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Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music
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Product Description
In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented.
Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner takes us through the major breakthroughs and glorious failures in the art and science of recording. An American soldier monitoring Nazi radio transmissions stumbles onto the open yet revolutionary secret of magnetic tape. Japanese and Dutch researchers build a first-generation digital audio format and watch as their “compact disc” is marketed by the music industry as the second coming of Edison yet derided as heretical by analog loyalists. The music world becomes addicted to volume in the nineties and fights a self-defeating “loudness war” to get its fix.
From Les Paul to Phil Spector to King Tubby, from vinyl to pirated CDs to iPods, Milner pulls apart musical history to answer a crucial question: Should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? The answers he uncovers will change the very way we think about music.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #6502 in Books
- Published on: 2009-06-09
- Released on: 2009-06-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 416 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780571211654
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Recording gadgets evolve with dizzying speed, but debates over their effects on music never change, according to this fascinating study of technology and aesthetics. Journalist Milner (coauthor, Metallica: This Monster Lives) surveys developments in recording, from Thomas Edison's complaints about those new-fangled Victrolas to the contemporary controversy between CD and vinyl. With every advance of hardware, he notes, comes accompanying shifts in the sound of music: the sense of physical space implied by stereo sound; the advent of rock 'n' roll reverb; the big obnoxious ambient drum sound that defined the '80s under the Phil Collins dictatorship; the unsettling robotic tone imparted to vocals by today's Auto-Tune pitch-correction software; the arms race toward ear-grabbing, distortion-heavy loudness that leaves us surrounded by music that does nothing but shout. Perennial arguments about the fidelity of new technologies, he contends, miss the point: now that every record is digitally spliced together out of multiple tracks and far-flung samples, there is no authentic musical performance for the sound engineer—contemporary music's true auteur—to record. Milner combines a lucid exposition of acoustics and technology with a critic's keen discernment of the pop-music soundscape. The result is a real ear-opener that will captivate fans and techies alike. (June 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Perfecting Sound Forever is an exhaustively researched, extraordinarily inquisitive book that dissects the central question within all music criticism: When we say that something sounds good, what are we really saying? And perhaps more important, what are we really hearing?” —CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, author of DOWNTOWN OWL
“Milner tells the story of recorded music with novelistic verve, ferocious attention to detail, and a soulful ambivalence about our quest for sonic perfection. He shows how great recordings come about not through advances in technology but through a love of the art, and that same love is the motor of his prose.” —ALEX ROSS, author of THE REST IS NOISE
“Milner’s history begins with the Big Bang and never quiets down, unpacking recordings by everyone from Bing Crosby to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a voice that’s equal parts lay scientist and used-record-store guru. It’s ear candy of the highest order.” —WILL HERMES, coeditor of SPIN: 20 YEARS OF ALTERNATIVE MUSIC
“A brilliant history of sonic dreams, full of provocative questions for any music lover: When you fall in love with a sound, what are you hearing? Does a recording capture a moment or create one? Milner makes these questions more fascinating—and more unsettling—than ever.” —ROB SHEFFIELD, author of LOVE IS A MIX TAPE
“[Milner] delves so deeply into the hows and whys of recorded sound that you may never listen to Lady Gaga the same way again. … a gifted storyteller with an ear for absurdity … Milner never loses his grasp on the humanity behind the music; what fascinates him more than decibels and ‘dead rooms’ is mankind’s innate desire to document and preserve itself. You might not think a book about reverb could thrill. Milner’s does.”—Mikael Wood, Time Out: New York
“Exhaustive, technically precise and fascinating.”—Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times
“Broad in scope and steeped in detail… Milner provides insightful commentary and possesses a solid grasp of pacing and a light touch with the technical aspects. … Milner especially excels at revealing the human side of each story.”—Kirkus
“A personal yet informative interpretation of recorded music that will appeal to students and professionals in the music industry as well as general music-loving readers.”—Bradford Lee Eden, Library Journal
“Recording gadgets evolve with dizzying speed, but debates over their effects on music never change, according to this fascinating study of technology and aesthetics. … Milner combines a lucid exposition of acoustics and technology with a critic’s keen discernment of the pop-music soundscape. The result is a real ear-opener that will captivate fans and techies alike.”—Publishers Weekly
“Superbly researched. … Milner’s is by no means a nerd’s-eye view: this is fundamentally a human story. … The fact that the Red Hot Chili Peppers get a pasting is just one pleasure to be drawn from a book that is less about the music we like than what we may have sacrificed in pursuing it.”—Metro.co.uk
“Greg Milner’s Perfecting Sound Forever unravels the why and how with all the juicy technological details in place. … As deep as Perfecting Sound Forever takes us into sound, it never devalues the allure of the chimera that is the perfect recording. Milner is plenty aware of his sphinxlike subject.”—John Dugan, Time Out: Chicago
About the Author
Greg Milner has written about music, media, technology, and politics for Spin, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Slate, Salon, and Wired. He is the coauthor, with the filmmaker Joe Berlinger, of Metallica: This Monster Lives and has also worked as a political speechwriter. He lives in Brooklyn.
