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116-442: A record producer or music producer is a music creating project's overall supervisor whose responsibilities can involve a range of creative and technical leadership roles. Typically the job involves hands-on oversight of recording sessions; ensuring artists deliver acceptable and quality performances, supervising the technical engineering of the recording, and coordinating the production team and process. The producer's involvement in

232-480: A Grammy nomination, the Recording Academy defines a producer: The person who has overall creative and technical control of the entire recording project, and the individual recording sessions that are part of that project. He or she is present in the recording studio or at the location recording and works directly with the artist and engineer. The producer makes creative and aesthetic decisions that realize both

348-473: A film school to get a bachelor's degree studying film or cinema. Film students generally study the basic skills used in making a film. This includes, for example, preparation, shot lists and storyboards, blocking, communicating with professional actors, communicating with the crew, and reading scripts. Some film schools are equipped with sound stages and post-production facilities. Besides basic technical and logistical skills, students also receive education on

464-419: A "cue lever", a device that mechanically lowers the tonearm on to the record. It enables the user to locate an individual track more easily, to pause a record, and to avoid the risk of scratching the record, which may require practice to avoid when lowering the tonearm manually. Early developments in linear turntables were from Rek-O-Kut (portable lathe/phonograph) and Ortho-Sonic in the 1950s, and Acoustical in

580-469: A Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Most of the disc machines designed at the Volta Lab had their disc mounted on vertical turntables. The explanation is that in the early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables. One interesting exception

696-423: A broad project, the creation of a popular music recording may be split across three specialists: the executive producer , who oversees business partnerships and financing; the vocal producer or vocal arranger, who aids vocal performance via expert critique and coaching of vocal technique, and the record producer or music producer, who, often called simply the producer, directs the overall creative process of recording

812-434: A composite performance. The 1980s advent of digital processes and formats rapidly replaced analog processes and formats, namely, tape and vinyl. Although recording onto quality tape, at least half an inch wide and traveling 15 inches per second, had limited "tape hiss" to silent sections, digital's higher signal-to-noise ratio , SNR, abolished it. Digital also imparted to the music a perceived "pristine" sound quality, if also

928-465: A cylinder. By the 1930s, a gramophone etched it laterally across a disc. Constrained in tonal range, whether bass or treble, and in dynamic range , records made a grand, concert piano sound like a small, upright piano, and maximal duration was four and a half minutes. Selections and performance were often altered accordingly, and playing this disc—the wax master—destroyed it. The finality often caused anxiety that restrained performance to prevent error. In

1044-477: A definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the French Academy of Sciences , a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish priority of conception of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute. An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised

1160-400: A device that could replicate the function of the human ear. Scott coated a plate of glass with a thin layer of lampblack . He then took an acoustic trumpet, and at its tapered end affixed a thin membrane that served as the analog to the eardrum . At the center of that membrane, he attached a rigid boar's bristle approximately a centimetre long, placed so that it just grazed the lampblack. As

1276-529: A different machine that played nonrecordable discs (although Edison's original Phonograph patent included the use of discs. ) In Australian English , "record player" was the term; "turntable" was a more technical term; "gramophone" was restricted to the old mechanical (i.e., wind-up) players; and "phonograph" was used as in British English . The "phonograph" was first demonstrated in Australia on 14 June 1878 to

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1392-608: A film director. Some film directors started as screenwriters , cinematographers , producers , film editors or actors. Other film directors have attended film school. Directors use different approaches. Some outline a general plotline and let the actors improvise dialogue, while others control every aspect and demand that the actors and crew follow instructions precisely. Some directors also write their own screenplays or collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners. Other directors edit or appear in their films or compose music score for their films. A film director's task

1508-480: A flat fee for the project, as a weekly salary, or as a daily rate. A handful of top Hollywood directors made from $ 133.3 million to $ 257.95 million in 2011, such as James Cameron and Steven Spielberg , but the average United States film directors and producers made $ 89,840 in 2018. A new Hollywood director typically gets paid around $ 400,000 for directing their first studio film. The average annual salary in England

1624-411: A helical or spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a record . To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm that produced sound waves coupled to

1740-652: A human voice was conducted on April 9, 1860, when Scott recorded someone singing the song " Au Clair de la Lune " ("By the Light of the Moon") on the device. However, the device was not designed to play back sounds, as Scott intended for people to read back the tracings, which he called phonautograms. This was not the first time someone had used a device to create direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects, as tuning forks had been used in this way by English physicist Thomas Young in 1807. By late 1857, with support from

1856-405: A leading A&R man of the 1950s. During the decade, A&R executives increasingly directed songs' sonic signatures, although many still simply teamed singers with musicians, while yet others exercised virtually no creative influence. The term record producer in its current meaning—the creative director of song production—appearing in a 1953 issue of Billboard magazine, became widespread in

