Léonne 009

Electricity was not used for recording until microphones

appeared in the mid 1920's. Conflicting opinions about the

merits of electric recording were held by recording artists.

The late master piper Tommy Kearney told me in a long

interview about his teacher Liam Walsh that the sound

engineers of His Masters Voice were unable to control the

volume of his uilleann pipes. The same problem occurred when

Liam was in London for a radio broadcast. The sound engineers

finally came up with a rather unusual but effective solution. They

took a big piece of rug (carpet) and rolled the microphone in

the rug. Some afficionados of Liam Walsh commented that the

sound of his pre-electric records was pure and much to be 

preferred to his first electric recordings.

The early gramophones had the advantage that you could listen

to records in your garden. They also come handy when posing in

antique glasses with lenses that are nearly three diopters off!