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MMD > Archives > March 2000 > 2000.03.21 > 10Prev  Next


What is a Recording? What is a Record?
By Julian Dyer

Joyce Brite's question is an interesting one.  The word record has been
hijacked by the audio recording system over recent years, to such an
extent that no other form of capturing a performance as it happens is
thought of as a record.  This is highly misleading.

Think about it.  Manual and other processes are often considered to
be records, for example, something such as a court record, which is
manually entered in real time into a machine.  We've all seen films or
TV where something is 'struck from the record'.

If you look in old Ampico catalogues, at no point do they refer to
themselves as anything else than 'records'.  You would never know the
catalogues were for piano rolls!

A hand-played piano roll, captured by some form of device as it
happens, is indeed a record of the notes played.  The dynamics on a
reproducing piano roll are a record, whether notated manually in real
time (such as the vast majority of Ampico rolls), notated by a person
using mechanical aid (such as the Duo-Art recording console), or
captured automatically (late Ampico spark chronograph).  The
recording is the process of capturing the details of the performance
-- notes and dynamics -- but not the technique of capturing this
information, the way in which it is edited, or the way the playback
device works.

On the other hand, a piano roll arranged from sheet music is clearly
not a record.  It is simply the sheet music in another notation.
Therefore, the record is the data on the roll, not the medium of the
roll itself.

So, trying to answer Joyce's questions I would say the recording is the
capture of the information, and the record is the medium which stores
the results of the recording.

No wonder people get confused!

Julian Dyer


(Message sent Tue 21 Mar 2000, 12:28:49 GMT, from time zone GMT.)

Key Words in Subject:  is, Record, Recording, What

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