At the dawn of sound recording, recordists were mechanical engineers whose only
training was on the job. As the recording industry grew more sophisticated, so did
the technology used to make records, yet the need for recording engineers to use
craft skill and tacit knowledge in their work did not diminish. This paper explores
the resistance to formalized training of recording engineers and the persistence of
tacit knowledge as an indispensable part of the recording engineer’s work.
In particular, the concept of ‘microphoning’ - the ability to
choose and use microphones to best effect in the recording situation - is discussed
as an example of tacit knowledge in action. The recording studio also becomes the
site of collaboration between technologists and artists, and this collaboration is
at its best a symbiotic working relationship, requiring skills above and beyond
either technical or artistic, which could account for one level of
‘performance’ required of the recording engineer. Described by
one studio manager as ‘a technician and a diplomat’, the
recording engineer performs a number of roles - technical, artistic, socially
mediating - that render the concept of formal training problematic, yet necessary
for the operation of technically complex equipment
Anonymous
(1945)
‘Transients’
, Radio (August):
8
.
2.
Anonymous
(1949)
‘A University is Born’
, Radio and Television News42 (November):
52-53
.
3.
Anonymous
(1952)
‘Men Behind the Microphones: Makers of Music for Millions’
, Newsweek (8 September):
56-59
.
4.
Barley, Stephen R.
&
Julian E. Orr
(eds) (1997) Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in
U.S. Settings (
Ithaca, NY: ILR Press
).
5.
Baum, Rodney W. (1964) ‘Radio Transcription Services: Their
Development and Decline’, MA Thesis, Bowling Green State University.
6.
Biel, Michael Jay (1977) ‘The Making and Use of Recordings in
Broadcasting Before 1936’, PhD Thesis, Northwestern University.
7.
Borwick, John
(1973)
‘What is a Tonmeister?’
, db: The Sound Engineering Magazine (October):
26-28
.
8.
Borwick, John
(1974)
‘Mixing Musical Art and Technology’
, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society22(2):
112
.
9.
Bucciarelli, Louis L.
(1994) Designing Engineers (
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
).
10.
Bull, Michael
(2001) ‘Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Study
of Automobile Habitation’, in
D. Miller
(ed.), Car Cultures (
Oxford: Berg
): 185-202.
11.
Bull, Michael
(2002)
‘The Culture of Mobile Listening. From Walkmans to the Automobile
as an Acoustic Theatre’
, unpublished paper delivered at the Sound Matters: New Technology
in Music Workshop, University of Maastricht (November).
12.
Burkowitz, Peter K.
(1977)
‘Recording, Art of the Century?’
, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society25(10/11):
873-879
.
13.
Calvert, Monte
(1967) The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910:
Professional Cultures in Conflict (
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
).
Collins, H.M.
(1992) Changing Order: Replication and Induction in
Scientific Practice, 2nd edn (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
17.
Collins, H.M.
(2001)
‘Tacit Knowledge, Trust and the Q of Sapphire’
, Social Studies of Science31(1):
71-85
.
18.
Crozier, Michel
(1963) The Bureacratic Phenomenon (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
19.
Culshaw, John
(1967) Ring Resounding (
New York: Time Incorporated
).
20.
Davies, Bren
(2004)
‘The Recorded Sound Sucks - We’re Trying to Make it
Better’: A Conversation with Walter Sear
, Tape Op: The Creative Music Recording Magazine41 (May/June):
50-64
.
21.
DeNora, Tia
(2002)
‘Background Music - a Technology of “Control”?’
, unpublished paper delivered at the Sound Matters: New Technology
in Music Workshop, University of Maastricht (November).
22.
Eno, Brian
(1999)
‘The Revenge of the Intuitive: Turn off the Options, and Turn up
the Intimacy’
, Wired (January):
176
.
23.
Erhorn, Philip C.
(1956)
‘Audio Console Design Notes’
, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society4 (April):
65-71
.
24.
Fay, Michael
(1988)
‘So You Wanna Be An Engineer’
, Recording Engineer/Producer (February):
4
.
25.
Ferguson, Eugene S.
(1992) Engineering and the Mind’s Eye (
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
).
26.
Frayne, John G.
&
Halley Wolfe
(1949) Elements of Sound Recording (
New York: John Wiley& Sons
).
27.
Gaisberg, F.W.
(1977 [1942]) The Music Goes Round (
New York: Arno Press
).
28.
Gitelman, Lisa
(2000) Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing
Technology in the Edison Era (
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
).
29.
Harper, Douglas A.
(1987) Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small
Shop (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
30.
Haselau, Christian
(1982)
‘So You Want to Be a Recording Engineer?’
, The Mix6 (December):
18
.
31.
