A Technological Ride of a Lifetime

By Jenna Burleigh

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Strapped inside a metal car, he’s slowly climbing to the peak of a rollercoaster. One more “tick” and the noise dies out. He draws in a deep breath before plunging over the edge. His stomach leaping into his chest, he’s racing, falling, hurling himself toward the ground at tremendous speeds.

Perhaps this is not exactly what Thomas Edison envisioned when he introduced the world to the phonograph, but music technology has progressed in a manner that resembles a rollercoaster ride.

The slow ascent of this ride technically began with the phonautograph, invented by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1857. While this device could record sound, it had no way of playing it back, which is probably why many people think of Edison when it comes to early musical devices.

The phonograph came along in 1877, which first recorded the human voice. This was followed in the same year by the gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner. This is where the cart briefly pauses, just for a moment, before the plunge.

“Before the twentieth century, listening to music was a temporal, fleeting experience- and a rare treat… The invention of recording, the phonograph, brought [people] home,” writes Mark Coleman, author of “Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and Money.”

Technology took off, as vinyl records and spring motor record players were introduced.

By 1920, electrical and magnetic recordings, as well as amplification systems, took over for vinyl records. These inventions drove the recording industry. Also introduced in 1920 was KDKA, the first radio station.

Long-playing records and full frequency range recordings came about in the ‘40s.

At this point, we’re roaring down the track like there’s no tomorrow. That unpleasant, yet exhilarating, gut-clenching feeling is holding fast.

The ‘60s gave birth to 8-track and audio cassette tapes. Before long, these “must-haves” became obsolete with the introduction to digital media. SONY released the first digital audio recording device, “pro use,” in 1978.

The following year, SONY revolutionized music as it released the walkman portable audio cassette player, the first truly portable, personal music player.

Compact discs (CDs) became commercially available in 1988. “The technology of sound recording, writ large, has profoundly transformed modern musical life,” writes Mark Katz in Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music.

And now we’ve reached the point where our knuckles have turned white and our faces are distorted into horrific shapes as we scream until our lungs feel like they will give out.

MP3 technology became commercially available in 1987. It wasn’t until 2001 that Apple introduced the hot-ticket item the iPod, which is still one of the most popular devices sold today.

Richard Davies, music professor at Plattsburgh State, commented on the pros and cons of music technology.

One clear advantage of modern technology is definitely the availability of music. It is fast, and in many cases, literally at your fingertips. People don’t need to leave their homes to purchase an album or song they want. All it takes is an iTunes card, and anyone can download their favorite songs. “It puts everything at your hand,” Davies says.

New technology has facilitated finding musical “gems.” The internet has become an outlet for musicians to let people hear their work. “It’s good for independent artists. They’re able to get their music out,” Davies says.

The downside of the digital era is that everything starts to sound the same. “I think that’s the bad side of technology, the way music is created is kind of homogenized,” Davies says.

Brandon Frenyea, Digi-Tech specialist at Best Buy, agrees with Davies. “Digital technology loses a lot of its lust. It loses a lot of its ‘umph,’ I guess you could say.”

Frenyea says the convenience of digital media comes with the cost of better sound. “Vinyl sounded a lot better than average digital technology, but it was harder to copy. The tapes always wore out,” he says.

Surprisingly, according to Frenyea, vinyl is making a comeback. It is not likely to out-sell the oh-so-popular iPod any time soon, but some people are excited to see vinyl again.

But comeback or not, vinyl is a thing of the past, and new technology is rapidly outpacing itself. “It’s always re-innovating, always changing. There’s always something better, something bigger, something newer, something cheaper,” Frenyea says.

It is this movement that makes people, particularly younger generations, want everything to be available to them quickly.

“It’s going to keep progressing and progressing and progressing to the point where it can’t get any faster and there’s going to be a problem,” Frenyea says. “People are going to have a problem with any kind of technology if it stops moving as fast as it does.”

So this is where we are in this musical rollercoaster. We are uncertain when the ride will stop, or where it may take us, but we know there is certainly still more to come.