H

This music is often played on piano. Ragtime Style of dance music which became popular at end of 19th Century and helped influence Jazz. Some features are strongly syncopated melody against a steady vamp accompaniment. This music is often played on piano. Player Piano was created between late 19th and early 20th Century. These often played Ragtime music.

Ragtime Piano Syncopated R.H Vamp in L.H

Blues Started as Black American folk music developing from spirituals and work-songs. Often in 4/4 time and mainly in a 12 bar pattern. Walking bass and shuffling can be heard in blues music. Uses a scale with flattened notes. The blue notes are important to the overall sound. C Major

Swing Developed in the early 1930’s and become a distinctive style by 1940’s. Swing is a style of Jazz. The number of and types of instruments in the bands increased. Swing refers to the overall feel of the music. Brass, Woodwind and Percussion instruments present in Big Bands.

People would say that you DANCE to SWING, but GROOVE to JAZZ.

Country Music It takes its roots from American folk and Western music. Country music often consists of ballads or dance music with simple forms and harmonies that are accompanied by mostly string instruments such as: Banjo Electric/Acoustic guitar Fiddles Harmonicas Vocalists in country music often sing with a twang/yodel sound to their voice.

Technological Developments

Player pianos A player piano is a self playing piano containing a mechanism inside that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music that is recorded on perforated paper. These are often associated with ragtime music. http://video.mit.edu/watch/player-piano-revealed-calibration-and-test-8828/

Wax Cylinders The Phonograph Cylinder was created by Thomas Edison in 1877. This was the earliest creation for recording sound. Wax cylinders were originally just called ‘records’. They are hollow cylindrical objects that have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface.

This sound was then reproduced when played on a mechanical cylindrical phonograph. To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, very faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through an acoustic horn.  The wax coating meant that the cylinders could be shaved down and reused.

Gramophone Record A gramophone record is an analogue sound recording medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove starting near the periphery and ending near the centre of the disc. The Gramophone disc record was the primary medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century, replacing the Wax Cylinders.

Vinyl LP At the time the LP was introduced, records were originally made out of a shellac compound which was very noisy. These required a much larger groove therefore making the records larger in size. This played at 75rpm (revolutions per minute) limiting the playing time to only 5 minutes per side.

This meant the record could play for up to 20 minutes on each side. The new product was a 10 or 12inch fine grooved vinyl record and was played with a smalled tipped ‘micro-groove’ stylus at a speed of 33½ rpm. This meant the record could play for up to 20 minutes on each side. Although the LP was especially suited to classical music because of its extended continuous playing time, it also allowed a collection of ten or more typical pop music recordings to be put on a single disc. 

45 rpm record The 7-inch 45 rpm record was introduced in 1949 by RCA as a smaller, more durable replacement for the 78 rpm discs.  The first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s. These could hold as much sound as the 12” 78rpm records but were much smaller and more attractive.

Juke Box Coin operated boxes and Player pianos were the first forms of automated coin-operated musical machines. A jukebox is a partially automated music playing device, usually a coin operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers on them that, when entered in combination, are used to play a specific selection.

These instruments used paper rolls, metal disks, or metal cylinders to play a musical selection on the instrument, or instruments, enclosed within the device. In the1890s these devices were joined by machines which used actual recordings. These are mainly associated with Rock & Roll, but the popularity extends back further to the Swing era.

Solid Body Electric Guitar There are some common characteristics of solid body electric guitars. They typically have six strings although there are some seven- and eight-string models. Most have at least a volume and tone control. If they have more than one guitar pickup they have a switch that allows them to switch between the different pickups.

A pickup device is a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations from string instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts them to an electrical signal that is amplified, recorded, or broadcast. These were first needed during the Swing era when Big Bands began to incorporate more brass. An early attempt was made known as a resonator guitar but it did not meet the requirements.

Electric Organ An electronic organ was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Electricity arrived on the organ scene in the first decades of the 20th century, but it was slow to have a major impact. In place of reeds and pipes, Robb and Hammond introduced a set of rapidly spinning magnetic wheels, called tonewheels, which excited transducers that generated electrical signals of various frequencies that were mixed and fed through an amplifier to a loudspeaker.

Most Hammond organs have two 61-note (5-octave) manuals Most Hammond organs have two 61-note (5-octave) manuals. Each manual is laid out in a similar manner to a piano keyboard, except pressing a key results in the sound continuously playing until it is released. There is no difference in volume regardless of how heavily the key is pressed, so overall volume is controlled by a foot pedal (also known as a "swell" or "expression" pedal) Hammond organs come with a wooden pedal board played with the feet, for bass notes. The sound on a tonewheel Hammond organ is varied through the manipulation of drawbars. A drawbar is a metal slider that controls the volume of a particular sound component, in a similar way to a fader on an audio mixing board. As a drawbar is incrementally pulled out, it increases the volume of its sound. When pushed all the way in, the volume is decreased to zero. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hopUp1qBbJ4

Reel to Reel Magnetic Tape Reel-to-reel/open-reel (audio) tape recording is the form of magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording medium is held on a reel, rather than being securely contained within a cassette. Magnetic tape revolutionized broadcast and recording. It was invented for recording sound in 1928 in Germany, and was based on the magnetic wire recording of 1898.