Bone Fone
A new concept in sound technology may revolutionize the way we listen to stereo music.
You’re standing in an open field. Suddenly there’s music from all directions. Your bones resonate as if you’re listening to beautiful stereo music in front of a powerful home stereo system.
But there’s no radio in sight and nobody else hears what you do. It’s an unbelievable experience that will send chills through your body when you first hear it.
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The coming record revolution: digital discs
A laser “reads” the compact, no-wear disc to deliver superior hi-fi
By LEONARD FELDMAN
Tokyo, Japan
A Sony technician slipped a small disc into the slot of a player no larger than a portable cassette machine. I noticed the record’s shiny surface broke light into rainbow colors. Seconds later I was bathed in rich, wide-ranging stereo music that sounded better than anything I’d ever heard from discs or tapes.
Sony Corporation’s Dr. Toshi Doi, a leading digital-systems designer, explained that this was a true digital record: Information stored as number codes on its surface was being converted into music. Instead of grooves, this disc had an optical track “read” by a laser beam. I heard absolutely no surface noise or distortion and no pitch fluctuations from the spinning disc. Dynamic range, or the difference between the loudest and softest musical sounds, was awesome.
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Movie Sounds from Queer Machines
When horses clatter down the street on the talkie screen, you can wager that the sound of their hoof-beats has been registered by a machine like that shown above. Arms on the two crank-turned wheels strike against metal brackets. The device is used mainly in comedy work.
Earthquakes must frequently be recorded in the talkies, and of course, nature can’t be depended on to supply these sound effects for the director. On such occasions the huge drum shown above is brought into action. Bowling balls are placed inside the metal drum, which is then revolved by a hand crank.
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The Music Pals of the Nation
New friends, new pleasures, new and interesting experiences, invitations galore—dinners, dances, week-end parties, outings,—are some of the good things playing a Gibson brings into your life.
Gibson Instruments are easily learned in spare time without previous knowledge of music. A few weeks of pleasant, interesting study and you’ll be able to play. And there’s no other joy in life quite equal to hearing music you make on your own instruments.
$5.00 Monthly buys a Gibson. The ultimate in construction, finish, tone quality and volume. Built like a violin. Adjustable bridge, non-warpable truss rod neck and thirty other exclusive Gibson features. Guaranteed for life. Non-Gibson instruments exchanged.
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It’s really amazing how much these pictures look like the modern music visualizers in WinAmp or iTunes.
Music Is Turned Into Glowing Color
Soundless Symphonies from Keys of “Organ” Projected on Screen Are Hailed as Birth of a New Art
THE audience sat in hushed and wondering expectancy within the darkened theater. Without accompaniment of sound, soft color suddenly glowed upon the screen. Slowly it moved into definite form, its modulation of figures evolving in majestic sweeps. Its hue deepened and then melted radiantly into iridescent crimson, and from the restless, ever-changing shapes a slow rhythm was born. It grew and blossomed, a symphony of light, plastic and mobile. The “clavilux,” as Thomas Wilfred, the inventor, has named the organ, opens the door to a new art, the expression of moving color and form, which the artist-craftsman believes is destined to take a place as a sister of music and sculpture. It has long been the vision of dreamers; Mr. Wilfred has actualized the dream and provided the instrument that visualizes it.
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What movie does this remind you of?
Piano Students Use Giant Keyboard
WHEN Arthur Zahorik, a high-school music teacher in Milwaukee, Wis., tells a student to “run up the scales” he means it literally. For on the classroom floor stands a two-octave model of a giant piano keyboard, with white keys a foot wide, upon which students step to demonstrate their mastery of chords and scales. Each of the keys is actually a treadle which, when depressed, closes an electrical contact, causing a metal rod to strike a tuned metal plate and sound the correct note.
Odd Designs on Film Turn to Music
SYNTHETIC music is being produced in a German film studio by reversing a familiar process. When artists sing and orchestras play “before the talkie microphone, their music is recorded, in one standard method, as a wavy black line upon the sound track of the film. What would happen if an artist were to draw arbitrary shapes, imprint them on sound film, and run it through a reproducer? A German technician, Oscar Fischinger, recently tried the experiment with startling results. A series of concentric circles, drawn in a strip and photographed upon sound film, imitated an electric bell. Eye-like spots reproduced a bassoon, and a pattern of dots sounded like a xylophone.
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Crosley Musicone
Wire coating represents years research —
WORLD’S FASTEST SELLING SPEAKER
Delicate actuating parts of loud speakers are subject to rust and deterioration. The Crosley patented actuating unit is not affected by the climate. Special impregnable coating covers the wire in the coils. Impervious bakelite instead of cardboard bobbins prevents any retention of moisture. Higher voltage is possible with resultant louder, finer tones.
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