Sound recording, and the means of distribution have changed so has the worlds music. [sticks clacking] [cultural music montage] slobin technology has become quite decisive for world musicmaking since the advent of the Industrial Age in a few key ways. One is the creation of new instrument types that simply couldnt be built before. The modern piano depends on high steel techniques that just simply werent available until a certain point in the 19th century. Instruments like the modern saxophone, the modern flute these are all hightech in a 19th century way. [screeching, reverberating cymbal crash] another way in which technology has become decisive is in the invention of sound reproduction. It simply was the case that before about 1890 music vanished into the air. You had to remember the way somebody played something that you heard once in your life because you would never hear that again. Once you could reproduce that sound you could stockpile it because of the technology of reproduction. This is a profound and deepranging change that happened to music after a million years of human existence. [static] [muffled song plays] shapiro the invention of the vacuum tube came early in the century. Radio came along and music was delivered to a much different and wider audience and everything changed but that wasnt the first time. As soon as you move from just singing to making instruments, youre involved in technology. I just saw this article about this bone flute from years ago. The archaeologist said boy, we didnt think people were making anything back then. And yet one of the very first technological advances was this bone flute. That flute was made at the very limits of the Available Technology for these very, very primitive humanoids. And for millennia, instruments until the present day, really instruments were, and remain often and in some ways at the forefront of the technology. narrator the flute is one of the worlds oldest Musical Instruments. Over time, its construction, playability and sound have been determined by the Technology Available to instrument makers. Flute production has been and continues to be a marriage of sorts a marriage of artistry and technology. wassar the flute is really a very simple instrument. What makes it different from other woodwind instruments like a recorder, is that instead of blowing down the instrument youre actually blowing transversely. Youre blowing across the embouchure hole just the way you would blow across a soda bottle. [lilting flute music] greer in the early 19th century, late 18th century, flutes were very simple. They had one key or two keys if any and they were hard to play in tune with themselves or with anyone else in a small orchestra and consequently they had a reputation for being whistlelike and not real sonorous or real colorful. This is the most simplistic of what we call transverse flutes, and it just has the six finger holes and one key for the pinky. The natural scale on the baroque flute is basically the position of the six fingers and the six holes so that if you lift up your fingers in order, you get what we call a major scale. [plays major scale] so when you were playing in pieces that required notes that werent in that particular scale you had to like make adjustments by rolling in to make it flatter or close more holes down and it was a very awkward thing. So if you tried to play a chromatic scale, it would get like this. [plays chromatic scale] so thats when they developed adding more keys to the flute. This flute is pretty much what was developed around mozarts time about four or five keys. [plays] greer mozart hated the sound of the flute but realized that it was so popular that it should be in the orchestra. What he hated about it was it was not in tune with other members of the orchestra and consequently sounded awful, as he put it. But he wrote for it, and he wrote very well for it. Theobald boehm, back in 1850 came up with what we call the modernday flute key system, but we seem to try and improve on whats been done for 140 years. finley flute production has changed dramatically mostly through mechanical and technological improvements digitally. And a lot of the machining has changed dramatically more specifically through tolerances of one thousandths of an inch, which is the thickness of a cigarette paper. And if its off that much, flutists can hear it. We have machinery. We have computerized machinery. We essentially work with metal. Were metal workers. We melt it, we machine it, we cut it theres all kinds of things that we do to metal here and to do most of those functions you need tools and equipment. greer technology is the science of what if. I think of it as something that we cant do without because our minds are curious, and something that if we did without it wed still be starting fire with stones. And the human mind wants more than that. And we want to better ourselves. Sometimes we better ourselves, and sometimes we miss. wassar the pads are a very critical part of the flute and have a major impact on the responsiveness and the acoustical qualities of the instrument. In the case of a piccolo the pads traditionally are made of felt and about seven to ten years ago i came up with the idea to design a special silicone pad which actually has a hollow or baffle system inside. One of the advantages of using silicone is that it can truly seal the tone hole. What we discovered, however, is that the mechanical perfection of this pad was in conflict with the artists desire to control his sound. What was happening was that a felt pad is, in some ways, so bad that when you open and close a pad you dont get an on off, yes no. Theres a lot of gray area in between. That makes transitions between notes appear to be very smooth so that you have an imperfection in