1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
Electronic music
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In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer. During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for instruments were composed. Musique concrète, created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds, Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953. Electronic music was created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s. An important new development was the advent of computers for the purpose of composing music, algorithmic composition was first demonstrated in Australia in 1951. In America and Europe, live electronics were pioneered in the early 1960s, during the 1970s to early 1980s, the monophonic Minimoog became once the most widely used synthesizer at that time in both popular and electronic art music. In the 1980s, electronic music became dominant in popular music, with a greater reliance on synthesizers, and the adoption of programmable drum machines. Electronically produced music became prevalent in the domain by the 1990s. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Today, pop music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments and these initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments, while some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium accurately synthesized the sound of orchestral instruments. It achieved viable public interest and made progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments, ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery. They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises, developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified, and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin, ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s, from the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger to adopt them
4.
Classical music
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Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music, including both liturgical and secular music. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common-practice period, Western staff notation is used by composers to indicate to the performer the pitches, tempo, meter and rhythms for a piece of music. This can leave less room for such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation. The term classical music did not appear until the early 19th century, the earliest reference to classical music recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. This score typically determines details of rhythm, pitch, and, the written quality of the music has enabled a high level of complexity within them, J. S. The use of written notation also preserves a record of the works, Musical notation enables 2000s-era performers to sing a choral work from the 1300s Renaissance era or a 1700s Baroque concerto with many of the features of the music being reproduced. That said, the score does not provide complete and exact instructions on how to perform a historical work, even if the tempo is written with an Italian instruction, we do not know exactly how fast the piece should be played. Bach was particularly noted for his complex improvisations, during the Classical era, the composer-performer Mozart was noted for his ability to improvise melodies in different styles. During the Classical era, some virtuoso soloists would improvise the cadenza sections of a concerto, during the Romantic era, Beethoven would improvise at the piano. The instruments currently used in most classical music were largely invented before the mid-19th century and they consist of the instruments found in an orchestra or in a concert band, together with several other solo instruments. The symphony orchestra is the most widely known medium for music and includes members of the string, woodwind, brass. The concert band consists of members of the woodwind, brass and it generally has a larger variety and number of woodwind and brass instruments than the orchestra but does not have a string section. However, many bands use a double bass. Many of the used to perform medieval music still exist. Medieval instruments included the flute, the recorder and plucked string instruments like the lute. As well, early versions of the organ, fiddle, Medieval instruments in Europe had most commonly been used singly, often self accompanied with a drone note, or occasionally in parts. From at least as early as the 13th century through the 15th century there was a division of instruments into haut, during the earlier medieval period, the vocal music from the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic, using a single, unaccompanied vocal melody line. Polyphonic vocal genres, which used multiple independent vocal melodies, began to develop during the medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later 13th
5.
Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
6.
Moog synthesizer
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The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems in the mid 1960s. The Moog synthesizer gained wider attention in the industry after it was demonstrated at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967. The commercial breakthrough of a Moog recording was made by Wendy Carlos in the 1968 record Switched-On Bach, the success of Switched-On Bach sparked a slew of other synthesizer records in the late 1960s to mid-1970s. Later Moog modular systems featured various improvements, such as a scaled-down, the Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems. Moog became interested in the design and construction of electronic music systems in the mid-1960s while completing a Ph. D. in Engineering Physics at Cornell University. The burgeoning interest in his designs enabled him to establish a company to manufacture. Pioneering electronic music experimenters like Leon Theremin, Louis and Bebe Barron, Electronic music studios typically had many oscillators, filters and other devices to generate and manipulate electronic sound. Early electronic music performance devices like the Theremin were also limited in function. In the period from 1950 to the mid-1960s, studio musicians, Moog began to develop his synthesizer systems after he met educator and composer Herbert Deutsch at a conference in late 1963. Over the next year, with encouragement from Myron Hoffman of the University of Toronto, Moog and this specific definition means that adding or subtracting control voltage simply transposes pitch, a very valuable feature. At a time when digital circuits were still relatively costly and in a stage of development. In the Moog topology, each module has one or more inputs that accept a voltage of typically 10 V or less. Thus, frequency determines pitch, attenuation determines instantaneous loudness, for instance, control voltages can be added or subtracted in a circuit almost identical to an adder in such a computer. Inside a synthesizer VCO, an exponential function provides the 1 volt per octave control of an oscillator that basically runs on a volts/kHz basis. Positive voltage polarity raises pitch, and negative lowers it, the result is that, for example, a standard keyboard can have its output scaled to that of a quarter-tone keyboard by changing its output to one-half volt per octave, with no other technical changes. The central component was the oscillator, which generated the primary sound signal, capable of producing a variety of waveforms including sawtooth, square. The inputs and outputs of any module could be cross-linked with patch cords and, together with the control knobs and switches, could create a nearly infinite variety of sounds. As a result, ownership and use was at first mainly limited to such as educational institutions and major recording studios
7.
