Disco

“ and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony. ”

“ The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. ”

“ But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything. ”

“ Mind discovers itself in matter, matter transforms itself into mind. In the glorious sun is revealed the glory of glories. In the serene moon mind imbibes of all serenities. In the reverberation of the thunder is the Voice of the Lord which makes itself heard afar. ”

“ The creaking of the saddle, the soft step of the mare upon the fir-needles, jar my ears. I seem alone in a dead world. A dead world: and yet so full of life, if I had eyes to see! Above my head every fir-needle is breathing—breathing for ever; currents unnumbered circulate in every bough, quickened by some undiscovered miracle; around me every fir-stem is distilling strange juices, which no laboratory of man can make; and where my dull eye sees only death, the eye of God sees boundless life and motion, health and use. ”

“ The easiest way of illustrating this is by means of a revolving disc, with sixteen holes pierced at regular intervals round the edge, and a jet of high-pressure air, which is forced through each of the holes successively as they revolve. When the disc does not quite complete one revolution in a second, only fifteen puffs come to the ear in a second of time, and they are heard as puffs; but when the rate reaches one revolution in a second, the [Pg 146] sound, as if by magic, changes into the lowest musical sound. ”

“ Mission bells, mysteriously invisible, stand solitary tall and erect in the open woods, delighting their discoverer with drooping bell-shaped flowers mottled with bronze and green. Fairy lanterns, exquisite little plants of graceful form and delicate coloring, grow half concealed among the grasses of the open woods and rock ledges. ”

“ Louder grew the sound and louder, and now all the body of the cube vibrated to their rhythm. The crystal walls were melting, growing misty as though formed of the mist of diamonds. And the disc itself was growing ... the shapes shifting, dividing and multiplying as though some door had been opened and into it companies of phantasms were pouring. While brighter, more bright grew the pulsing light. ”

“ But if the disk be turned a little, an unperforated portion of the disk comes under the tube, the current of air being then intercepted. As the disk is slowly turned, successive perforations are brought under the tube, and whenever this occurs a puff of air gets through. On rendering the rotation rapid, the puffs succeed each other in very quick succession, producing pulses in the air which blend to a continuous musical note, audible to you all. Mark how the note varies. When the whirling table is turned rapidly the sound is shrill; when its motion is slackened the pitch immediately falls. ”

“ To quote Proctor's words: 'The golden disc, faintly striped with silver-tinted belts; the circling rings, with their various shades of brilliancy and colour; and the perfect symmetry of the system as it sweeps across the dark background of the field of view, combine to form a picture as charming as it is sublime and impressive.' Fortunately the main features of this beautiful picture are within the reach of very humble instruments. ”

“ On a disc of cardboard the centre and border of which have been previously painted black, are pasted seven strips of paper, painted as nearly as possible of the same colour as the components of the spectrum—or if the student is anything of an artist he may paint the disc in imitation of the spectrum, carefully shading off the tints into each other. If the disc be now rapidly rotated the colours will disappear, and a greyish hue will be seen, which will approach more closely to white, the nearer the colours on the disc are to those of the spectrum. ”

“ Do not think it beneath your dignity to investigate the number of copies of any composition that you are planning to use, and when there are not enough to supply each singer in the chorus and each desk in the orchestra with a copy, to see to it that more music is ordered. It is impossible to rehearse efficiently if the singers in a chorus have to use a part of their energy in trying to read music from a book or sheet held by some one else, or if the players in an orchestra are straining their eyes because three or four instead of two are reading from a single desk. ”

“ The vibrations of the voice or of music, which reach the disc, cause this needle or point to rise or fall, producing impressions upon the tin foil or other substance. After the record has been made, duplicates are produced in a substance largely made of rubber, which is placed on a rotary disc or cylinder that is turned automatically, the needle or point attached to the disc working into the grooves and rising with or following the impressions, which cause the plate or disc to vibrate. The process is wholly mechanical, and electricity is not used. ”

“ The material needed for these discs is cardboard, covered with white paper on one side, or the Bristol board used by artists. The discs on which the designs are drawn should be made as large as the gramophone table will take conveniently, so as to be viewed by a number of people at once. To encourage readers who do not possess a gramophone, it may be pointed out that a gramophone, is merely a convenience, and not indispensable for turning the discs, which may be revolved on a sharpened pencil or any other spindle with pointed ends. ”

“ A disc of card five inches in diameter, with six equidistant holes half an inch from the edge, answers well. The disc must be made to spin by any means very regularly at such a speed that the tuning-fork, or stretched string if this be used, when looked at through the holes, appears quiet, or nearly quiet, when made to vibrate. The separate drops will then be seen, and everything described in the preceding pages, and a great deal more, will be evident. This is one of the most fascinating [Pg 161] experiments, and it is well worth while to make an effort to succeed. ”

“ I have heard, and you doubtless, in a fine concert of viols, extemporary descant upon a thorough bass in the Italian manner, when each performer in turn plays such variety of descant, in concordance to the bass, as his skill and present invention may suggest to him. In this manner of play the consonances invariably fall true upon a given note, and every succeeding note of the ground is met, now in the unison or octave, now in the concords, preserving the melody throughout by the laws of motion and sound. I have thought that this is life. ”

