Slashdot Mirror
5000 Cylinder Recordings Placed Online
Jon Noring writes "The Department of Special Collections at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) Davidson Library recently placed online, with free access, over 5000 sound recordings as part of its Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. These recordings date from the 1890's to the 1920's, all transfered from Edison cylinders using state-of-the-art equipment. The restorations are first-class, using CEDAR tools. Besides MP3 and streaming audio, the raw transfers are also available for diy'ers to try their own hand at audio restoration. For those who like their music 'hot', there's not much there since most of the cylinders predate the start of the Jazz Era (ca. 1917), but there is some early 'mouldy fygge' dance-type jazz, like 1920's 'Peggy' by Lopez and Hamilton's Kings of Harmony Orchestra."
Oh man, as if having Sony on their asses wasn't enough, these guys are going to bring the wrath of Edison down on themselves!
mp3? Would lossless compression have been a better choice for archiving all these ancient songs? Something like FLAC?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Well, I guess a recording of this one won't be there...
After watching this video I guess there are 4999 left for them to archive:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/techtvblooper.html
Friggin hilarious!
The Amberoll cylinders were tough, too. They had to be, to survive repeated mechanical playback, with a stylus pressure of about a pound. So they're much tougher than vinyl records.
There's now optical equipment for reading damaged or fragile cylinders and records. UCSB isn't using it, but it's available for the tough cases.
Some of these recordings are a century old. The original media are still playable. It's sad that we don't have something to transcribe them to that will be playable a century from now. All we can do is hope that someone will recopy the files periodically.
Seriously, though, I've always thought that was an interesting song. Remember that the Wright Brothers flew only in 1903, so the whole concept of "flying machines" was incredibly new and exciting. There's a certain innocent romance to the song that's so... impossible to recapture today.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
When I was in Niagara On the Lake, or Niagara Falls [I don't remember which], I was in a museum with an Edison player, and a wax cylinder mounted in it. They wouldn't take it off, for fear that it would fall apart, even though they had a few other ones. They started it up for me and my friend, and I kicked myself for not bringing my digital vid. camera with me to record it. The music was over 90 years old, and recorded live! Cool; all those people are dead.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Fortunately, the U.S. Government, via the National Park Service (I believe) are the owners of the Edison masters, and so the recordings appear to be public domain. Or at least the U.S. Government won't attempt to claim state-level copyright on the recordings (which I suppose they could.) Note that sound recordings made before 1972 are NOT covered by Federal Copyright Law, rather they are covered by a patchwork of state copyright laws (both common and statutory), anti-competitive laws, etc. It's a mess. Pre-1972 recordings (other than those whose ownership is lost) will not come under Federal Copyright protection (and thus, hopefully, public domain status) until 2067! There are some early Columbia cylinder recordings from 1890 (technically owned by Sony-BMG) which will not become public domain until 2067, a whopping 177 years after they were 'waxed'.
Marion's Attic radio show is a good source:
http://members.aol.com/marionweb/
Were not just famous for our cheaters, hackers partying, surfing, and FREEBIRDS.
I remember when I was a young whippersnapper, I listened to the Sony cylinders and it loaded a rootkit on my Babbage Calculating Machine. It took forever to calculate 12 + 15...that is if the infernal machine wouldn't jump up by itself and crash on the floor.
...of using thousand dollar machines to grab every usable sonic bit, and then throw 90% of them away by running it through lame.
/I know, I know. But still...
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
This is a good example why we need to roll back copyright to a reasonable period of time, or at least require periodic registration and renewal for copyright protection to continue. If they had the copyright laws back then that we have now, these recordings would never see the light of day. There is little or no commercial value to these recordings, but they are a valuable part of our history. It would be a shame to lose them to the ravages of time because of insane copyright laws, like what can (and is happening) to film from 1923 on.
Beware of Sleestak
Note that the original raw transfers (lossless wav) are also downloadable for each song. It would not surprise me (but I have not checked), that the restored version (using CEDAR) in lossless format is also available in the directory of the archive (but there's no public link to it from the discography page.) It's the high-quality transfers that are the most critical to do right, and UCSB did do them right. Save those in lossless format, and they'll always be around for anyone to restore. Algorithms and applications to restore old recording will continue to improve, and these raw transfers can be re-restored at a future time to improve the sound even more.