the pad actually enhancing the artistic quality of the instrument. And what we did to deal with this problem was to actually sandblast the mold to roughen the surface of the silicone to create infinitesimal little leaks. As a result of creating these leaks in the pad we were able to partially satisfy the artists desire to have more gray area and to allow for smooth transitions. stubbs the evolution of precision technonologies has made a kind of standard possible whereby you can go to duluth or to paris and find the same a440 on the instrument that you are playing. And this kind of standardization has led to the sharing of more music; the playing of more varied instrumentalists together. But a Musical Instrument can be made of something extremely simple and still have the power of profound expression. It seems to only be true in the european or American World that people look on instruments as a manufactured item. Elsewhere in the world the kind of spiritual aspect to an instrument is much more important. Instrumentalists treat their instruments very, very carefully. In many societies, libations and ceremonies are prepared as the instrument is being built and as it is being completed. Theres a kind of soul in each instrument that is the responsibility of the musician to seek out, because the instrument is an object but its not the object. Music is always the object of the instrument. Narrator Technology has always had a fundamental impact on the construction of Musical Instruments. But in the past 100 years, it has also influenced what music we hear and how we hear it. In 1877, Thomas Edison designed the first machine capable of reproducing sound and the process of acoustic recording was born. recording i love you. fabris the very first phonograph used tinfoil as a recording medium. At the time, he was working on improving Alexander Graham bells telephone and was also trying to develop a recording telegraph, so he put these two ideas together in his mind and made essentially a recording telephone. If you were to walk into a Recording Studio in edisons era, thered be no microphones. Instead of a microphone, what was used was known as an acoustical horn or a recording horn. That was what captured the sound and transferred the sound waves onto the master record. Is that a tear in your eye, dear . As the singer sang or a band played the air in the room would vibrate and an acoustical recording horn would collect the sound waves, and these would be transferred through sound pressure down onto a cutting stylus which cut the sound pressure waves into the record. Musicians really had to play for the recording equipment so you would set up the recording equipment, and then the musicians would gather around the recording horn and, for example if someone had a solo, they would move up closer to the horn and if they were not doing a solo, they would have to move away from the horn. [trumpet plays on recording] the main limitation was, it took loud sounds to cut into the record, and, for example, instruments like an Acoustic Guitar or a violin were very difficult to record. [violin plays on recording] one way around that was at the turn of the century. For a few years, a lot of the Recording Studios edison included, used what was known as a stroh violin which was designed in england. It used a phonograph diaphragm and a phonograph horn so it essentially made the violin into a horned instrument. osullivan like anything else, technology can be used very badly or it can be used very well. One of the negative things connected with technology has been in the homogenization of playing styles within ireland and for that matter, the rest of the world where irish music is played. Prior to the radio and the phonograph learning music was done very, very locally. Keep in mind that going back only 100 years ago or so that most people never got beyond their little village. And you could tell where somebody was from just by listening to them play. You wouldnt even have to hear them speak. Starting in the 1920s, there were a number of players who were recorded in this country. Michael coleman, probably the most influential irish musician of the 20th century. The old wax cylinders and 78s that he made here in new york they traveled back to ireland, and they changed fiddle playing style. People tried to imitate coleman whether they were from sligo or whether theyre from cork or donegal. It no longer was the case that you could tell where somebody was from by listening to them. That was the beginning that this was starting to be homogenized. In a positive way, technology has helped this music in that theres an awful lot of recordings of very good music out there. So its brought it to a wider listening public. tesar very, very early days, some phonograph recordings were cut right to wax. Theyd stand in the room and the cutting lathe would cut the original master right into wax, which, by the way, had to be very soft, so it had to be very hot. So a lot of the oldtime musicians will tell stories about the early days of recording like almost stripping down in their underwear and going in this room and recording for three minutes. Its 130 degrees in this little room because its got to be hot enough for the wax to be soft enough for the lathe to cut it and everything was done live right there. [jazzy keyboard music] certainly, things are pretty easy. Weve got airconditioned studios now, and this instrument doesnt even need a microphone. The sound is coming out of a wire and going directly to the tape recorder. bill tesar with the advent of multitrack recording you can actually record yourself several times on one piece of tape without erasing what youve already done. Each person is recording on a different line on that tape. So the tape recorder is recording me on