1972-712: A loss of analog recordings' perceived "warm" quality and better-rounded bass. Yet whereas editing tape media requires physically locating the target audio on the ribbon, cutting there, and splicing pieces, editing digital media offers inarguable advantages in ease, efficiency, and possibilities. In the 1990s, digital production reached affordable home computers via production software. By now, recording and mixing are often centralized in DAWs, digital audio workstations —for example, Pro Tools , Logic Pro , Ableton , Cubase , Reason , and FL Studio —for which plugins , by third parties, effect virtual studio technology . DAWs fairly standard in

2088-680: A meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria by the Society's Honorary Secretary, Alex Sutherland who published "The Sounds of the Consonants, as Indicated by the Phonograph" in the Society's journal in November that year. On 8 August 1878 the phonograph was publicly demonstrated at the Society's annual conversazione , along with a range of other new inventions, including the microphone . The phonautograph

2204-518: A more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure. The author of this article called the device a phonographe , but Cros himself favored the word paleophone , sometimes rendered in French as voix du passé ('voice of

2320-512: A musical element while playing a previously recorded record, Les Paul developed a recording technique called "sound on sound". By this, the final recording could be built piece by piece and tailored, effecting an editing process. In one case, Paul produced a song via 500 recorded discs. But, besides the tedium of this process, it serially degraded the sound quality of previously recorded elements, rerecorded as ambient sound. Yet in 1948, Paul adopted tape recording, enabling true multitrack recording by

2436-439: A musical project can vary in depth and scope. Sometimes in popular genres the producer may create the recording's entire sound and structure. However, in classical music recording, for example, the producer serves as more of a liaison between the conductor and the engineering team. The role is often likened to that of a film director though there are important differences. It is distinct from the role of an executive producer , who

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2552-539: A new technique, " overdubbing ". To enable overdubbing, Paul revised the tape recorder itself by adding a second playback head, and terming it the preview head . Joining the preexisting recording head, erase head, and playback head, the preview head allows the artist to hear the extant recording over headphones playing it in synchrony, "in sync", with the present performance being recorded alone on an isolated track. This isolation of multiple tracks enables countless mixing possibilities. Producers began recording initially only

2668-542: A recent trend of more attention to women directors in India, brought on partly by Amazon and Netflix moving into the industry. Of the movies produced in Nollywood , women direct only 2%. There are many different awards for film directing, run by various academies , critics associations , film festivals , and guilds . The Academy Award for Best Director and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director are considered among

2784-399: A role in the development of the gramophone , whose inventor, Emile Berliner, worked with the phonautograph in the course of developing his own device. Charles Cros , a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leap from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to devising

2900-522: A set of recordings in Los Angeles. Later, folklorist Archie Green called this perhaps the earliest printed use of A&R man . Actually, it says neither "A&R man" nor even "A&R", an initialism perhaps coined by Billboard magazine in 1946, and entering wide use in the late 1940s. In the 1920s and 1930s, A&R executives, like Ben Selvin at Columbia Records , Nathaniel Shilkret at Victor Records, and Bob Haring at Brunswick Records became

3016-437: A similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he wrote in retrospect: "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, although there was little of the scratching that later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine

3132-402: A slightly earlier one that is believed to preserve the voice of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes , but as of May 2014 they have not yet been scanned. These antique tinfoil recordings, which have typically been stored folded, are too fragile to be played back with a stylus without seriously damaging them. Edison's 1877 tinfoil recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb , not preserved, has been called

3248-422: A small, simple machine about which few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: 'Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?' The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..." The music critic Herman Klein attended an early demonstration (1881–82) of

3364-480: A stylus with a small diamond or sapphire tip that runs in the record groove. The stylus eventually becomes worn by contact with the groove, and it is usually replaceable. Styli are classified as spherical or elliptical, although the tip is actually shaped as a half-sphere or a half- ellipsoid . Spherical styli are generally more robust than other types, but do not follow the groove as accurately, giving diminished high frequency response. Elliptical styli usually track

3480-446: A woman the reins of an immense, creative project like making a record." Ultimately, the reasons are multiple and not fully clear, although prominently proposed factors include types of sexism and scarcity of female role models in the profession. Women producers known for producing records not their own include Sonia Pottinger, Sylvia Robinson and Carla Olson. In January 2018, a research team led by Stacy L. Smith, founder and director of

3596-508: A yearly salary from ¥4 million to ¥10 million, and the Directors Guild of Japan requires a minimum payment of ¥3.5 million. Korean directors make 300 million to 500 million won for a film, and beginning directors start out making around 50 million won. A Korean director who breaks into the Chinese market might make 1 billion won for a single film. According to a 2018 report from UNESCO ,

