Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/687

 Popular Science MontJily

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���Embalming a duet by Lina Cavalieri and Lucien Muratore. Cavalieri was formerly a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Muratore is a distinguished Italian tenor. The photograph shows in a general way how songs with orchestral accompaninient are recorded. Sometimes the phonograph projects through a partition, so that the singer sees only its mouth. Often five or six phonographs are used simultaneously to make records. In making master records, the artists always sing twice

��Singing for the Phonograph

THE recording of the human voice on the phonograph is almost a science in itself — not so much as the artist is concerned as the laboratory head who is responsible for the clearness of the ulti- mate record. While each phonograph company has its own system of arrang- ing the recording phonograph relatively to the orchestra and artist, the essential principles are very much the same in all laboratories.

As a general rule the musicians are perched midway between floor and ceil- ing, with their instruments pointing toward the horn of the recording phono- graph. Men who play the tuba and similar brass instruments turn their backs to the phonograph so that the mouths of the instruments may project their growls and blasts toward the horn. In order that the tuba pla\'ers may see the conductor of the orchestra, mirrors are placed in front of them, which reflect the movements of his baton.

For violin solos, an ordinary violin is used, the artist usually playing directly

��in front of a horn projecting through a partition. This is true of chamber music and all records in which the violin tone can be heard with sufficient dis- tinctness. In heavy orchestral pieces, however, a special instrument called, after its inventor, the Stroh violin, is used. It seems that the sounds of the ordinary violin are difficult to produce, especially at a distance. Stroh devised a violin which has no sounding-board. It comprises sim- ply a bridge, over which the strings arc stretched in the usual manner, and a horn which amplifies the sounds. This instrument is now used in all phonograph laboratories. On the finished phono- graph record its sounds are hardly to be distinguished from those of an ordinary violin.

Many experiments have b^en made to determine the best shape of room in which to make records. Edison, for example, tested almost every conceivable form. He even went so far as to build a room in the shape of a horn, the small end of which terminated in the phono-

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