Computer Music Center
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The Computer Music Center at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. The Center was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the CMC is housed in Prentis Hall,632 West 125th Street, New York City, across the street from Columbias new 17-acre Manhattanville campus. The facility consists of a graduate research facility specializing in computer music and multimedia research, as well as a number of composition. Projects to come out of the CMC since the 1990s include, originally concerned with experiments in music composition involving the new technology of reel-to-reel tape, the studio soon branched out into all areas of electronic music research. The Center was officially established with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1959 which was used to finance the acquisition of the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer from its owner, RCA. The flagship piece of Center equipment, the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, was delivered to the Center in 1957 after it was developed to Ussachevsky, the RCA were re-housed in Prentis Hall, a building off the main Columbia campus on 125th Street. In 1961 Columbia Records released an album titled simply Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the Center also acted as a consulting agency for other electronic music studios in the Western Hemisphere, giving them advice on optimum studio design and helping them to purchase equipment, etc. The staff engineers at the Center under Peter Mauzey developed a variety of customized equipment designed to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes of tape delay machines, quadraphonic mixing consoles, the Center also had a large collection of Buchla, Moog, and Serge Modular synthesizers. By the late 1970s the Electronic Music Center was rapidly nearing obsolescence as the classical analog tape techniques it used were being surpassed by parallel work in the field of computer music. The original Columbia facility was re-organized in 1995 under the leadership of Brad Garton and was renamed the Columbia University Computer Music Center and it is six floors and covers 121,752 square feet. Columbia acquired it in 1949 and had used it for a chemical engineering laboratory. The architect was Frank A. Rooke
8.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
9.
Brownstone
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Brownstone is a brown Triassic-Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is used in the United States to refer to a townhouse clad in this material. In the 19th century, Basswood Island, Wisconsin, was the site of a run by the Bass Island Brownstone Company which operated from 1868 into the 1890s. The stone comes from the Hummelstown Quarry in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, the Hummelstown Quarry is the largest provider of brownstone on the east coast. Typically the stone was transported out of Hummelstown through the Brownstone, connecticut River Brownstone, is also very popular. C. and Baltimore. Quarries from the Passaic Formation in northern New Jersey once supplied most of the used in New York City. The Manhattan neighborhood of the Upper West Side, too, retains many brownstones, Brownstones also predominate in some Hudson County neighborhoods directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, especially in Hoboken and around Van Vorst Park and Hamilton Park in Jersey City. New York City brownstones usually cost several million dollars to purchase, a typical architectural detail of brownstones in and around New York City is the stoop, a steep staircase rising from the street to the entrance on what amounts to almost the second-floor level. This design was seen as hygienic at the many were built. Lately, it has become fashionable to use the term brownstone to refer to almost any townhouse from a certain period, many townhouses in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, for example, are basically built of brick, some having concrete masonry cladding to make them resemble actual stone. The Rittenhouse Square and Fairmount, Philadelphia neighborhoods of Philadelphia also include examples of brownstone architecture, many of these homes have been converted into apartment buildings. Back Bay, Boston, is known for its Victorian brownstone homes – considered some of the examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States. Although some brownstones exist in Chicago, a similar residential form known as greystones are by far more prevalent, a greystone is a type of residential structure that utilizes Indiana limestone for its facade, regardless of its overall architectural style. As in Brooklyn, there exists a Greystone Belt in Chicago, with numbers of such structures located in the south. It is estimated that around 30,000 of Chicagos greystones built between 1890 and 1930 are still standing, Brownstone, also known as freestone due to its durability and advantages as a building material, was used by early Quakers in Pennsylvania to construct stone mills and mill houses. In central Pennsylvania, some 1700s-era structures survive, including one used as a residence. Archived from the original on 2006-08-13, cS1 maint, BOT, original-url status unknown in Wisconsin. Website devoted to the Weser brownstone quarries from Germany being imported into the US, after Fight, a Brooklyn Brownstones Costly Rescue, The New York Times Website devoted to the colonial-era Quaker Mill House in Pennsylvania
10.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
11.