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3712-428: A zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the centre, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, which is predominantly used in many languages. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, stylus, pickup system, and

3828-736: Is a film criticism concept that holds that a film director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process. Some film directors started as screenwriters , film editors , producers , actors , or film critics , as well as directing for similar media like television and commercials. Several American cinematographers have become directors, including Barry Sonnenfeld , originally

3944-409: Is especially important for playback of quadraphonic recordings. A few specialist laser turntables read the groove optically using a laser pickup. Since there is no physical contact with the record, no wear is incurred. However, this "no wear" advantage is debatable, since vinyl records have been tested to withstand even 1200 plays with no significant audio degradation, provided that it is played with

4060-657: Is more forgiving of overmodulation , whereby dynamic peaks exceed the maximal recordable signal level: tape's limitation, a physical property, is magnetic capacity, which tapers off, smoothing the overmodulated waveform even at a signal nearly 15 decibels too "hot", whereas a digital recording is ruined by harsh distortion of " clipping " at any overshoot. In digital recording, however, a recent advancement, 32-bit float , enables DAWs to undo clipping. Still, some criticize digital instruments and workflows for excess automation, allegedly impairing creative or sonic control. In any case, as production technology has drastically changed, so have

4176-416: Is mostly involved in the recording project on an administrative level, and from the audio engineer who operates the recording technology. Varying by project, the producer may or may not choose all of the artists. If employing only synthesized or sampled instrumentation, the producer may be the sole artist. Conversely, some artists do their own production. Some producers are their own engineers, operating

4292-584: Is often identified as the oldest surviving playable sound recording, although the evidence advanced for its early date is controversial. Wax phonograph cylinder recordings of Handel 's choral music made on June 29, 1888, at The Crystal Palace in London were thought to be the oldest-known surviving musical recordings, until the recent playback by a group of American historians of a phonautograph recording of Au clair de la lune recorded on April 9, 1860. The 1860 phonautogram had not until then been played, as it

4408-440: Is the first step in a broader effort to improve those numbers and increase diversity and inclusion for all in the music industry." Film director The film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions and stay within the budget . There are many pathways to becoming

4524-418: Is to envisage a way to translate a screenplay into a fully formed film, and then to realize this vision. To do this, they oversee the artistic and technical elements of film production. This entails organizing the film crew in such a way to achieve their vision of the film and communicating with the actors. This requires skills of group leadership, as well as the ability to maintain a singular focus even in

4640-714: Is £50,440, in Canada is $ 62,408, and in Western Australia it can range from $ 75,230 to $ 97,119. In France, the average salary is €4000 per month, paid per project. Luc Besson was the highest paid French director in 2017, making €4.44 million for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets . That same year, the top ten French directors' salaries in total represented 42% of the total directors' salaries in France. Film directors in Japan average

4756-781: The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, based in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism , issued a report, estimating that in the prior several years, about 2% of popular songs' producers were female. Also that month, Billboard magazine queried, "Where are all the female music producers?" Upon the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative's second annual report, released in February 2019, its department at USC reported, "2018 saw an outcry from artists, executives and other music industry professionals over

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4872-426: The Royal Society of Victoria , writing "There was a large attendance of ladies and gentlemen, who appeared greatly interested in the various scientific instruments exhibited. Among these the most interesting, perhaps, was the trial made by Mr. Sutherland with the phonograph, which was most amusing. Several trials were made, and were all more or less successful. 'Rule Britannia' was distinctly repeated, but great laughter

4988-707: The "bed tracks"—the rhythm section , including the bassline , drums, and rhythm guitar—whereas vocals and instrument solos could be added later. A horn section , for example, could record a week later, and a string section another week later. A singer could perform her own backup vocals, or a guitarist could play 15 layers. Across the 1960s, popular music increasingly switched from acoustic instruments, like piano, upright bass , acoustic guitar , and brass instruments , to electronic instruments, like electric guitars , keyboards , and synthesizers , employing instrument amplifiers and speakers. These could mimic acoustic instruments or create utterly new sounds. Soon, by combining

5104-428: The 1940s advent of tape recording —which Les Paul promptly innovated further to develop multitrack recording —and the 1950s rise of electronic instruments, turned record production into a specialty. In popular music, then, producers like George Martin , Phil Spector and Brian Eno led its evolution into its present use of elaborate techniques and unrealistic sounds, creating songs impossible to originate live. After

5220-457: The 1940s as record players or turntables, the movements of the stylus are transformed into an electrical signal by a transducer . This signal is then converted back into sound through an amplifier and one or more loudspeakers . The term "phonograph", meaning "sound writing", originates from the Greek words φωνή (phonē, meaning 'sound' or 'voice') and γραφή (graphē, meaning 'writing'). Similarly,