The velocity of the "needle" across the surface is inherently constant with a cylinder. With a disk the RPMs are constant but it spirals in so you have to compensate for this frequency drift when recording. I wonder how well that worked? I've heard that when cylinders competed with disks they were regarded as having higher fidelity. The reason they failed is eerily similar to the beta vs. VHS debate: cylinders couldn't record as long. Also, if you do the math you find it's much harder to pack the same ammount of surface area into a box of cylinders than it is for disks. So cylinders were more expensive and could hold less music. The difference in quality wasn't enough to overcome that, and disks won.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I hope they may go on with this project and make available other collections as well, creating a world wide sound archive of early recordings.
For instance, the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, Germany, owns very rare recordings made by musicologist at the same time around the world: They document musical traditions that may have disappeared by now. Some of the recordings were later released on schellack record disks, but even these are very rare now (less the 5 sets or so world-wide).
I've listened to several of the songs. It's quite interesting.
However, their recording and filtering process has left a considerable amount of background static and white noise. I understand that these are old recordings, and I definitely think these guys deserve pats on the back. But couldn't a white noise filter have been used in the digitization process to clean it up better?
We want these preserved in as close to originally performed quality, not originally recorded. Additional cleanup of the sound would get more people to listen to this interesting music.
Here's a good example of content that should be in the public domain. It's really too bad that just about anything newer than the 1920s is still under copyright - Happy Birthday is owned by a division of AOL Time Warner and won't fall into the public domain for another 25 years (unless Congress extends it again).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Anyway, this old stuff rocks. I think I'll burn some onto CD, and when I cruise through the mall, I crank my stereo up playing 1910 Rag Time. My ex gf's brother used to blast Nursery Rhymes like the Muffin Man in the mall, I guess I want to be cool like him.
God spoke to me.
Actually, in this case, had there been Federal Copyright law applied to sound recordings as it was to other types of creative works (like books), the pre-1923 sound recordings would all be public domain.
But they are not the kind of example you are talking about. It is worse than that! Why? Because pre-1972 American sound recordings are NOT covered by Federal Copyright Law. Yes, you heard me right, Federal copyright law does NOT apply to pre-1972 sound recordings, and according to Title 17 of the U.S. code won't apply until 2067. In the meanwhile, then, sound recordings are covered by a patchwork of state copyright laws (both statutory and common law), plus other mechanisms. The Capitol vs. Naxos case was filed in the State of New York under New York copyright law, for example (Google that for more information).
What does this mean? State copyright laws, by and large, have no limits. So, for example, Columbia cylinders recorded back in 1890 (technically owned today by Sony-BMG) are still copyright protected (at the state level), and won't revert to Federal protection until 2067 (if the copyright terms remain the same as today, all pre-1972 sound recordings will then revert to the Public Domain in 2067). This means that these earliest cylinders will, unless Congress acts, have at least 177 years of copyright protection.
Most of the UCSB collection is from Edison cylinders. Edison is a unique case in that the ownership of the Edison recordings is the U.S. Federal Government (via the National Park Service), and I believe they are not claiming any state copyright protection of them (but they might be able to). So UCSB felt free to go ahead at least with the Edisons. There are a few other early labels whose ownership is totally unknown and likely abandoned, such as the Grey Gull "group" of labels of the 1920's. These are very interesting to transfer as well. There are some really oddball stuff from before World War I, too, that are probably abandoned.
Hey I go there....UCSB.....library, there's a library?
All I know is there's alot of boos and sex.....
University of Casual Sex and Beer!
$sig$
What the fuck is a cylinder and how does it relate to music?
I am reminded of this incident. With 5000 recordings I hope they didn't break any. (sorry about the WMV)
Since submitting this SlashDot item, I discovered in the cylinder collection an even jazzier recording (from 1924) that some may enjoy: "Why Did you Do It?" by the Georgia Melodians.
By the 1920's, Edison was mastering onto vertical cut disc masters (and issued as "Diamond Discs"), and then producing cylinder masters by dubbing master disc pressings. So the sound quality of the cylinders issued in the 1920's was lower than the comparable discs, such as the above recording. It should be noted that disc records pretty much took over the market by 1915, so by the end of World War I cylinders became almost like the "8-track" of its day. Edison still issued cylinders until it went under in 1929, but the 1920's cylinders are quite rare compared to the Edison discs (as a side note, in 1928 Edison released lateral cut records to play on regular phonographs, and they sounded quite good. Edison was also late to switch to electrical recording, strangely enough.)
