Abstract
ACCORDING to a report in the Times of January 11, an interesting curiosity has been on exhibition in Germany in the form of a sound film “Die Tonende Handschrift” in which the sound part was originally prepared without the use of sound. Details are not available but from the illustrations it appears that the film uses the contour method of sound recording in which a constant density of blackening is produced over varying widths of the film. Normally this is produced by light reflected on to the moving photographic film from an oscillograph operated by electric vibrations transformed from the original sound vibrations. Herr R. Pfenninger in the new process makes templates each containing several sound waves and photographs a reduced image of these in turn on to the stationary film. Both the preparation of the templates and their photographing naturally take much longer and the object is not to reproduce graphically the tones of well-known musical instruments but to construct music of new timbre. The report states that the laboriousness of preparing the templates is to be reduced by the use of a typewriter which uses wave-outlines instead of letters, a separate sound-wave typewriter being used for each timbre. It would be interesting to know if the characteristic wave-forms of singing or string playing of exceptionally good quality could be successfully copied so as to give reproductions of melodies which had not been actually performed. This might make possible the performance of a new musical work by the voice, or playing, of an artist no longer living.
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Synthetic Sound Films. Nature 131, 125 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131125b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131125b0