5336-454: The 1940s, during World War II, the Germans refined audio recording onto magnetic tape—uncapping recording duration and allowing immediate playback, rerecording, and editing—a technology that premised emergence of record producers in their current roles. Early in the recording industry, a record was attained by simply having all of the artists perform together live in one take. In 1945, by recording

5452-422: The 1956 season had ended, Philco decided to discontinue both models, for transistors were too expensive compared to vacuum tubes, but by 1961 a $ 49.95 ($ 509.29 in 2023) portable, battery-powered radio-phonograph with seven transistors was available. There are presently three main phonograph designs: belt-drive , direct-drive , and idler-wheel . In a belt-drive turntable the motor is located off-center from

5568-509: The 1960s. Still, a formal distinction was elusive for some time more. A&R managers might still be creative directors, like William "Mickey" Stevenson , hired by Berry Gordy , at the Motown record label. In 1947, the American market gained audio recording onto magnetic tape. At the record industry's 1880s dawn, rather, recording was done by phonograph , etching the sonic waveform vertically into

5684-494: The 1980s, production's move from analog to digital further expanded possibilities. By now, DAWs, or digital audio workstations , like Logic Pro , Pro Tools and Studio One , turn an ordinary computer into a production console, whereby a solitary novice can become a skilled producer in a thrifty home studio. In the 2010s, efforts began to increase the prevalence of producers and engineers who are women, heavily outnumbered by men and prominently accoladed only in classical music. As

5800-516: The 78-rpm format was completely phased out. (Shellac records were heavier and more brittle.) 33s and 45s were, however, made exclusively of vinyl, with the exception of some 45s manufactured out of polystyrene . In 1955, Philco developed and produced the world's first all- transistor phonograph models TPA-1 and TPA-2, which were announced in the June 28, 1955 edition of The Wall Street Journal . Philco started to sell these all-transistor phonographs in

5916-1087: The Berlin/Brandenburg TV station RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting) and ARTE . In recent decades American directors have primarily been coming out of USC , UCLA , AFI , Columbia University , and NYU , each of which is known for cultivating a certain style of filmmaking. Notable film schools outside of the United States include Beijing Film Academy , Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City, Dongseo University in South Korea, FAMU in Prague, Film and Television Institute of India , HFF Munich , La Fémis in Paris, Tel Aviv University , and Vancouver Film School . Film directors usually are self-employed and hired per project based on recommendations and industry reputation. Compensation might be arranged as

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6032-524: The Coen brothers' Director of Photography; Wally Pfister , cinematographer on Christopher Nolan 's three Batman films made his directorial debut with Transcendence (2014). Despite the misnomer, assistant director has become a completely separate career path and is not typically a position for aspiring directors, but there are exceptions in some countries such as India where assistant directors are indeed directors-in-training. Many film directors have attended

6148-509: The French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception. Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at

6264-581: The Graphophone, U.S. patent 506,348 , was developed by Tainter in 1893 to compete with nickel-in-the-slot entertainment phonograph U.S. patent 428,750 demonstrated in 1889 by Louis T. Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company. The work of the Volta Associates laid the foundation for the successful use of dictating machines in business, because their wax recording process

6380-575: The Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale, Scott's phonautograph was recording sounds with sufficient precision to be adopted by the scientific community, paving the way for the nascent science of acoustics. The device's true significance in the history of recorded sound was not fully realized prior to March 2008, when it was discovered and resurrected in a Paris patent office by First Sounds, an informal collaborative of American audio historians, recording engineers, and sound archivists founded to make

6496-423: The Volta Associates were sure that they had a number of practical inventions, they filed patent applications and began to seek out investors. The Volta Graphophone Company of Alexandria, Virginia, was created on January 6, 1886, and incorporated on February 3, 1886. It was formed to control the patents and to handle the commercial development of their sound recording and reproduction inventions, one of which became

6612-557: The age of 45. Thomas Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone . His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph , a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in Scientific American and several newspapers in

6728-409: The artist's and label's goals in the creation of musical content. Other duties include, but are not limited to: keeping budgets and schedules; adhering to deadlines; hiring musicians, singers, studios, and engineers; overseeing other staffing needs; and editing (Classical projects). The producer often selects and collaborates with a mixing engineer, who focuses on the especially technological aspects of

6844-523: The beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a "talking-machine" can be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune on May 9 ), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was patented on February 19, 1878, as US Patent 200,521). "In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the Scientific American , and placed before the editors