Dem kids don't know how good they have it these days. Babbage Calculating Machines and rootkits...Bah! Back i' my days, them Sony-cans made backdoors in the houses that caused drafts many a day! And nearly everybody died of the flu! It's all because of them darn dangled Spainiard pirates! (so Sony says...)
Imagine if they had the equivalent of DRM and/or EULAs in the 1900s...
Each cylinder would come with a warning
This cylinder may only be played using a licensed RCA needle. Using any other needle is a violation of the Pony Millenium Rights Act and is a federal offense. By removing this cylinder from its box, you agree to be bound and gagged by the terms of this End-User License agreement. You may not play this music before a publicly audience without expressed written consent of RCA. Within 30 days of purchase, you must write RCA via pony express to "activate" your cylinder. Failure to do so is a violation of this agreeement and is punishable by hanging. After 5 different people have heard playback (or any portion thereof) this cylinder, you might re-activate it by submitting a written request to RCA. Failure to do so is punishable...
Boston Tea Party? Nah. What were they thinking???????????
And then I had to change my depends because I soiled myself with excitement after hearing these gems from the good old days. Or perhaps I'm just incontinent.
Right, and I'd like to take a moment to point out what I think is the single most important aspect of this project. To quote their copyright policy page here:
In my opinion, one of the greatest things crippling the public domain today is the fact that even when public domain sources exist, they're inaccessible to those who might want to use them. I ran into this problem myself some months back when researching some vintage Broadway material for a recording project. Musicals that were written by people like George M. Cohan circa 1905 are clearly now public domain and, in theory, may be performed, recorded etc. at will. In practice, however, most of the original scripts, musical scores etc. have been bought up by firms like Tams-Witmark (who are happy to license you their own copyrighted reprints, for the right price...) or are stowed away in private collections. The net result is that it is very difficult to actually take advantage of the public domain status of these works because almost no verifiably public domain sources are actually available to the general public.
The solution is not necessarily to use "copyleft"-style licensing to guarantee reprints, restorations, etc. of public domain works remain open. That places restrictions (granted pro-copying ones) on the use of the works, and the original intent of the public domain was that after a certain time no such restrictions should exist. If Tams-Witmark spends the time, effort, and money "polishing up" a century-old Broadway score with new typesetting and the like, then as far as I'm concerned they should be able to offer that for sale and make whatever profit they can with it. What I *do* object to is the fact that the limited availability of original public domain sources effectively makes licensing of a copyrighted derivative the *only* reasonable way to obtain some older works.
In short, I say UCSB has done The Right Thing(tm) here. They've chosen their own terms (in this case a Creative Commons License) for their restored derivatives, but they've explicitly granted the raw transfers to the public domain. The net effect is as though there were thousands more of the original cylinders to work from, available to all those who want one, and the monopoly-of-sorts I described above does not occur. We need more online archives of all manner of public domain material, and it's (in my opinion) particularly vital that the copies offered online be public domain themselves. It's possibly the best way we have of preserving this culture for the future.
-Frank
Even still, it is a shame that these recordings, the largest collection of its type in the world, is being hidden from the public just for what can't possibly be more than a few thousand dollars a year. (You can actually listen to most of the sounds in low resolution streaming on the web, but you can't do analysis at the quality they offer.)
http://flac.sourceforge.net/
Now you can save your time and bullets.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I never thought I'd hear "Edison cylinder" and "state of the art" in the same sentence.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Edison meet Slasdot
bla
Oh wait, that's another 60 years hence.
Still, love those Scorpion dudes from *West* Germany.
Can't be beat
Before the hard disk, there were drum drives. Compared to their raw bandwidth, their seek times were amazing.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
has anyone found a way to download them all at once or in several large chunks?
It'd be great if there was a torrent for this.
I know the some of the cats that are responsible for this project, and it is entirely a labor of love. They know the subject and have done their damnedest to make sure everything is legal. This is the sort of project that the music industry should laud, and use for favorable pr.
Anthion Thrandocles, Prophet of the Oil
http://www.archive.org/audio/audiolisting-browsear tists.php?collection=78rpm
A lot of these are transfers from the flat Diamond Discs, not the cylinders dubbed from Diamond Discs. Some of those transfers are pretty freakin' amazing. Lots of history here. Hear Irving Berlin sing. Hear why people raved about Enrico Caruso...makes Pavarotti and Domingo sound like punters. Hear Fanny Brice do her schtick. A lot of what is referred to as "Jazz" is actually more like Ragtime. But that can be pretty amazing too.