lets say not the whole 2 inch width of the tape, but maybe an eighth of an inch. And someone else gets the next eighth of an inch. You can see what we call the meter bridge and actually see all the sounds of the individual musicians when theyre playing; when theyre not playing. [saxophone plays what child is this] lets just say the band plays a fiveminute piece of music and Everybody Loves what they played. Oh, it was just so perfect. But one person just made one dumb mistake and played something and missed a note or their finger slipped and they hit something they didnt want. And it was just one note. We have the ability for that person to play lets, for example, just say that they meant to play this [plays scale] and they played [plays chord with one missed note] well, the tape recorder can actually go back after the fact, and do what we call a punchin and a punchout or an edit. Was that a punch or was that another rehearsal . That was just rehearse. Lets do that, and well be fine. Lets make that edit. Now what will happen is, before it goes into record itll just be playing back that persons performance. The minute it goes into record it will start with what theyre now playing so what we would need to do is go back and play what we had played originally minus the mistake. Okay. I think that was it. Bernstein Technology has enabled the bass to come out. The bass has traditionally been a supportive instrument. If you listen to old records you can hardly hear the bass player at all. With the advent of the electric bass the bass became much more a force. The bass line has just become much more a part of what the average listener hears. Of course, its a doubleedged thing as far as with anything, technology in the studio gives you the possibility of making something perfect, theoretically, and so it has created a whole new art form. Making a record and playing live are two different things. I think thats the first thing i had to learn as a musician. In the studio, you have to learn to create in a different environment without the energy of the audience, without the energy of necessarily even the live performance. But youre still creating the music. The challenge for the jazz musician is to be able to maintain the live feeling. tesar there is a universal code or language that many Musical Instruments operate on midi Musical Instrument digital interface, midi. By having a universal code like midi, i have the ability of playing this keyboard and controlling sounds from maybe other sound sources or even other keyboards. Many of the different sounds that i played on this instrument really come from whats called a sampling technology. At one point, there was a microphone stuck inside a real piano, and a recording of that instrument was made, converted into a digital code, and through the midi language, is played back on this instrument. At the risk of sounding greedy id actually like to layer another part on top of that. Of course, sampling technology does open up somewhat of a pandoras box for musicians. Now if i can play the sound of violins maybe i dont need to have a string section anymore. So to some degree, it has changed. Its the cotton gin so to speak. Its changed the nature of the way music is being made. I liken the whole studio experience to playing an instrument itself. Look, every Musical Instrument is just some kind of a contraption anyway, and in many ways the tape recorder has almost become like another Musical Instrument. It really makes each individual musician kind of like a conductor a composer, an arranger. It affords each individual musician the ability to do all those things. So it almost brings us back 500 years to the days of the wandering minstrel where like somebody had to write their own tune, walk from village to village play whatever instrument they could and they were the whole show. shapiro i graduated from high school in 1960, and i didnt have a tape recorder. I had no technology. An electronic music studio was oscillators taken from the physics lab. There was nothing like a synthesizer made for musicians. Here behind me heres an arb synthesizer. How many of those were made . 300, 400, maybe a 1,000 of this big model. It was made for composers. It was invented by composers right . Here in front of me heres a kurzweil synthesizer. Hundreds of thousands of these are made. Its made for consumers. And of course, the synthesis got linked to computing. One way of making a piece is to make the piece on a synthesizer and record as you go on the computer no notation, yknow, playing, playing. I like this. I dont like that. Try it again. Record again on the computer as a sequence. Little by little i began to realize that the music that i wrote was very shaped by the technology i was using to write it. The process became sort of passive. I did way more listening and way less writing. It was slowed down and i was losing track of the shaping of it. So i switched over to paper and pencil again. And after a while, it began to seem that i could work either way interchangeably. All instruments have developed technologically, and it slowly, slowly changes. The important thing to remember is it doesnt get better. Technology gets better but the music of the middle ages is as compelling is as good as the music of the 20th century, and i know some would say better. Theres no progress in music or in any of the arts, but there is change, and that change is certainly driven as much as anything by changes in technology. [recording plays violin music] funding for this program was provided by the Annenberg Cpb project. Inactive activities on a glorious day huh . Lets get out there and play yeah sweet. Whew play play there are lots of great play ideas online. Funding for this program is provided by. [ horn honks ] narrator air pollution