Is This A Home Recording Or???

[SonnyPhono]

I am trying to identify a group of brown wax cylinders and came across a strange one. There is one cylinder in the bunch that I think may either be a home recording or possibly the result someone dubbing a copy of another cylinder.There isn't any announcement on the cylinder and it is a bit quieter than the other 19 cylinders it was with. They all came in a wood carrying case with pegs and all of the other cylinders were produced before 1900. So I would assume this one is from the same time period if that helps at all.

I was able to come up with some of the words listening to it and luckily found out what song it is. It is "My New Old Hampshire Home" and is performed by what sounds like a man and woman accompanied by a piano?? I am not sure what the proper speed of playback is supposed to be. I played it at 120 RPM's and it sounded about right but I could be completely wrong. Here is the strange part. At the beginning and end of the song there is a short period of what sounds like mechanical noise of some sort. It is far louder than the rest of the recording and is just really odd. I looked closely at the grooves of the two areas in question and they are not damaged in any way. However, they are in fact different from the rest of the grooves in that the indentations created by the recording stylus appear to be extremely amplified. You can clearly see the frequency of whatever made the noise and the fact the amplitude is far greater than the rest of the recording. Does that make sense?

The strange noise and singing start immediately at the beginning of the cylinder with no announcement. Also, the total recording only takes up about two-thirds of the playing surface leaving a lot of wasted space. I will be interested to hear what others think about this cylinder. It's interesting to me regardless of what it is and I would love to know if it's a home recording or something else. Thanks in advance for the help!

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

[Wolfe]

I'd peg it as a home recording. Those don't sound remotely like professional singers to me (from what I can make out.)

[SonnyPhono]

Thanks for the taking a look, Wolfe. I was leaning towards a home recording too. Any idea why there is a "trill" throughout the entire recording?

[Wolfe]

I don't know what you mean by 'trill.'

But then, 360p YouTube videos look/sound more degraded over my dial-up internet connection. If it's a fluttery, whistling sound, it's probably the cutting stylus scraping the wax.

[SonnyPhono]

Yea...sorry about the low quality video/audio. I don't have a video camera so I have to use my digital camera to take videos. It's a pretty low end digital camera too so it doesn't do much by means of video quality.

Yes, The "trill" I am referring to is the way the audio sounds so shaky or fluttery. Here is a definition of trill as I am not very good at explaining it:

1. A melodic ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between a principal note and the note a whole tone or semitone above it.
2. A shrill warbling sound, esp as made by some birds

The recording's pitch seems to be oscillating up and down really fast like the shrill of a bird, if that makes sense. I am just wondering if this effect is usually found on home recordings or if the vibrating sound can help determine the source of the recording.

[Wolfe]

Shaky, fluttey, and the cylinder isn't warped or out of round, I'd be pretty sure it's the machine it was recorded on.

Cylinder experts out there? (Of which I'm not.) Over to you....

[SonnyPhono]

Nope...cylinder is actually in good condition considering how poor the recording sounds. Here's a pic:



The more I look at it and listen to the recording, the more I think it's a home recording. But what is that mechanical noise in the beginning and end? It's pretty strange.

[Phototone]

I think it is a home recording on a machine in less than a perfect "state" of tune. Some of the cheap Columbia machines exhibit some of this flutter on playback of commercial cylinders...if you make a recording on a machine with flutter and you play it back on any cylinder machine (they all have a wee bit of flutter) it would be exaggerated.

The end of the recording noise sounds to me like the cutting stylus got a big blob-o-wax on it and clogged. If you notice the videos at the Edison Historic Site when they record they constantly use a camels-hair brush, to brush away the chippings to prevent just this thing. The Ediphones I have (dictating cylinder machines), have an integral brush to sweep away the chippings.

Also, many of the cylinder recorders used commercially had an extra flywheel on the mandrel shaft to smooth out flutter.

[SonnyPhono]

Thanks for the information.

So you feel this was recorded originally on a lower end phonograph? I would love to know who is singing and who originally owned this group of cylinders. They all date to between 1896 - 1899. I don't thing any of them are later than that. They were all in a wood carrying case with 24 pegs. Would this be a typical way to store cylinders for the average phonograph owner of that time period? Or could this be an exhibitor's case that was used in travel? That is what I thought it was at first, but now I don't know because I don't think there would be a home recording in an exhibitor's travel case.

Any thoughts?

[gramophoneshane]

Would this be a typical way to store cylinders for the average phonograph owner of that time period?

Yes. Maybe not typical, but it was certainly quite common, given the number of these type of cases that are still around today, and personally I'm yet to see two that are exactly the same. They were of course offered as part of some exhibition outfits, but it appears that just about every music & department store stocked them.
In 1902, you could buy the normal suitcase version for $3.25 at Sears.

Don't forget too, that just about every spring driven open horn phonograph was designed to be carried around (and they often were to picnics etc), so storage boxes/carrying cases were the most convenient way to lug cylinders around with a machine.
To me, a couple things that might suggest such a case was used for exhibition purposes would be an owners name or initials applied to the case, or perhaps even excessive wear to the case, due to being transported a million miles in the back of a wagon. I think most example that turn up today though, were purely for domestic use.

That said, I don't think it would be that out of place to find a home recording with an exhibitors records, as many outfits were offered with a recorder and a supply of blanks so customers could record & hear their own voice.