6960-699: The capabilities of tape, multitrack recording, and electronic instruments, producers like Phil Spector , George Martin , and Joe Meek rendered sounds unattainable live. Similarly, in jazz fusion , Teo Macero , producing Miles Davis 's 1970 album Bitches Brew , spliced sections of extensive improvisation sessions. In the 1960s, rock acts like the Beatles , the Rolling Stones , and the Kinks produced some of their own songs, although many such songs are officially credited to specialist producers. Yet especially influential

7076-426: The cylinder was rotated and slowly progressed along its axis , the airborne sound vibrated a diaphragm connected to a stylus that indented the foil into the cylinder's groove, thereby recording the vibrations as "hill-and-dale" variations of the depth of the indentation. By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded

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7192-422: The director ensures that all individuals involved in the film production are working towards an identical vision for the completed film. The set of varying challenges they have to tackle has been described as "a multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with egos and weather thrown in for good measure". It adds to the pressure that the success of a film can influence when and how they will work again, if at all. Generally,

7308-435: The director works with the editor to edit the material into the director's cut . Well-established directors have the " final cut privilege ", meaning that they have the final say on which edit of the film is released. For other directors, the studio can order further edits without the director's permission. The director is one of the few positions that requires intimate involvement during every stage of film production . Thus,

7424-560: The earliest sound recordings available to the public. The phonautograms were then digitally converted by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, who were able to play back the recorded sounds, something Scott had never conceived of. Prior to this point, the earliest known record of a human voice was thought to be an 1877 phonograph recording by Thomas Edison . The phonautograph would play

7540-502: The earliest verified recordings by the famous that have survived to the present. Alexander Graham Bell and his two associates took Edison's tinfoil phonograph and modified it considerably to make it reproduce sound from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work at Bell's Volta Laboratory in Washington, D. C., in 1879, and continued until they were granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax. Although Edison had invented

7656-485: The early 1960s. These were eclipsed by more successful implementations of the concept from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. The pickup or cartridge is a transducer that converts mechanical vibrations from a stylus into an electrical signal. The electrical signal is amplified and converted into sound by one or more loudspeakers . Crystal and ceramic pickups that use the piezoelectric effect have largely been replaced by magnetic cartridges . The pickup includes

7772-494: The fall of 1955, for the price of $ 59.95. The October 1955 issue of Radio & Television News magazine (page 41), had a full page detailed article on Philco's new consumer product. The all-transistor portable phonograph TPA-1 and TPA-2 models played only 45rpm records and used four 1.5 volt "D" batteries for their power supply. The "TPA" stands for "Transistor Phonograph Amplifier". Their circuitry used three Philco germanium PNP alloy-fused junction audio frequency transistors. After

7888-474: The film industry throughout the world has a disproportionately higher number of male directors compared to female directors, and they provide as an example the fact that only 20% of films in Europe are directed by women. 44% of graduates from a sample of European films schools are women, and yet women are only 24% of working film directors in Europe. However only a fraction of film school graduates aspire to direct with

8004-508: The first Dictaphone . After the Volta Associates gave several demonstrations in the City of Washington, businessmen from Philadelphia created the American Graphophone Company on March 28, 1887, in order to produce and sell the machines for the budding phonograph marketplace. The Volta Graphophone Company then merged with American Graphophone, which itself later evolved into Columbia Records . A coin-operated version of

8120-545: The first instance of recorded verse . On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, Edison recounted reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb to test his first machine. The 1927 event was filmed by an early sound-on-film newsreel camera, and an audio clip from that film's soundtrack is sometimes mistakenly presented as the original 1877 recording. Wax cylinder recordings made by 19th-century media legends such as P. T. Barnum and Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth are amongst

8236-407: The glass plate was slid horizontally in a well formed groove at a speed of one meter per second, a person would speak into the trumpet, causing the membrane to vibrate and the stylus to trace figures that were scratched into the lampblack. On March 25, 1857, Scott received the French patent #17,897/31,470 for his device, which he called a phonautograph. The earliest known surviving recorded sound of

8352-410: The groove more accurately, with increased high frequency response and less distortion. For DJ use, the relative robustness of spherical styli make them generally preferred for back-cuing and scratching. There are a number of derivations of the basic elliptical type, including the shibata or fine line stylus, which can more accurately reproduce high frequency information contained in the record groove. This

8468-476: The hard rubber used to make the discs with a shellac compound. Berliner's early records had poor sound quality, however. Work by Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved the sound fidelity to a point where it was as good as the cylinder. In the 1930s, vinyl (originally known as vinylite) was introduced as a record material for radio transcription discs , and for radio commercials. At that time, virtually no discs for home use were made from this material. Vinyl