Hawkins, Erik
(2002) Studio-in-a-Box: The New Era of Computer Recording
Technology (
Vallejo, CA: EM Books
).
32.
Horning, Susan Schmidt (2002) ‘Chasing Sound: The Culture and
Technology of Recording Studios in America, 1877-1977’, PhD Thesis, Case
Western Reserve University.
Inglis, Andrew F.
(1990) Behind the Tube: A History of Broadcasting Technology
and Business (
Boston, MA: Focal Press
).
35.
Kealy, Edward R. (1974) ‘The Real Rock Revolution: Sound Mixers,
Social Inequality, and the Aesthetics of Popular Music Production’, PhD
Thesis, Northwestern University.
36.
Kealy, Edward R.
(1979)
‘From Craft to Art: The Case of Sound Mixers and Popular Music’
, Sociology of Work and Occupations6 (February):
3-29
.
37.
Kuttner, Fritz A.
(1959)
‘Musical Art vs. Technology’
, American Record Guide26 (October):
84-85, 130-135
.
38.
Lees, Gene
(1987) Singers and the Song (
New York: Oxford University Press
).
39.
Lescarboura, Austin C.
(1918)
‘At the Other End of the Phonograph’
, Scientific American (31 August):
164, 178
.
40.
McGinn, Robert E.
(1983)
‘Stokowski and the Bell Telephone Laboratories: Collaboration in
the Development of High-Fidelity Sound Reproduction’
, Technology and Culture24(1):
38-75
.
41.
MacKenzie, Donald
&
Graham Spinardi
(1995)
‘Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons’
, American Journal of Sociology101(1):
44-99
.
42.
Massenburg, George
(1997) Keynote Speech, ‘AES Goes Gold’, 103rd AES
Convention, New York City. <
www.aes.org/events/103/ >, accessed 23 November 1998.
43.
Maxfield, J.P.
&
H.C. Harrison
(1926)
‘Methods of High Quality Recording and Reproducing of Music and
Speech based on Telephone Research’
, Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers45 (February):
334-348
.
44.
Minter, Jerry
(1954)
‘The AES Begins Its Seventh Year: A Report by the President of
the Audio Engineering Society’
, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society2(1):
1
.
45.
Mitchell, Ogilvie
(1922) The Talking Machine Industry (
London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons
).
46.
Morris, DeWitt F.
(1977)
‘The Audio Engineer - Circa 1977: What Does He (or She) Do?’
, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society25 (October/November):
864-872
.
47.
National Phonograph Company
(1900) The Phonograph and How to Use It (
New York: National Phonograph Company
).
48.
Perlman, Marc
(2002)
‘Golden Ears and Meter Readers: The Contest for Epistemic
Authority in Audiophilia’
, Social Studies of Science34(5):
783-807
.
49.
Pinch, Trevor, H.M. Collins
&
Larry Carbone
(1996)
‘Inside Knowledge: Second Order Measures of Skill’
, Sociological Review44:
163-186
.
50.
Polanyi, Michael
(1958) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical
Philosophy (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
51.
Polanyi, Michael
(1966) The Tacit Dimension (
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company
).
52.
Ravetz, Jerome
(1971) Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (
London: Oxford University Press
).
53.
Read, Oliver
&
Walter L. Welch
(1976) From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the
Phonograph, 2nd edn (
Indianapolis, IN: Howard W. Sams
).
54.
Seymour, Henry
(1918) The Reproduction of Sound: Being a Description of the
Mechanical Appliances and Technical Processes Employed in the Art (
London: W.B. Tattersall
).
55.
Smulyan, Susan
(1994) Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American
Broadcasting, 1920-1934 (
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press
).
56.
Sternberg, Robert J.
&
Joseph A. Horvath
(eds) (1999) Tacit Knowledge in Professional Practice:
Researcher and Practitioner Perspectives (
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
).
57.
Sternberg, Robert J.
,
George B. Forsythe
,
Jennifer Hedlund
,
Joseph A. Horvath
&
Trueman Tremble
(1999) Tacit Knowledge in the Workplace. Technical
Report 1093 (
Alexandria, VA: US Army Research Institute for
the Behavioral and Social Sciences
).
58.
Sutherland, Scott
(1988)
‘In a Maine Outpost, A Master of Sound Has Built a Mecca’
, New York Times (29 March): Sec. 2.
59.
Turner, Stephen
(1994) The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit
Knowledge, and Presuppositions (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
60.
von Ottenfield, Eddison
(1951)
‘Acoustical Balance in Recording’
, Audio Engineering (August):
23, 58
.
61.
Wacjman, Judy
(1991) Feminism Confronts Technology (
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press
).
62.
Whiteman, Paul
(1948) Records for the Millions (
New York: Hermitage Press
).
