Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 4, No. 11 (1930-08)

The Phonograph and 1 he Sona! Film By HARRY ALAN POTAMKIN Embodying a review of the Parlophone Sound Test records* A LTHOUGH the phonographic synchronization in the aud- /jk ible film will yield more and more to synchronization on " ^a single medium, the negative strip, for sound and visual image, the phonograph can serve as an experimental base for the sonorous film. We have had a number of noise-records, viz: the Yypres bombardment and the traffic noises outside Parliament in London (H.M.Y.), the New Year’s service out- side St. Paul’s in London and the Leicester Square traffic noises (Columbia), and, most eminently, Polydor’s Edmund Meisel noise compositions, consisting of Street Noises, The Start and Arrival of a Train, A Train running till the Emergency Brake is pulled, Noises of a Railway State, Machine Noises, A Bom- bardment, Music of the Heavenly Hosts. Several years ago a friend and myself were speaking of the possible cataloguing of sounds, and indexing them according to volume, as Mob scene, Index I. If quadruple volume were needed, the same Mob scene could be recorded fourfold in volume. By a system of simple multiplication volumes could be attained with certainty and at the saving of a great ex- pense. There is no need to get distinct sounds for identical images: standardization is not counter-quality. As a matter of fact, such standardization, which is an elementary kind of conventionalization of sound, has already been instituted by the film-companies. That is a first rudimentary step in the establishment of a method in sound-engineering, and sound- aesthetics. A further step is the analysis of sound itself. The present mode of prolonged speech and theme-song, where the song is not*. used as a sound-motif but as “plugging” act, must yield to shorter intervals of sound and song, used in the pattern of the visual frames. That is, the motion picture will demand that sound yield to its method of editing or cutting, the com- position of the film. Already Alexandroff, co-director with Eisenstein, has made a brief excursion into sound-film-i montage or composition in his picture, “A Sentimental Romance”, to be released by Paramount. Alexandroff tried to design his sound. First, he ran the sound-track backwards; second, he broke a sustained sound into minute steps; third, he even tried the linear inscription of sound: Sound on disc or celluloid is after all nothing but a form of writing. Sound can be created without a sound-source. Alexandroff cut a registration of a note struck upon a piano into bits (on the negative) and got a sequence of sounds. Instead of recording a siren’s whistle literally, he cut that into its component frames and got an as- cent and descent in steps, instead of upon a regular incline. It is because of the future of the acoustical art that the Parlophone Sound Test Records are so interesting and impor- tant. These were made by Parlophone in conjunction with Dr. E. Meyer and Dr. H. Salinger of the Hertz Institute, “to obtain a simple and easily workable source of alternating current measurement or of sound measurement for electrical and acoustical readings.” The recordings consist of three 12- inch double-sided discs: The first (P 9794) is a gliding tone, which begins with a pure tone of 6000 Hertz, gliding down to 100 Hertz, a Hertz being equal to one vibration a second. The record ascertains the frequency curve of electrical or electro-acoustical apparatus, the constancy of the particular frequencies. The other side ♦Sound Test Records (howling and gliding tones). Farlo- phone P9794-6 (3 D12s, Alb.). Obtainable from the Parlophone Company, Ltd., 81 City Road, London, E. C. 1, England. Price, including postage and packing, 2 pounds, 5 shillings. of this disc is a gliding howling tone, whose frequency varies about 10 times per second by plus/minus 50 Hertz, the mean frequency lessening steadily from 6000 to 150 Hertz. “This record is to be preferred for acoustical purposes. When re- cording the frequency curves of sources of sound (gramophones, loudspeakers) there is the difficulty that stationary waves de- velop in the recording room, and the result of the test is then largely dependent on whether the sound-testing arrangement is at any time situated in the nodal point or in the anodal point of vibration. This drawback can be avoided by work- ing with howling tones instead of with pure tones, as the system of nodes and anodes is then continually shifted, thus giving a mean value.” Discs P9795-I and II, P9796-I and II, are howling tones. Each of these has a frequency band traversed about 10 times a second, while the mean is constant. The small bands (plus/minus 50 Hertz) is for the registering of the acoustics of buildings and rooms —walls, telephone cells— their echo characteristics, etc. For speech it is enough to “have a mean value over a large range of frequencies.” The last disc-side (plus/minus 650 and plus/minus 1600) serves this purpose. This descriptive material, supplied by the Parlophone, ex- plains the physical ultility of these records, and the immediate reason for their manufacture. They offer another opportunity, for the study of standard sounds, and as an analytical base both for the composer and the director of the audible film. A close scrutiny, best under magnification, of the threads will say much about the relation of the inscription to the sound. Dens- ity of threads, linear pattern . . . these must in time be an- alyzed. The excuse that speech-inscription and sound-inscription look alike will not hold under closest observation. Another method of coming to a knowledge of the utterance of inscrip- tions is to scratch first and then listen, to work backwards, to eliminate the source of the sound. Eisenstein has said that the method of sound-filming is not naturalism but disproportion. That includes a number of things: non-synchronization of source with sound, “going against the visual beat,” having non-vocal images speak (rivers, etc.), and the breaking up of durations or the sustaining of a single pitch, monotone, unnatural inflections, and so forth. As the sound film moves toward disproportion, it will require fundamental experimentation in sound-design. The phono- graph will supply that. Possibilities are: the sound track run backwards, imprinting one sound upon another, crossing of sounds, cacophony and its analysis, direct inscription, the re- assembling of harmonies. The last is illustrated in this: record an orchestra and then break up the concurrence and the se- quences. Has not modem music done this? A fine basis for study in sound-analysis is Carrillo’s quarter-, eighth-, sixteenth- tone record (see The Phonograph Monthly Review, June 1930). It is, when its component parts are utilized singly and as rhythmic recurrences, an excellent sound-source for the film. Instead of, for a broad instance, the duplicate rendition of a keening voice for a film, let us say hypothetically, made of Synge’s “Riders to the Sea,” the soprano voice in it offers instructive opportunity in sound-suggestiveness, as opposed to sound-literalness. It is hoped that gramophone companies will extend their work in this special field of “sound test” recording. The gen- eral disc-amateur may not find such records attractive, and repetition of them on his phonograph may not please him or his neighbors; but for the student of acoustics and the critic and artist in the cinema they are highly valuable. 374