Overview

In the early days of recording, artists crowded around a horn leading to a diaphragm-driven stylus cutting a groove on a wax cylinder. In early radio dramatics, actors, actresses, and sound-effects persons moved in toward the microphone or faded back according to the dictates of the script. Greater freedom came as several microphones, each under separate control in the booth, were used. All this, of course, was monophonic.

Monophonic is still with us in commercial form, but the advent of stereophonic techniques has added a new dimension of realism and enjoyment to recordings, films, radio, etc. Stereo requires, basically, a dual pickup. This can be two separated microphones or two elements with special directional characteristics and electrical networks mounted close together. In broadcasting or recording a symphony orchestra, for example, it was soon found that some of the weaker instruments required their own microphones to compete with the louder instruments. The signal from these was proportioned between the left and right channels to place them properly in the stereo field. Here, again, we see a trend from two microphones to many.

Popular music has always been with us, but its form changes with time. Recording techniques came to a technological maturity just in time to be clasped to the breast of new-wave musicians and musical directors. Whether the Beatles were truly the vanguard of this new musical development or not will be left to historians, but their style spread like wildfire throughout the western world. "Good" sound quality...