Since when, how, why do we record sound? Juliette Boutillier asks herself the question in a fascinating series, which we would have liked to have been even longer, despite the four hours she has already devoted to it.
Episode 1: Jalal Aro, director of the Phono Museum in Paris, then historian Ludovic Tournès tell the story. The history of recording, capture and restitution. Scientific and technical inventions that allow us to triumph over the ephemeral and soon support recreational use, when it becomes possible to listen to music at home. After 1945, the invention of the LP made it possible to develop a real recording industry. The privatization of listening gives the listener the beautiful illusion that the beloved singer is close and singing “just for us”.
Thomas Henry, head of Radio France’s collections, also emphasizes that when it comes to restoration, we must be careful not to go too far: “The temptation to clean, to remove imperfections should not be made on the at the expense of experience. A record is a journey through time. »
Concrete music “
The next episode focuses on sound recordists. When Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), considered the father of “concrete” music, proposed this term in 1948, he intended to mark with this adjective “an inversion in the direction of musical work: instead of noting musical ideas by the symbols of music theory, and entrusting the concrete realization to known instrumentalists, it was a question of collecting the concrete sound, wherever it came from, and of abstracting from it the musical values that it potentially contained.
This is explained, in particular and among others, by Christian Zanési, former director of the Musical Research Group and former student of Pierre Schaeffer. This episode, particularly dense, is also very successful because the numerous extracts broadcast allow us to get a feel for – or rather an ear for – some of the concepts handled or the techniques used.
Sound signature of brands
Episode three questions sound propaganda and the manipulation of our daily environment, from the Second World War to the present day. Instructive is the interview with Laurent Cochini, director of Sixième Son, a Parisian “sound identity of brands” company, who explains the necessity and the benefit of investing in senses other than the image. For example, a brand of vacuum cleaner that wants to make sounds considered pleasant, even friendly, or a car that, through the quiet sound of a door closing, wants to convey a certain standing.
This is the birth of what we call audio branding: brands, previously identified by a visual, now want a sound signature. In this sense, the SNCF has rewritten its history by abandoning announcements made by a railway worker with a popular voice, anchored in its territory, in favor of a woman’s voice, close to that of flight attendants.
While the last episode focuses on sound recording for intimate use, it is good to remember – what this series does particularly well – the powers of sound, evocative and creator of images and memories.