Cylinder music

[kanoot]

I thought I would pass along something I ran across recently. At UC Santa Barbara they have a project entitled "Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project" which is an attempt to collect and digitize as many Edison Cylinder recordings as possible.

They have thousands of cylinders recorded so far and almost all have been made into mp3s. Due to the original sanity of copyright laws they are all free to download, listen to, burn, distribute, or whatever.

I can say that, at least for me, it is great fun to listen to a recording made from, say, 1906 through my squeezebox. Its a great lesson in what 100 years can bring in technology. Please do NOT expect good sound quality. Just pretend that your squeezebox pops and scrapes all the time - its still amazing just to hear something that was recorded!!


Cylinder project: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

More on Cylinders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_cylinder

[mecouc]

It's depressing when you post something and nobody replies, so I'll just say thanks for posting that - it's great.

[Gary_W]

Thanks from me also. Very spooky to hear tunes that were cut 80 and 90 years ago. A very interesting link ;)

[Skunk]

I used to browse the Library of Congress archives for video, photos, but never tried music. May be worth a look.

[kanoot]

It's depressing when you post something and nobody replies, so I'll just say thanks for posting that - it's great.


Ha! well, I didn't think people were totally ignoring the link. I just figured people didn't like hearing pops and scratches :)

[Mark Lanctot]

Ha! well, I didn't think people were totally ignoring the link. I just figured people didn't like hearing pops and scratches :)

Actually the link's been posted at least twice before, so there wasn't really too much else to say. :-)

The whole thing reminds me of this project I saw on Discovery Channel - I think it was for the Library of Congress? They were recording old vinyl albums using a laser read method to avoid further degradation and so that they could correct the resultant recording, removing hiss, pops and crackles. Neat!