I came here looking for cartoony music that had passed into the public domain for my upcoming podcast series The Cartoon Geeks. There's lots of it here. Here's the tune that's going to be the theme music. Yowza yowza.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It makes an interesting read/rant.
A guy in our neighborhood has a working collection of these and other working victrolas etc. It's amazing how loud they can be without any electricity.
Awesome birthday to you,
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
As soon as I hear any of these old jazzy recordings I get this mental image of a black and white mouse on a river boat for some reason.
Grampa: "That Quimby fella promised to build us the Matlock Expressway. How ya gonna top that smart guy?"
Sideshow Bob: "Hmm, well how's this: I'll not only build the expressway, I will spend the remainder of this afternoon patiently listening to your interminable anecdotes."
Grampa: "Hot diggity damn! Not many people know I owned the first radio in Springfield. Weren't much on the air then, just Edison reciting the alphabet over and over. 'A' he'd say. Then 'B.' 'C' would usually follow."
So they have 5000 cylinders... So what.
Everyone knows that what counts is not the quantity, but the quality of the cylinder.
As if they could claim copyright without doing any creative work... There are of course weird copyright laws around the world that grant copyright on "collections of data," I hate knowlage hoarders.
Get this -- if you download one of those files and view its ID3v2 info, the "copyright" field says "© 2004 Regents of the University of California".
...
Now, they can't legally claim a new copyright on public domain material unless they've modified the material in a sufficiently creative way for it to qualify as a new "derivative" work. An MP3 doesn't qualify, because there's no creativity involved. This is a bogus claim.
However, given the Creative Commons license on the site's text, the copyright factoids they have in the sidebar, and the fact that this claim would hold up for all of five minutes in court, I'm guessing that this is just a SNAFU.
As the go-to person on Wikipedia for music and video uploads, I would have *LOVED* to put these up en masse. Unfortunately, the license is creative commons attribution-noncommericial, which makes it a non-starter for Wikipedia (Specifically, stuff on Wikipedia must be commerically reusable). What a shame.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?quer
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?quer
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?quer
I've used it. It is, in fact, a piece of crap.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Wow. That one hell of a big motor.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Elgar made a lot of cylinder recordings. When they went to digitize them, they figured it was going to be a nightmare assembling long pieces out of 4-minute chunks, the ends of cylinders are often in bad shape, so there'd be gaps between the end of one and the beginning of the next. Then they ran thru them and noticed something amazing - that Elgar et. al. picked the break points for the performances based on the cylinder length, and subtracted a little - so that for each cylinder, they made their break points a few bars back into the end of one cylinder, and started the next cylinder a few bars back - so that except for the begining and end of a work, there was a few bars overlap between two cylinders.
This is exactly what the digitizing folks would tell you to do today. Except it was all done before 1920.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
But, there is this public domain piece of music here:
s /81-100.jpeg
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/aitch/song
Look towards the bottom of the page, and note the alternative lyric given under the title.
There is a rumor that Abraham Lincoln made an audio recording.
-j
Imagine back 100 years ago... a root kit??? What the heck is that?
Dynamite, for getting stumps out of your back forty.
Freedom: "I won't!"
i wonder if it was google doing this people would try to sue them for infringing on their rights
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
He's actually talking about diameter compensation.
On a disc, although the RPMs are constant the speed of the groove past the stylus diminishes as the diameter decreases (C=pi*D, y'know). On an LP --12" black vinyl-- disc, the groove velocity drops by >50% from outer to inner grooves. This produces a loss of high frequencies (or more accurately, a decrease in sensitivity to high frequencies), much like you get with analog tape when you record at a slower speed. To take this into account, "modern" disc mastering equipment can be set to automatically boost the highs as the diameter decreases. (And BTW, this has nothing to do with the overall recording equalization (think "RIAA curve")... it sits on top of it.)
Cylinders, OTOH, have a groove velocity that is constant from beginning to end, so they don't have this problem.
