Scientific Measurements of Piano Playing as Used in Making Ampico Records
Charles Fuller Stoddard · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1929
This paper, illustrated by 30 lantern slides, was in the nature of a demonstration of the making of an Ampico record showing the various processes through which a record passes in its development between the time of playing to the finished reproduction. The complete recording apparatus from the Ampico Laboratories was moved to the hall, and at the beginning of the reading of the paper, a record was taken of an artist's actual playing in person of Chaminade's Air de Ballet. Mr. Leslie Loth of New York was the artist. The paper explained in detail how every characteristic of the pianist's playing including quality of tone, feeling of “touch,” exact loudness of every individual note, etc. was translated into note sheet performations which give a facsimile perfect enough to reproduce the emotional characteristics of the artist's performance. After the reading of the paper, the Ampico reproduced Mr. Loth's playing of the Air de Ballet from a record which had been taken in the Ampico Laboratories three weeks previously and produced by the method explained in the paper.