The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

[youtubehq]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWayL_StLqY[/youtubehq]

This is something I have found on YouTube today - although it is somewhat faint to determine clearly, it definitely sounds like a electrical recording. Maybe this is an example of Orlando Marsh's recording sessions or early experiments done by Bell Lab....what do you think?

I think it's electrical all right: it has all the earmarks of the kind or distortion I mentioned in my recent post in the Victor Day thread. Now the next question would be from which of the many experimenters it came. There were a bundle all working on electrical recording at that time: Guest and Merriman, Charles Hoxie,( at General Electric) Orlando Marsh, Herbert Berliner and the Bell Labs, among others in North America and in Britain W.S. Purser developed a system at Columbia and something was being done at the HMV labs although they weren't pushing very hard.
So in short this is a very interesting side. Where did you get it? ( Just realized YOU don't have it ...it's on Youtube )
Columbia in North America was working with Guest and Merriman until the company went through it's first bankruptcy at which time interest flagged along with the money.
Berliner had his own Company up here in Canada and his pressings are obvious to me when I see them.
Pathé was pressing the Bell Lab stuff....so it would interesting to see a clear pic of the record itself!

Jim

I dunno. To my ear, the recorded vocal quality has the earmarks associated with almost all acoustical recordings of the female voice that I've heard, even singers of high repute in their day (such as my all-time favorite, Amelita Galli-Curci): cut-off of the high frequencies, that is, those in the range not directly audible but present in the sound to produce the typical timbre associated with the trained female voice. This results in the kind of colorless, "flat" sound one hears here, rather than the rich, full tone of modern recordings. By the same token, the piano sound is rather dull and "clunky." So if this is an electrical, it doesn't show much improvement over the acoustical, IMO.

P.S. Interesting to hear the tango accompaniment in the piano (bum--ta-da-da, bum--ta-da-da, etc.). I hadn't realized "O solo mio" was a tango!

There is a slight buzzing to the clip on youTube, probably not in the original recording. I listened to it with headphones. I hear more room ambiance, reverberation than I would expect to hear on the average acoustic recording..but as I understand it Columbia tried to "capture" as much room ambiance as possible, with their acoustical recording, and this does look like a laminated pressing to me, which would indicate Columbia.

That large outer rim looks like Columbia too, that could also be owing to it being a test.

Though, I was thinking, 5 minutes ago when I was listening to it, that it had the hallmarks of an early Victor electrical. The piano tone, especially, and the sound of the distortion, which even found it's way to some their early released electric sides. But assuming it is from 1923...likely not.

It's be more helfpul to hear a direct transfer, rather than one picked up over the guy's loudspeakers.
The buzzing is indeed not on the record.

I've been digging, and I think what this gent has is in fact a Guest and Merriman experimental recording. As I've mentioned before the person who really started the ball rolling in terms of the history of early electrical recording was Dr. Micheal Biel. If you are a member of 78L you'll be familiar with his posts. He did groundbreaking work on the early electrical era which he presented at the Association of Recorded Sound Collections Conference in 1977. I have the tape of his presentation and the notes that accompanied it. In that programme be presented nine excerpts from a series of Guest and Merriman material that is held by the National Library of Canada in Ottawa. It is the final exerpt which I think is germane to our discussion here. It is
Piano Solo " Narcissus" October 25, 1923 Matrix number X- 2138.
The example here is X 2134 recorded October 4 1923 and it appears to be on a laminated pressing, it would seem to suggest pretty strongly that this is one of the Guest and Merriman experimental sides done for Columbia.
The reason this piques my interest so much is that I have done similar research in regards to Herbert Berliner here in Canada. I presented that research at the ARSC conference here in Toronto in 1988.
Jim

I just re-read my post in the Victor Day thread and I should have said that not only did Guest and Merriman do experimental work in England for Columbia but they contiued it in Connecticut for American Columbia.
The distortion on this side is absolutely typical of the early electrical experiments which I have heard. ( Kinda like a bad Brunswick Light Ray ) It's why the record companies didn't rush to use the electrical process...and all the biggies except Edison were dabbling in it in the early 20's..... because the results sounded in the main so very crummy. It was obvious that they were recording a wider band of frequencies but at what cost? The resonant peaks of the system were working against them at every turn. Bell as I have said, had the brilliance to use rubber to dampen the cutting stylus and thereby smooth the response. The mechanical impedance of the acoustic system performed this function more or less automatically, although the acoustic engineers wouldn't have thought of it like that.

J

I wish I knew who the soprano was. She's kind of blowsy on this record, but I want to say I've heard her before.

Lenoirstreetguy wrote: I have the tape of his presentation and the notes that accompanied it. In that programme be presented nine excerpts from a series of Guest and Merriman material that is held by the National Library of Canada in Ottawa. It is the final exerpt which I think is germane to our discussion here. It is Piano Solo " Narcissus" October 25, 1923 Matrix number X- 2138. The example here is X 2134 recorded October 4 1923 and it appears to be on a laminated pressing, it would seem to suggest pretty strongly that this is one of the Guest and Merriman experimental sides done for Columbia. The reason this piques my interest so much is that I have done similar research in regards to Herbert Berliner here in Canada. I presented that research at the ARSC conference here in Toronto in 1988.

Thank you for this information - I've posted a comment with your information on YouTube.

Henry wrote:P.S. Interesting to hear the tango accompaniment in the piano (bum--ta-da-da, bum--ta-da-da, etc.). I hadn't realized "O solo mio" was a tango!

This 'tango-like' piano arrangement was not unusual - I heard number of recordings with this arrangement. I can think of some examples; e.g. Japanese soprano Sekiya Toshiko's version from 1932, and Mario Chamlee's 1926 Brunswick version. I also have a piano score of this from early 1930s, which has same intro chords.

Wolfe wrote:I wish I knew who the soprano was. She's kind of blowsy on this record, but I want to say I've heard her before.

I think I heard this singer on National Music Lovers label. Her name was Marie Volevi, I think.

I think it does sound electric, but not by much. It would be nice to hear a professional transfer of this. I wonder what size stylus tip he used on this and how the (assumed) stereo cartridge was wired. Those factors Would make a big difference in the sound.

Jim