My parents have a shellac recording of edisons actual voice from 1918, talking about WW1, which I found interesting.
owner of the physical media does not equal copyright ownership.
copyright of the recording does not equal copyright for the work (sheet music and words).
property rights in this case belong to the Regents of the University of California, with use by the Regents subjet to donor agreements, but even if the property owner were US Forest service that would not make these public domain.
How can you have a State copyright law? Copyright is specifically a power of the Federal government per US constitution.
If something were created pre 1972, but not published untill, say 2002, why wouldn't modern copyright law apply? If something were *published* pre-1923, how could it not be in the public domain? Clearly an unpublished 1890 recording could be under copyright, but how could a published work still be protected?
copyright of the recording does not equal copyright for the work (sheet music and words).
Good news: U.S. copyright in pre-1923 musical works has expired, as copyright in musical works has always been federal. If you're worried about it, fire up FL, Modplug, Audacity, or whatever other musical prototyping software you use and make yourself a cover.
But, there is this public domain piece of music here: [sheet music for "Good Morning to You" with alternate lyric "Happy Birthday to You"]
Do you also have a scan of the title page and verso for the book that contained the page depicted in that image? I get "403 Forbidden" when I remove the file name from the URL.
Here is some information about Vinyl:
Westrex 45/45 stereo system - Left channel modulates inner groove. - Right channel modulates outer groove. - A mono signal causes lateral only movement
- An out of phase mono signal causes vertical movement.
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/4.JPG
There are 86 square inches of surface on which to cut.
- More Time = More Space
- More Level = More Space
- More Bass = More Space
Space is measured in lines per inch (lpi). This is called the pitch of the lathe.
- This is the number of grooves (lines) per inch of radius. - More Time requires higher lpi - More Level requires lower lpi - More Bass requires lower lower lpi
Pitch = (Run Time x 33.3 rpm)/Radius (3 inches)
- Max Pitch about 300 lpi - Minimum groove width is 1 mil. - Maximum groove width is 6 mils. - Average groove width is 2.5 mils. Gw = [(1000/lpi) + 1] / 2
An increase in lpi should be accompanies by a decrease in depth. An increase in depth should be accompanies by a decrease in lpi.
Pitch and depth (groove width) are controlled by a cutting computer. The pitch must be changed before the loud parts to prevent over cut. A one half revolution delay is required for the preview channel.
The variable pitch control receives right channel information from the preview system so that the pitch can be increased before loud signals that might cut into the previous groove. Left channel information comes from the program system. A difference signal from the preview system is also sometimes provided.
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/5.JPG
The variable depth control receives the difference (left minus right) signal from the preview system.
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/6.JPG
RIAA Curve
1953 RIAA instituted an EQ curve that narrowed the grooves and improved play time.
Boost high freq. 17 dB at 15 kHz and cut the low freq. 17 dB at 50 Hz.
- RIAA pre emphases is automatically added.
- Post emphases is done at the phono pre amp.
- Inner groove distortion causes high frequency loss (scanning loss).
- A compensation system was tried but mostly abandoned.
- Avoid putting bright (sibilant) cuts in this area.
- A low frequency crossover is almost always used to prevent lift out.
- The effect is to move low frequency signals into the center.
- The frequency below which this happens is variable.
- Cutting head is a moving coil device powered by Cutting Amps.
- Cutting stylus is a heated sapphire
- The cut produces a chip that is vacuumed up for safety.
- The Master Lacquer is an aluminum disc covered in lacquer cellulose nitrate.
The cutting console has four channels of everything 2 preview, 2 program. All controls are stepped for resetting purposes. A reference lacquer may be cut to test settings. A Master Lacquer may not be
played. An Eqed Master tape was made for other Mastering Labs.
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/7.JPG
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/8.JPG
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/9.JPG
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/010.JPG
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/011.JPG
Libertas in infinitum
- Many if not most of todays record companies started out selling technology not music.
- Records were produced to sell record players.
- Control of patent rights were more important than control of copyrights.
Predevelopment
1857 - Leon Scott de Martinville designs a device that records sound wave shapes phonoautograph
1863 - F B Fenby designs a system that uses paper tape to record and play back piano music player piano the 1st binary recording system.
1877 Edison invents the phonograph and records Mary Had A Little Lamb.
Edisons device used a tin foil covered cylinder. The stylus cut a hill and dale groove.
