Tin Pan Alley Travels, Part Two

While in New York City back in march, I had the chance to make a few disc records for Colin Hancock with his period acoustic setup. Even though I have been studying the methods in which records were made for over a decade now, the process they were originally made continues to baffle me. There is something so amazing and inspiring about the acoustic recording process. The process in which these were made was nothing new to me, but something about stepping into the space and environment that all of my favorite historical figures once stood really hit me. Making acoustic records is something that most people who read this publication will well understand. It’s a relatively simple process that is basically the reverse of how we listen to the records. No microphones, very minimal electricity, and a lot of experimentation led to these recordings made before 1925. And before this afternoon, I had made several records before then. Back in 2017, I made a brown wax cylinder of a piano solo, in the sweltering dry heat of the Sutter C