Last time we talked about Les Paul’s role as the father of the electric guitar. Nobody can question the significance of his innovations there, but that was far from the limit of his contribution to modern music. Next up we’ll be learning about the part he played in the development of modern audio recording.

The State of the Art (in the 1930’s)

Les was just as fascinated with recorded sound as he was with the electric guitar and he was equally important in its development. To put the revolution Les spearheaded in context we need to go back in time to the 1930’s. Sound recording and reproduction technology had already been around for some time, but it was a purely mechanical process with no electronics involved.

Early recording systems were nothing more than a stylus attached to a diaphragm, etching a groove directly into a spinning wax disc. The sound waves produced by the musician vibrated the diaphragm causing the stylus to carve grooves into the moving disc. (This is where the phrase “cut a record” comes from!)

What may surprise modern readers is that the “wax masters” produced could only be used to create a handful of gramophone records before they became damaged! Popular performers had to play a song many times over with multiple recording devices in front of them in order to produce a decent batch of copies to sell.

By the time Les was performing, disc reproduction had improved to the degree that many records could be made from a single performance, but recording still carved directly into a disc – meaning one bum note and the disc was ruined… Unlike us pampered musicians of the Pro Tools era, in the 30’s you had to get it right first time.

Sound on Sound

Today anyone with a laptop and some inexpensive (or even free) software can have a home studio that puts the recording technology available to classic acts like the Beatles to shame, but back in Les Paul’s day the idea of having a your own recording studio was completely unheard of. Even if you had the money there simply weren’t shops where you could buy the equipment. So in typical style, Les built his own.

Click to read the rest…

You don’t need a fancy Hi-Fi system to have fun ear training, but good sound reproduction can inspire your creativity, reveal unheard detail in a familiar recording and is less tiring for extended listening sessions. In this series of articles I will be providing some hints and tips on how to get the best listening experience at home and on the move.

You may wonder why I need to write this article; after all there’s a huge amount of information available on the web. Unfortunately few subjects provoke as much ill-informed, unscientific nonsense as home audio. Audiophile magazines are full of reviews claiming a £1000 speaker cable makes music more “emotional” or advising you to spend £500 on a mains lead for your amplifier. I hope to share with you lessons I’ve learned with my own ears in my years as a broadcast engineer and musician to get maximum enjoyment out of your music – without breaking the bank, or blinding you with science.

In the first article of this series I’m going to talk about playback sources. Playback sources come in a variety of shapes and sizes from CD players, to iPods, to laptops and they are key to getting great sound. Click to read the rest…