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/1.JPG
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/2.JPG
http://ultrasonicdesigns.com/audio/vinyl/3.JPG
1887 Emile Berliner, inventor of the microphone patents flat disc records
1888 Wax cylinders replace tinfoil.
1890 Dictating sales slow. Glass puts a machine in a saloon charges a nickel a play. First entertainment cylinders.
1894 First home cylinder players.
1897 Berliners flat 78 rpm records louder and easier to mass produce. Made of shellac.
1901 Berliner & Johnson form Victor Talking Machine Co.
1902 Johnson designs tone arm.
1906 Johnson introduces the Victrola hidden horn unit increasing the ASF.
1912 Cylinders decline.
1919 Work begins on developing an electrical recording chain.
1924 The electrical recording system introduced.
1925 Radio begins to cut into record sales.
1926 First home electrical player introduced
1929 Stock market crash and free radio kills record industry.
1931 RCA-Victor release 33 1/3 rpm long play record. Format fails.
1933 Record sales hit bottom
1934 First radio/phono combination.
1936 Juke boxes help industry recover
1946 Peter Goldmark & William Bachman of CBS begin the develop of microgroove & vinyl records.
1947 High fidelity magnet recording
1948 Columbia introduces the 12 inch, 33 1/3 vinyl record.
1949 RCA introduces the 7 inch, 45 rpm record.
1950 Sales of 78 rpms decline.
1952 RIAA formed.
1954 Compact Cassette introduced by Phillips
1958 First stereo records released.
1961 Stereo FM radio starts
1971 Quad SQ disc by Sony/CBS
1972 Quad discrete by by RCA
1977 Direct to disc revived.
1978 Record sale peak then decline.
1982 Tape sale top record sales.
1983 Compact Disc introduced. Record sales plummet.
It is interesting to note that a lot of our tape and magnetic storage technology came from the Germans after their fall in WW2. Those German engineers were damn good!
Libertas in infinitum
Unlike so many MP3 collections released to the public before, the scope of this release is not only grander than anything I've seen before, but the 5000 MP3s have all been properly tagged so that my collection isn't filled with mystery MP3s. Each artist and the cylinder the song came from is painstakingly noted. I am so impressed with the effort put into this project.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
Thanks. It's gratifying to see comments like this. I've forwarded your post to the person who entered all 5,000 ID3 tags.
It was a no brainer for us to make the decision to fully utilize the tags. We're librarians after all. Getting the procedures for entering data right (data was actually entered in the wav file header and then mapped to the ID3 tags) and making sure the data was accurate took a lot of hard work.
We never did settle on a genre though. Oldies?
-David Seubert
This is a fantastic storehouse that they've put together. Some of these recordings are divine and of enormous historical value.
Think about it: some of these cylinder recording made in the 1890's where made by the classical masters of that age. Think people in their 70's. These people started their musical education back in the 1810s-1820's. That's the age of Beethoven (died 1827), Haydn (died 1809), Liszt (died 1886). So what we're hearing with these cylinder is the direct first-hand influence of the Classical/Romantic masters. Not some modern interpretation. And you thought the Rachmaninoff recordings were a 'Window into Time'!
This is really one of the coolest things I've seen this year. If only all classical downloads had such consistency and quality of ID3 tags. Only problem is that the 'genre' field always seems to be 'other'. It would be cool (but a bit too subjective) to just throw these into itunes and then sort out the classical from the jazz.
Somebody should compile all these MP3s and create a torrent out of it. Having the entire collection in the hands of thousands of people world-wide will effectively make it last forever.
made dirigible baloons that were around for a decade in the 1911.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
We never did settle on a genre though. Oldies?
Funny. I just noticed that. I was initially disappointed, but then realized that I had no idea what to label them either! LOL Ragtime? Dancehall? Bandmusic? Ken Burns had this problem when trying to determine at which point some of this music became jazz... "Ragtime" comes closest to describing the samples I added to my collection.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
But they don't want to save it in that format because they're unsure of how widely it's accepted and whether or not it will be around for long (shorten is dead, so flac will die soon too). I would think a local mirror of the flac site would put that to rest, but oh well.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
From grandparent post:
"...I'm not sure what software I'd need to hunt down in order to play FLAC files, but..."
I posted exactly what he'd "need to hunt down" and no more or less. The "FLAC will die soon too" part is quite flamebait-ish. Mirrors are not really necesary with so many copies of the source code for FLAC floating around.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
-- Not much text --
Wikileaks, no DNS