8584-458: The industry are Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Physical devices involved include the main mixer, MIDI controllers to communicate among equipment, the recording device itself, and perhaps effects gear that is outboard. Yet literal recording is sometimes still analog, onto tape, whereupon the raw recording is converted to a digital signal for processing and editing, as some producers still find audio advantages to recording onto tape. Conventionally, tape

8700-666: The knowledge demands, although DAWs enables novices, even teenagers at home, to learn production independently. Some have attained professional competence before ever working with an artist. Among female record producers, Sylvia Moy was the first at Motown , Gail Davies the first on Nashville's Music Row , and Ethel Gabriel , with RCA , the first at a major record label . Lillian McMurry , owning Trumpet Records , produced influential blues records. Meanwhile, Wilma Cozart Fine produced hundreds of records for Mercury Records ' classical division. For classical production, three women have won Grammy awards, and Judith Sherman 's 2015 win

8816-505: The lack of women in music" and "the plight of women in music", where women were allegedly being "stereotyped, sexualized, and shut out". Also in February 2019, the Recording Academy 's Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion announced an initiative whereby over 200 artists and producers—ranging from Cardi B and Taylor Swift to Maroon 5 and Quincy Jones —agreed to consider at least two women for each producer or engineer position. The academy's website, Grammy.com , announced, "This initiative

8932-472: The majority entering the industry in other roles. In Hollywood, women make up only 12.6 percent of film directors, as reported by a UCLA study of the 200 top theatrical films of 2017, but that number is a significant increase from 6.9% in 2016. As of 2014, there were only 20 women in the Directors Guild of Japan out of the 550 total members. Indian film directors are also greatly underrepresented by women, even compared to other countries, but there has been

9048-568: The manufacturing of record discs. After World War II , pioneering A&R managers who transitioned influentially to record production as now understood, while sometimes owning independent labels, include J. Mayo Williams and John Hammond . Upon moving from Columbia Records to Mercury Records , Hammond appointed Mitch Miller to lead Mercury's popular recordings in New York. Miller then produced country-pop crossover hits by Patti Page and by Frankie Laine , moved from Mercury to Columbia, and became

9164-400: The master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced pantograph -based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 90–150 copies of each record. However, as demand for certain records grew, popular artists still needed to re-record and re-re-record their songs. Reportedly,

9280-566: The matrixes to stamp disc can be shipped to other printing plants for a global distribution of recordings; cylinders could not be stamped until 1901–1902, when the gold moulding process was introduced by Edison. Through experimentation, in 1892 Berliner began commercial production of his disc records and "gramophones". His " phonograph record " was the first disc record to be offered to the public. They were five inches (13 cm) in diameter and recorded on one side only. Seven-inch (17.5 cm) records followed in 1895. Also in 1895 Berliner replaced

9396-492: The medium's first major African-American star George Washington Johnson was obliged to perform his " The Laughing Song " (or the separate "The Whistling Coon") up to thousands of times in a studio during his recording career. Sometimes he would sing "The Laughing Song" more than fifty times in a day, at twenty cents per rendition. (The average price of a single cylinder in the mid-1890s was about fifty cents.) Lambert 's lead cylinder recording for an experimental talking clock

9512-622: The most prestigious awards for directing, and there is even an award for worst directing given out during the Golden Raspberry Awards . Phonograph A phonograph , later called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910), and since the 1940s a record player , or more recently a turntable , is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound . The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of

9628-458: The name by competing disc record manufacturers was rigorously challenged in court. However, in 1910, an English court decision ruled that the term had become generic; In American English , "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to Emile Berliner 's Gramophone,

9744-548: The nature of professional relationships that occur during film production. A full degree course can be designed for up to five years of studying. Future directors usually complete short films during their enrollment. The National Film School of Denmark has the student's final projects presented on national TV. Some film schools retain the rights for their students' works. Many directors successfully prepared for making feature films by working in television. The German Film and Television Academy Berlin consequently cooperates with

9860-457: The next five years developing the New York City electric light and power system. Meanwhile, Bell, a scientist and experimenter at heart, was looking for new worlds to conquer after having patented the telephone . According to Sumner Tainter , it was through Gardiner Green Hubbard that Bell took up the phonograph challenge. Bell had married Hubbard's daughter Mabel in 1879 while Hubbard

9976-435: The open air through a flaring horn , or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope -type earphones. The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison ; its use would rise the following year. Alexander Graham Bell 's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone , including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in

10092-517: The past'). Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the public domain free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of

10208-496: The phonograph in 1877, the fame bestowed on him for this invention was not due to its efficiency. Recording with his tinfoil phonograph was too difficult to be practical, as the tinfoil tore easily, and even when the stylus was properly adjusted, its reproduction of sound was distorted, and good for only a few playbacks; nevertheless Edison had discovered the idea of sound recording . However immediately after his discovery he did not improve it, allegedly because of an agreement to spend

