The Basics, Keith Potger (The Seekers) and Indigenous duo Stiff Gins have teamed up with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) to record new songs using 1890s wax cylinder technology. The NFSA has worked with a number of other recording artists and the recordings are available for free download.
A spokesman for the NFSA explained that for this project, the NFSA used an Edison Standard D model phonograph as a recording machine. Recording a wax cylinder is a purely mechanical process with no electricity involved. The performer sings or plays down a metal horn and the energy of that sound is concentrated onto a thin circular mica disc in the recorder head. The vibrations of the disc move a thin glass rod which cuts the spiral groove in the cylinder.
“We’ve always been fascinated by how the “limitations” of recording technologies have shaped our experience of music, and even our perception of the past. Our forthcoming album The Age of Entitlement sees us walking in the footsteps of The Beatles, recording in Abbey Road’s Studio 2, but this wax cylinder recording is an incredible jump back to the beginning of modern musical history, completely re-contextualising how sound shapes our understanding.” The Basics’ Kris Schroeder commented.
Keith Potger, one of the original members of The Seekers, recorded a two-minute version of his song ‘Guardian Angel, Guiding Light’. On the recording he also plays a 12-string guitar. The Basics recorded ‘I Don’t Need Another’ originally released in 2003 on Get Back through while the Stiff Gins recorded their song ‘Dust’.
A spokesman for the NFSA explained recording three vocalists accompanied by a 12-string guitar added complexity to the recording process. There is not much dynamic range available when recording onto a cylinder, so it is best if the performers’ volume is fairly consistent. Otherwise, unlike a modern recording system, they need to physically move towards – or away from – the horn of the phonograph to compensate.