Stereo was first invented by Alan Dower Blumlein in 1931 in response to “experience in local cinemas when watching the first movies with spoken dialogues. Early sound systems normally only had a single set of speakers and could yield counterintuitive effects, e.g., with a character appearing on one side of the screen while his voice originated from the other.” Blumlein wanted sound to originate from the position of the actor on screen. (Davies, 2015)
Stereo was seldom utilised for many years due to hardware such as gramophones and radios being designed for mono playback.
Twenty years later, stereo was becoming much more viable but was still put after mono when recording music. It wasn’t until the late ‘60s when stereo mixing became the exclusive format of choice for most artists and labels. With the introduction of stereo tape machines, came more complicated mixing consoles and hence more complicated recording sessions. In the early days of recording at Abbey Road, one or two microphones would be used to capture a performance. By the mid ‘50s it would not be unusual for a session to have eight or more microphones out on the studio floor. This scenario was even more exaggerated with the introduction of 4-track tape machines and larger recording consoles in the early ‘60s.
The growing use of stereo recording has lead to other experimental recording styles such as binaural recording. Binaural sound can best be described as recorded sound that you feel as a presence rather than just hear. A magnetic tape-recorder, equipped for binaural sound, uses two microphones and makes simultaneous dual recordings on separate tracks, which, when played back simultaneously through dual speakers, gives dimension and presence to sound.(Grentzer, 1953)
Here is an example of binaural recording.
I think that binaural audio could be useful in crafting soundscapes and more ambient styles of music and would like to experiment with it when I get a chance.
A great example of stereo enhancing a track is on Für die Katz’ by Cluster. The track portrays a sort of spacey psychedelic ambience featuring many bouncy echoey sounds that pan around the stereo field. If the track was recorded in mono, the experience of listening would be far less immersive and the rises and falls of the track would be much less expressive. The track creates a lot of tension through flowing dynamics in certain sounds as they get closer and farther away in the stereo field. The introduction of stereo to music has allowed experiences such as Cluster II to exist and without it I wonder what pieces of music would not exist today.
Davies, A.C. (2015) ‘EEE Signal Processing Magazine’, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
Abbey Road (2024) The history of recorded music has its roots firmly planted at no. 3 abbey road, Abbey Road. Available at: https://www.abbeyroad.com/news/the-history-of-recorded-music-has-its-roots-firmly-planted-at-no-3-abbey-road-2596#:~:text=years%20to%20follow.-,Introduction%20of%20Stereo,-By%20the%20mid (Accessed: 19 April 2024).
Grentzer, R. M. (1953). Binaural Sound. Music Educators Journal, 39(5), 46–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/3387737