Multitrack recording
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Multitracking became possible in the mid-1950s when the idea of simultaneously recording different audio channels to separate discrete tracks on the same reel-to-reel tape was developed. Prior to the development of recording, all of the singers, band instrumentalists, and/or orchestra accompanists had to sing. Multitracking allowed the engineer to adjust the levels and tone of each individual track, as well, different electronic effects such as reverb could be applied to specific tracks, such as the lead vocals, while not being applied to other tracks where this effect would not be desirable. In the 1980s and 1990s, computers provided means by which sound recording and reproduction could be digitized, revolutionizing audio recording and distribution. Though magnetic tape has not been replaced as a recording medium. Even in the 2010s, with digital multitracking being the dominant technology, with the introduction of SMPTE timecode in the early 1970s, engineers began to use computers to perfectly synchronize separate audio and video playback, and or multiple audio tape machines. In this system, one track of each carried the timecode signal. Some large studios were able to link multiple 24-track machines together, an extreme example of this occurred in 1982, when the rock group Toto recorded Toto IV on three synchronized 24-track machines. This setup theoretically provided for up to 69 audio tracks, which is far more than necessary for most recording projects. For computer-based systems, the trend in the 2000s is towards unlimited numbers of tracks, although issues such as RAM memory. Moreover, on computer-based systems, the number of available recording tracks is limited by the number of sound card discrete analog or digital inputs. At any given point on the tape, any of the tracks on the device can be recording or playing back using sel-sync or Selective Synchronous recording. They might then record a version on track 4 while listening to the other tracks. All the tracks can then be played back in perfect synchrony and this can be repeated until all of the available tracks have been used, or in some cases, reused. During mix down a set of playback heads with higher fidelity are used. Before all tracks are filled, any number of existing tracks can be bounced into one or two tracks, and the original tracks erased, making room for more tracks to be reused for fresh recording. In 1963, The Beatles were using twin track for Please Please Me, the Beach Boys Pet Sounds also made innovative use of multitracking with 8-track machines of the day. Motown also began recording with 8-track machines in 1965 before moving to 16-track machines in mid-1969, a recording engineer can record only the section being worked on, without erasing any other section of that track
12.
Ampex
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Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, at one time public, the remaining ongoing business unit was acquired by Delta Information Systems in October 2014, with the original parent, Ampex Corporation, ceasing operations in October 2014. Ampexs first great success was a line of tape recorders developed from the German wartime Magnetophon system at the behest of Bing Crosby. Ampex quickly became a leader in audio technology, developing many of the analog recording formats for both music and movies that remained in use into the 1990s. They also introduced multi-track recording, slow-motion and instant playback television, Ampexs tape business was rendered obsolete during the 1990s, and the company turned to digital storage products. They never managed to become a player in this field, russian inventor Alexander Matthew Poniatoff established the company in San Carlos, California, in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The name came from his initials plus ex to avoid using the name AMP already in use, during World War II, Ampex was a small manufacturer of high quality electric motors and generators for radars that used alnico 5 magnets from General Electric. Ampexs first offices were at 1313 Laurel St. San Carlos California, near the end of the war, while serving in the U. S. Army Signal Corps, Major Jack Mullin was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics experiments. He discovered the Magnetophons with AC biasing on a trip to Radio Frankfurt, the device produced much better fidelity than shellac records. Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of BASF Type L tape, and brought them to America and he demonstrated them to the Institute of Radio Engineers in San Francisco on May 16,1946. Bing Crosby, a big star on radio at the time, was receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs and he disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. This may have been what Crosby was hoping to avoid, as that was the argument Crosby used with the network when he asked to use transcription disc recordings of his show. Those recordings were made directly from the live east coast show, in June 1947, Mullin, who was pitching the technology to the major Hollywood movie studios, got the chance to demonstrate his modified tape recorders to Crosby. When Crosby heard a demonstration of Mullins tape recorders, he saw the potential of the new technology. Ampex was finishing its prototype of the Model 200 tape recorder, after a successful test broadcast, ABC agreed to allow Crosby to pre-record his shows on tape. Crosby immediately appointed Mullin as his engineer and placed an order for $50,000 worth of the new recorders so that Ampex could develop a commercial production model from the prototypes. Crosby Enterprises was Ampexs West Coast representative until 1957, the companys first tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200A, was first shipped in April 1948. The first two units, serial numbers 1 and 2, were used to record the Bing Crosby Show
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