No, not the one that's on Keith's new album... the one that is "saving the music."

The Physicist Who’s Saving the Music
Carl Haber is working to scan information off the surfaces of antique recordings so computers can allow them to be heard

Carl Haber in his recording research lab in April 2014 Photo: Roy Kaltschmidt/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Fifteen years ago, while languishing in traffic between Berkeley, Calif., and Silicon Valley, Carl Haber tuned in to a radio interview with Mickey Hart, the former Grateful Dead drummer turned music preservationist. Dr. Haber, a particle physicist, listened as Mr. Hart discussed his concern over historic audio recordings that were deteriorating. “He was talking about how sound recordings are on these fragile materials,” Dr. Haber recalls. “So it was kind of a challenge, sort of a plea.”

Dr. Haber thought he could help. At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he was developing equipment for the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, he had been using precision optical tools to measure devices that would help to track subatomic particles.

He wasn’t looking to apply science to music. “I’d been thinking not of sound recordings at all,” he says, “just of using imaging and pictures as ways of extracting information from things, which is something that’s very native to physics.”

But when he heard the radio interview, he says, “It just occurred to me: If we could turn these sound recordings Mickey Hart was talking about into pictures, we could treat them as large data sets that we could analyze on the computer and extract information from.”

Since 2002, Dr. Haber and several colleagues have been able to play back and restore some of the world’s oldest and rarest recorded sounds. Using a system of optical probes and cameras that they created and dubbed IRENE—for “Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etcetera” but also in honor of an early test that they did on a 1950 recording of “Goodnight, Irene” by the Weavers—they can scan and pull information off of the surfaces of antique recordings and create huge images, each several gigabytes in size.

A computer then extracts information from the images, which allows the recordings to be heard. “It’s a noninvasive, risk-free way to play things that were either delicate or unplayable,” Dr. Haber says.

Some of those delicate things are wax cylinders, lacquer and metal disks, plastic belts and even sheets of tin foil—cutting-edge technology from the past. The sounds that they hold include early, experimental voice recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell and his father in the 1880s.

The IRENE technologies also allow scientists to virtually remove defects from these old recordings—“essentially digging below the noise” for clearer playback, Dr. Haber says, even when the original media are damaged.

Over the years, Dr. Haber, 56, who was awarded a 2013 MacArthur “genius” grant for his audio work, has helped to rescue hundreds of endangered recordings at organizations including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. He is now working to scan and save an early 20th-century collection of some 2,700 ethnographic recordings documenting Native American voices and music, held by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

California boasts a wider array of Native American languages than any other state, but some of its indigenous languages no longer have living speakers. The recordings that Dr. Haber and his team are working to preserve will help tribes to revitalize languages at risk of fading, perhaps helping guide correct pronunciation and word usage.

This was the furthest thing from Dr. Haber’s mind when he was stuck in Bay Area traffic and listening to the radio back in 2000. But, as he says, “If you don’t explore ideas that come up, you don’t move forward.”

[www.wsj.com]

Brilliant. Great idea. Thanks for that bloomer. Glad to see genius minds working on things besides weapons and military technology.

I thought it was pretty cool too, but they should've gone back to Lead Belly's original recording, not The Weavers.

Really cool

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Keep On Rolling

this is stunning...and wonderful to 'hear'.

Sounds promising .... Be cool if they go back and clean up those Blind Lemon Jefferson recordings for starters .... Remember CEDAR? man that was like putting a wet blanket over the music ..



ROCKMAN

Quote
Rockman
Sounds promising .... Be cool if they go back and clean up those Blind Lemon Jefferson recordings for starters .... Remember CEDAR? man that was like putting a wet blanket over the music ..

It sounds to me like it's only a matter of time. And the best thing about it is that noise and defects will be taken out of these recordings. Can you imagine hearing all those old blues recordings with awesome sound and clarity?

I imagine someone will license this technology soon, turn it into very profitable business and the result will be better fidelity access to some really great early stuff.

Wow, that's fantastic. Will be like a time machine.

Actually, it is most fun when old recordings are found and can be released on disc at all ... I don't know if my highest dream is to hear Blind Lemon Jefferson without timely noise..just my tiny 2 cents on this with sound..

2 1 2 0

Wonder if they can improve the sound of Robert Johnson's recordings. What if they made it sound modern. That would be cool but also a little hard to get used to. I like Naturalust comment about using technology for good things for a change. Cheers.

That's way cool!

Great stuff - thanks for posting!

VERY COOL! I love the fact that they're able to recover these recordings and save them for posterity. I'm not sure where I fall on the concept of "restoring" the tracks though. On one level I love the idea of being able to hear all (eventually) that wonderful old music without hiss on pops. On another level I worry about "who" will do the mastering. The concept of "Robet Johnson Brickwalled" doesn't thrill me at all.

Overall, this is pretty exciting news. My hope would be that historians and musicologists are in charge as opposed to someone who has modernization and resale in mind.

Peace,
Mr DJA

This is very good. The US Archives has loads of vinyl I wonder if they are considering recovery for posterity. My old boss Howell Begle from the R&B Foundation donated a large number of excellent rare rock and R&B recordings to the Univ. of No. Carolina Southern music collection back in 2008. So they must have a respository too

[www2.lib.unc.edu]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-08-24 16:50 by tumbled.

Quote
Come On
Actually, it is most fun when old recordings are found and can be released on disc at all ... I don't know if my highest dream is to hear Blind Lemon Jefferson without timely noise..just my tiny 2 cents on this with sound..

Just think about it like hearing the man as if you were sitting in front of him. All that noise was obviously due to limitations in the technology, I'm sure Mr. Jefferson would not have chosen to add that to his recordings. You will be getting a better representation of how the artist actually sounded. It's a good thing.

Wikipedia for goodnight Irene"

The specific origins of "Irene" are unclear. Lead Belly was singing a version of the song from as early as 1908, which he claimed to have learned from his uncles Terell and Bob. An 1886 song by Gussie L. Davis has several lyrical and structural similarities to the latter song; however, no information on its melody has survived. Some evidence suggests the 1886 song was itself based on an even earlier song which has not survived. Regardless of where he first heard it, by the 1930s Lead Belly had made the song his own, modifying the rhythm and rewriting most of the verses.[2]

Lead Belly continued performing the song during his various prison terms, and it was while incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary that he encountered musicologists John and Alan Lomax who would go on to record hours of Lead Belly's performances. A few months prior to his release in 1934, Lead Belly recorded a number of his songs, including "Irene", for the Library of Congress.[2] "Irene" remained a staple of Lead Belly's performances throughout the 1930s and '40s. However, despite popularity within the New York blues community, the song was never commercially successful during his lifetime. In 2002, Lead Belly's 1936 Library of Congress recording received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2015-08-24 19:07 by tumbled.

The John Lomax recording of GoodnightIrene by Leadbelly is from 1934 and is with the Library of Congress.

video: [www.youtube.com]


Supposedly Huddie Ledbetter played with Blind Lemon Jefferson in his younger years.

[www.youtube.com]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2015-08-24 21:15 by tumbled.