My Big Ten Inch Record of a Band that Plays the Blues
Early in Mix Tapes and Empty Buildings, https://www.amazon.com/Mix-Tapes-Empty-Buildings-Book-ebook/dp/B01MXKAVEG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1511727582&sr=1-1&keywords=mix+tapes+and+empty+buildings
Mr. Garrity tells Mix that he owns 78rpm records. I'm sure modern readers born after 2000 have no idea what that could be. According to what I see, vinyl records are making a comeback.
There is a long history behind vinyl records and it starts with the 78.
The 78rpm vinyl record was made between 1898 to 1950. They were made of a shellac resin which formed a hardened rubber. The early ones were thick and heavy. They were later made of vinyl. These records were either 10 inches in diameter and played three minutes of music on each side or 12 inches in diameter and played four to five minutes each side.
The earliest way to play music was on the Edison cylinder. These were produced by Edison laboratories and they played a song.
The flat phonograph record was developed by Emile Berliner in 1889. The record was 5 inches in diameter.
In the early days of music reproduction, each record company and player maker made their own records and to keep competitors records off their machines. The thickness of the record varied, the music varied. They would have different playing speeds. The records would spin on a platter with a post in the center. In 1925, the record producing companies finally made a standardized speed of 78.26 revolutions.
In 1901 they also standardized the size of the disc to 10 inches.
If you should find an old ten inch 78, you'll notice the sound is full of feedback and the singing is loud like yelling. Well, that's how they recorded. The performer played or sang into a horn that created vibrations for a stylus that cut into the vinyl. This is a very simplified version of acoustic recording. Those bands had to play loud and there were no ballads on record. No way Tori Amos would've been a recording artist back then.
Over time when electric recording began, artists found that the 33 and a 1/3 record created better sound.
This information was obtained by Yale University library www.library.yale.edu
Obsolete media.org
The title of the blog came from an Aerosmith song.