Customer Reviews
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A layman like me could have been intimidated by the charts and bar graphs that pop up every now and again to prove things like replay gain and compression but Greg Milner had me from the start. He starts out with a bang, comparing the creation of the universe to `cutting a record,' then laying out the quirky, fascinating history of the men--and their methods--who proved that Marconi was right and `no sound ever dies.' Like the scientists and inventors, showmen and audio geeks, Willy Lomans and record company suits who wanted to raise the bar--whether that bar be quality, authenticity, loudness, or sales--Milner is also obsessed, and not just with the trajectory--the wax cylinders, analog tape and binary code that plays us back--but with pondering age-old questions: what is art? what is reality? is there truth? It's a rollicking, uproarious, rock `n rolla' ride and Milner takes you with him inside the "sweet spot" of an Edison recording of Bake Dat Chicken Pie; behind the prison walls of the Louisiana State Penitentiary and Lead Belly's thrilling Irene; next to Ike Turner's broken amp and its grungy sound at Sun Studio; beside the pummeling drums of Springstein's Born in the U.S.A.; inside the mix of the master King Tubby; compressed in the eardrum splitting Californication of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You are there. This is a brilliant, funny record that chronicles the amazing story of recorded (American) sound while raising important questions--to me anyway--like who owns sound? Do I want to hear what I hear, or better? Are the blockbuster Frankensteins of pop music today art? If you have the faintest interest in American music and what it says about our culture, run don't walk and read this book!
Nancy Becker
Brilliant! A Classic! You will never listen the same again!
This is the book that will give you the full history of recording sound. It describes the technicians and musicians behind recording sound, with many interviews and historical perspectives. It describes techniques of sound recording, goes into details of the science behind wax, vinyl, magnetic tape, tubes and SSL, compact discs, the loudness wars, the emulator and the synclavier, dub and sampling, digital recording, Pro-Tools and finally the currently ubiquitous mp3 and AAC. It was a pleasure to read, and it will serve me as a great reference of knowledge. Where will music recording go next? Think of it this way: when will we be able to cross the atlantic in 3.5hrs again, and when will your mp3 player sound like vinyl? This book sets you up with the whole story up until today.
Great resource for history of sound recording.
"Perfecting Sound Forever" is a well crafted book covering the history of sound recording technology from the early days of the Edison cylinder to the development of digital audio technology, right through to downloadable lossy-compression file formats, such as MP3's. Milner clearly has a solid understanding of the recording process which makes it an interesting read to those (like me) who work in the business, but he presents the material in a way that remains accessible to hobbyists or those who simply have an interest in the subject.
Rather than focusing solely on the technology, the book contains many interesting and insightful vignettes, through which Milner illustrates how the technology is being used by artists and producers -- for example, the early days of stereo with the collaboration between Bell Labs engineers, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra; the late, great Les Paul and the sound-on-sound process; and the early days of -- what will be called -- remixing, with King Tubby. Lovers of the Blues will enjoy trips to the American south with the Lomaxes, traveling with their `portable' recording devices discovering and capturing the roots of popular music through performances of artists such as Lead Belly. And those who use digital audio workstations (DAW's), such as Pro Tools, will find great interest in the detailed recount of the evolution of digital audio from esoteric technology to ubiquity.
The book details extremely well how -- through the last century -- technology has affected and influenced art, and how art has affected and influenced technology. Aside from a few minor inaccuracies, the book is an excellent historical resource, and a very interesting and enjoyable read. It is a must-read for anyone working in professional audio.