“ The piano vibrated, the stools creaked, the candles danced in their sockets, and every one sat mute while the four white hands chased one another up and down the keys, and the two fine faces beamed with such ecstacy that we almost expected to see instrument and performers disappear in a musical whirlwind. ”

“ When this disc is caused to rotate rapidly, we shall have first a patch formed by the light coming through one slit, and then another formed by that coming through the other slit, thrown on the screen on the same place in rapid succession, and the effect on the eye should be precisely the same as if the disc was not there, save in the matter of intensity. ”

“ Many performers, seized with a piano madness, play a grand bravoura piece, excite themselves fearfully, clatter up and down through seven octaves of runs, with the pedal constantly raised,—bang away, put the best piano out of tune in the first twenty bars,—snap the strings, knock the hammers off their bearings, perspire, stroke the hair out of their eyes, ogle [66] the audience, and make love to themselves. Suddenly they are seized with a sentiment! They come to a piano or pianissimo, and, no longer content with one pedal, they take the soft pedal while the loud pedal is still resounding. ”

“ If you throw on the screen a circle of light, coloured by passing the rays from the electric lamp through chloride of chromium, the disc will then consist chiefly of red rays mixed with the rays which are absorbed by the yellow spot. If the observers in the darkened theatre look at the disc and wink slowly, they will see, with more or less distinctness, an illusion like red clouds floating over the disc, in consequence of most of the rays other than the red being absorbed by the yellow spots in their eyes. ”

“ You have all heard a phonograph speak, or sing, or reproduce music. In its original form the Edison phonograph consisted of a cylinder covered with tinfoil, against which pressed lightly a steel point attached to the centre of a metal disc. In its modern form, as improved by Edison, Bell, Tainter, and others, it is a far more perfect instrument for recording and reproducing sound. It now consists of a cylinder covered with a composition similar to very hard soap. This cylinder is carried on a metal drum, and caused to [143] revolve by clockwork slowly and very uniformly. ”

“ Suddenly the heavy vibration of a single pedal note burst from the organ upon the breathing silence, long drawn out, rich, voluminous, and imposing. Presently, upon the massive bass, great chords grew up, succeeding each other in a simple modulation, rising then with the blare of trumpets and the simultaneous crash of mixtures, fifteenths and coupled pedals to a deafening peal, then subsiding quickly again and terminating in one long sustained common chord. ”

“ Several methods have been devised for recording sound and reproducing it in connection with the exhibition of motion pictures. A familiar one is the disc system, by which the sound vibrations are mechanically recorded upon and reproduced from discs by a stylus, which receives the sound vibrations for recording and transmits them from the disc to a loud-speaker in reproducing the sound.
Another method, important here, is the photographic film system, in which the sound vibrations are recorded upon a photographic record. ”

“ It is scarcely imaginable that a piano and a cornet should be mistaken for one another. Now, if the tracing instrument had been at work while the notes were made successively it would have recorded a wavy line, each wave of exactly the same length as its fellows, but varying in its outline according to the character of the note’s origin. We should notice that the waves were themselves wavy in section, being jagged like the teeth of a saw, and that the small secondary waves differed in size. ”

“ One of these disks is close to one end of the drum, the other to the opposite end, and the sectors are so arranged that, when the disks are made to rotate, the hole in one end is open while that in the other is closed, and vice versa. If the eye be placed near one hole, and a ray of sunlight be admitted by the other, it is obvious that while the sun shines on an object inside the drum the aperture next the eye is closed, and vice versa. ”

“ I can in the same way make the jet play a tune by simply making the nozzle rest against a long stick, which is pressed upon a musical-box. The musical-box is carefully shut up in a double box of thick felt, and you can hardly hear anything; but the moment that the nozzle is made to rest against the stick and the water is directed upon the india-rubber sheet, the sound of the box is loudly heard, I hope, in every part of the room. It is usual to describe a fountain as playing, but it is now evident that a fountain can even play a tune. ”

“ On this pasteboard disc, paint in colors a number of frogs in relative and progressive positions of leaping; make between each figure a slit of about a quarter of an inch deep: and when this second disc is made to revolve at a foot distance behind the first, and the eye is placed near the slit, the whole of the figures, instead of appearing to revolve with the disc, will all appear in the attitudes of leaping up and down, increasing in agility as the velocity of the motion is increased. ”

“ VIOLIN, VIOLONCELLO, HARP, PIANO Dickens' orchestras are limited, both in resources and in the number of performers; in fact, it would be more correct to call them combinations of instruments. Some of them are of a kind not found in modern works on instrumentation, as, for instance, at the party at Trotty Veck's (Ch.) when a ‘band of music’ burst into the good man's room, consisting of a drum, marrow-bones and cleavers, and bells, ‘not the bells but a portable collection on a frame.’ We gather from Leech's picture that other instrumentalists were also present. ”

“ The free disc rotates at high speed, so that the twelve jets of air which are driven through the throat are interrupted intermittently by the blanks of the revolving disc coming over the openings in the fixed disc, while when the two slits are in line the air has a free passage. If the revolving disc completes 3,000 revolutions per minute, and there are twelve slits in the discs, then a total of 36,000 vibrations per minute is produced while the instrument is in operation. ”