10324-476: The platter, either underneath it or entirely outside of it, and is connected to the platter or counter-platter by a drive belt made from elastomeric material. The direct-drive turntable was invented by Shuichi Obata, an engineer at Matsushita (now Panasonic). In 1969, Matsushita released it as the Technics SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market. The most influential direct-drive turntable

10440-548: The popularity of cassettes and the rise of the compact disc . However, records have undergone a revival since the late 2000s . This resurgence has much to do with vinyl records' sparing use of audio processing, resulting in a more natural sound on high-quality replay equipment, compared to many digital releases that are highly processed for portable players in high-noise environmental conditions. However, unlike "plug-and-play" digital audio, vinyl record players have user-serviceable parts, which require attention to tonearm alignment and

10556-415: The position of film director is widely considered to be a highly stressful and demanding one. It has been said that "20-hour days are not unusual". Some directors also take on additional roles, such as producing, writing or editing. Under European Union law, the film director is considered the "author" or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory . Auteur theory

10672-435: The precursors of record producers, supervising recording and often leading session orchestras. During the 1940s, major record labels increasingly opened official A&R departments, whose roles included supervision of recording. Meanwhile, independent recording studios opened, helping originate record producer as a specialty. But despite a tradition of some A&R men writing music, record production still referred to just

10788-463: The recording process, namely, operating the electronic equipment and blending the raw, recorded tracks of the chosen performances, whether vocal or instrumental, into a mix , either stereo or surround sound. Then a mastering engineer further adjusts this recording for distribution on the chosen media. A producer may work on only one or two songs or on an artist's entire album, helping develop the album's overall vision. The record producers may also take on

10904-407: The restrictions of the film's budget and the demands of the producer and studio (such as the need to get a particular age rating ). Directors also play an important role in post-production . While the film is still in production, the director sends " dailies " to the film editor and explains their overall vision for the film, allowing the editor to assemble an editor's cut . In post-production,

11020-437: The role of executive producer, managing the budget, schedules, contracts, and negotiations. (Artists and Repertoires) In the 1880s, the record industry began by simply having the artist perform at a phonograph . In 1924, the trade journal Talking Machine World , covering the phonography and record industry, reported that Eddie King, Victor Records ' manager of the "New York artist and repertoire department", had planned

11136-403: The sole superiors of the director are the producers and the studio that is financing the film, although sometimes the director can also be a producer of the same film. The role of a director differs from producers in that producers typically manage the logistics and business operations of the production, whereas the director is tasked with making creative decisions. The director must work within

11252-431: The song in its final mix. The producer's roles can include gathering ideas, composing music, choosing session musicians , proposing changes to song arrangements, coaching the performers, controlling sessions, supervising the audio mixing , and, in some cases, supervising the audio mastering . A producer may give creative control to the artists themselves, taking a supervisory or advisory role instead. As to qualifying for

11368-415: The sound and equalization systems. The disc phonograph record was the dominant commercial audio distribution format throughout most of the 20th century, and phonographs became the first example of home audio that people owned and used at their residences. In the 1960s, the use of 8-track cartridges and cassette tapes were introduced as alternatives. By 1987, phonograph use had declined sharply due to

11484-477: The stressful, fast-paced environment of a film set. Moreover, it is necessary to have an artistic eye to frame shots and to give precise feedback to cast and crew, thus, excellent communication skills are a must. Because the film director depends on the successful cooperation of many different creative individuals with possibly strongly contradicting artistic ideals and visions, they also need to possess conflict-resolution skills to mediate whenever necessary. Thus

11600-535: The stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch. The basic distinction between the Edison's first phonograph patent and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin foil, while Bell and Tainter's invention called for cutting, or "engraving", the sound waves into a wax record with a sharp recording stylus. In 1885, when

11716-437: The technology across the project: preproduction, recording, mixing , and mastering . Record producers' precursors were "A&R men", who likewise could blend entrepreneurial, creative, and technical roles, but often exercised scant creative influence, as record production still focused, into the 1950s, on simply improving the record's sonic match to the artists' own live performance. Advances in recording technology, especially

11832-519: The terms "gramophone" and "graphophone" have roots in the Greek words γράμμα (gramma, meaning 'letter') and φωνή (phōnē, meaning 'voice'). In British English , "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine that utilizes disc records . These were introduced and popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company . Initially, "gramophone" was a proprietary trademark of the company, and any use of

11948-479: The vast majority have been men. Early in the 2010s, asked for insights that she herself had gleaned as a woman who has specialized successfully in the industry, Wendy Page remarked, "The difficulties are usually very short-lived. Once people realize that you can do your job, sexism tends to lower its ugly head." Still, when tasked to explain her profession's sex disparity, Page partly reasoned that record labels, dominated by men, have been, she said, "mistrustful of giving

12064-577: The wear and choice of stylus, the most critical component affecting turntable sound. The terminology used to describe record-playing devices is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In modern contexts, the playback device is often referred to as a "turntable", "record player", or " record changer ". Each of these terms denotes distinct items. When integrated into a DJ setup with a mixer , turntables are colloquially known as "decks". In later versions of electric phonographs, commonly known since

12180-548: Was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct." The Argus newspaper from Melbourne, Australia, reported on an 1878 demonstration at

12296-441: Was a horizontal seven inch turntable. The machine, although made in 1886, was a duplicate of one made earlier but taken to Europe by Chichester Bell . Tainter was granted U.S. patent 385,886 on July 10, 1888. The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90 degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position. While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved laterally under

12412-647: Was an early female record producer, having produced both of her Ivor Novello award-winning songs. Across the decades, many female artists have produced their own music. For instance, artists Kate Bush , Madonna , Mariah Carey , Janet Jackson , Beyoncé (even that of Destiny's Child and the Carters ), Lana Del Rey , Taylor Swift , and Lorde have produced or coproduced and Ariana Grande who produces and arranges her vocals as well as being an audio engineer. Still among specialists, despite some prominent women, including Missy Elliott in hip hop and Sylvia Massy in rock,

12528-413: Was caused by the repetition of the convivial song of 'He's a jolly good fellow,' which sounded as if it was being sung by an old man of 80 with a cracked voice." Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a thin sheet of metal, normally tinfoil , which was temporarily wrapped around a helically grooved cylinder mounted on a correspondingly threaded rod supported by plain and threaded bearings . While

12644-447: Was her fifth. Yet in nonclassical, no woman has won Producer of the Year , awarded since 1975 and only one even nominated for a record not her own, Linda Perry. After Lauren Christy 's 2004 nomination, Linda Perry 's 2019 nomination was the next for a woman. On why no woman had ever won it, Perry commented, "I just don't think there are that many women interested." In the U.K., Lynsey de Paul

12760-553: Was invented on March 25, 1857, by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville , an editor and typographer of manuscripts at a scientific publishing house in Paris. One day while editing Professor Longet's Traité de Physiologie , he happened upon that customer's engraved illustration of the anatomy of the human ear, and conceived of "the imprudent idea of photographing the word." In 1853 or 1854 (Scott cited both years) he began working on "le problème de la parole s'écrivant elle-même" ("the problem of speech writing itself"), aiming to build

12876-589: Was only a transcription of sound waves into graphic form on paper for visual study. Recently developed optical scanning and image processing techniques have given new life to early recordings by making it possible to play unusually delicate or physically unplayable media without physical contact. A recording made on a sheet of tinfoil at an 1878 demonstration of Edison's phonograph in St. Louis, Missouri, has been played back by optical scanning and digital analysis. A few other early tinfoil recordings are known to survive, including

12992-443: Was practical and their machines were durable. But it would take several more years and the renewed efforts of Edison and the further improvements of Emile Berliner and many others, before the recording industry became a major factor in home entertainment . Discs are not inherently better than cylinders at providing audio fidelity. Rather, the advantages of the format are seen in the manufacturing process: discs can be stamped, and

13108-589: Was president of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., and his organization, which had purchased the Edison patent, was financially troubled because people did not want to buy a machine that seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate. The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax that had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following was the text of one of their recordings: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am

13224-653: Was the Technics SL-1200 , which, following the spread of turntablism in hip hop culture, became the most widely-used turntable in DJ culture for several decades. In some high quality equipment the arm carrying the pickup, known as a tonearm, is manufactured separately from the motor and turntable unit. Companies specialising in the manufacture of tonearms include the English company SME . More sophisticated turntables were (and still are) frequently manufactured so as to incorporate

13340-533: Was the Beach Boys, whose band leader Brian Wilson took over from his father Murry within a couple of years after the band's commercial breakthrough. By 1964, Wilson had taken Spector's techniques to unseen sophistication. Wilson alone produced all Beach Boys recordings between 1963 and 1967. Using multiple studios and multiple attempts of instrumental and vocal tracks, Wilson selected the best combinations of performance and audio quality, and used tape editing to assemble

13456-399: Was used for the popular 78-rpm V-discs issued to US soldiers during World War II . This significantly reduced breakage during transport. The first commercial vinylite record was the set of five 12" discs " Prince Igor " (Asch Records album S-800, dubbed from Soviet masters in 1945). Victor began selling some home-use vinyl 78s in late 1945; but most 78s were made of a shellac compound until

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