The Blindboy Podcast - Stereo sound and 13th century painting

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

The emergence of stereo sound in 1950's music shares strange similarities with 13th Century painting. A hot take Art history and music epiosde Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just to let you know before I begin this podcast, this episode is about a history of stereo sound and music. So I'd suggest you listen to this episode with a set of headphones on or earphones. I need you to be able to hear the left and right speaker in order to appreciate what this podcast is about. Dia guit, you droopy Cusacks. Welcome to the Blind Bi Podcast. You droopy Cusacks, welcome to the Blind Bi Podcast. I've been having a tremendous week of exercising and running and enjoying the outdoor air and the sun and the rising temperature. And I began to notice something as I was doing this. Do you know the way, do you know the way old lads, right, older men older men will say over the age of 50

do you know the way owl lads are exceptionally friendly and they'll just wave at you if you're out in public an owl lad

will just wave at you whether you know them or not they'll just say hello to you and owl lads seem to just say hello to everybody and I always thought that this was as a result of

maybe people becoming kinder with age or becoming more friendly but as I get older I realize that this isn't the case at all so when I was in my 20s one of the most embarrassing scenarios that I could think of something that filled me with utter dread and mortification was walking down the street on my own seeing somebody who I thought I knew and then saying hello and it turns out they're not the person who I thought they were and I've just said hello to a stranger in my 20s that used to I'd want to crawl into a hole for a week and I don't understand why I don't understand why that made me feel embarrassed back then because it's nothing to be embarrassed about

there's nothing wrong with being friendly to a stranger there's nothing shameful about it why did that absolutely mortify me especially if the person was my own age I used to be afraid that like oh no this stranger must think that I'm crazy just saying hello to people but really I had no reason to be embarrassed about it at all. The other thing that used to bring me great embarrassment in my 20s would be walking down the street on my own. It's always when you're

on your own. It's like when you're with a group you feel a sense of protection for your self-esteem back then but when I was on my own walking down the street suddenly realizing that I have to turn back because I forgot something and then feeling this a sense of shame and embarrassment because I'm walking down the street on my own and suddenly turning back as if someone's watching me and gives a fuck that used to fill me with dread I'd be walking down the road and I'd be saying to myself oh fuck I left something behind in that shop shit I better not suddenly turn around because if someone's watching I look crazy so I'm gonna have to figure out a way to get to the shop whereby I make it look natural and sometimes I might even incorporate a shoelace tie into it I'd walk down the road

fuck I left the sausages in Aldi stop tie my shoelace and then walk backwards as if someone's watching me and that's the concept of that the idea of suddenly stopping turning around going back in public used to fill me with dread and embarrassment and shame thankfully now in my 30s i don't think like that anymore at all i don't give a flying fuck i'll happily stop in the middle of the road and go backwards and do it again. I don't care. And I don't have a problem saying hello to strangers that I see on the street if it's a mistaken identity situation. I've no problem with it. And this is where I'm developing my theory about older men

and their excessively friendly behaviour to strangers in public. So one consequence of being in your 30s is your eyesight just gets a little bit worse. So, I still have good eyesight. It's just my eyeballs are getting flaccid. I don't have as good eyesight as I used to have. And a consequence of this means that in public spaces the frequency with which I say hello to total strangers has increased dramatically. So I did it yesterday in an extremely enthusiastic fashion. I was in the middle of my run and I look ahead and I see my friend Paul and he's walking his dog now as I'm running I begin to I realize

afterwards that I did this I didn't know I was doing it in the moment but as I see Paul the unconscious process in my head was okay there's Paul but I don't want to stop and talk to Paul nothing against Paul it's just there's a pandemic so I don't really like stopping and conversing with other human beings especially without masks it's not something I want to do right now so in my mind I said I'm gonna run past Paul and I'm gonna give him a hello that's so hearty loud and cheerful that this negates responsibility. That I might have to stop and talk. A very. I only read as I'd done it afterwards.

It's like. If you're running past someone. And you acknowledge the person so much. They don't feel any. They don't feel any type of effrontery. If you didn't stop and talk to him. Because the hello you gave him. Was so extravagant.

So I'm running down and i see paul and then i start screaming oh boy paul what's the fucking crack paul how are you getting on man go on lovely fucking day paul isn't it now this wasn't paul at all i don't know who the fuck it was but the the extremity and exuberance and enthusiasm of the running hello that i gave this man he actually adopted the persona of paul for maybe two seconds for two he was just like who the fuck is this cunt running past me screaming Paul at me but he didn't look weird he accepted all the Paulness that I was projecting upon him and he waved back it was like yeah fuck it man I'll be Paul I don't know who the fuck Paul is but if Paul deserves a greeting

as loud as this then I think I'd like to be Paul so he became Paul for maybe one and a half seconds I ran past and said fuck that wasn't Paul at all I just screamed at a stranger but I didn't feel shame I didn't feel embarrassment I got on at my run and I just said

who gives a fuck I said hello to a stranger brightened up his day he had a smile on his fucking face. Why do I have to be embarrassed about that? And I realised. The reason I was able to let it slide off my shoulders. If I was 22. I wouldn't be leaving the house for a week.

I'd be mortified that I just screamed Paul at a stranger. But I don't give a fuck now. And I realised. The reason I don't give a fuck. Is as realised the reason I don't give a fuck is as I get older my eyesight's getting worse I've mistaken people's identity in public so much that I've realised there's no actual negative consequences to it it's nothing to be embarrassed of

and it's fine, it's absolutely fine but then old lads old lads will say in their 60s or 70s they've gotten to the point where they're just saying hello to everybody they're mistaking identities they're mistaking people's identities in public so much that at this point they've just figured I'm just gonna say hello to'm just going to say hello to everyone and if I say hello to everyone I'm probably going to know at least one of those people

and that's how owl lads get to that situation that's how owl lads so it's not a friendliness it's just simply I don't know I don't know it's all

everyone's face is blurring into one I'm just going to say hello to everyone fuck it and that's how that happens just thinking back there to the uh the feeling of embarrassment in my 20s of saying hello to a stranger and i don't think i'm alone in that i think that's quite a common fear and social faux pas that we all go through at some stage which doesn't make sense it like there's nothing wrong with accident with getting mistaken identity and saying hello because ultimately

you're just being friendly so you've just given someone a free hello so there's nothing to be ashamed of but why is it universally embarrassing and possible childhood roots are we've all called a teacher ma at some point it's like you know when you're like seven or eight in school and you put your teeth your your your hand up and you go ma and it's like it's not your math it it's the teacher. And then everyone laughs. And the shame, the shame that's projected on you in the laughter at that moment when someone does it in class when you're a kid, it's when you're at the age where you're seven or eight and you don't consider yourself to be a baby anymore. You're kind of getting embarrassed about playing with toys.

You know, you kind of keep it secret. So when you call the teacher ma. At 789. Then you're like fuck. I've let everyone know that I'm a big baby. Because you are. Because you're fucking 7 years of age. Then you know.

Some poor cunt does it in secondary school. Particularly embarrassing. But then there's the other one. Like I do. So. school particularly embarrassing but then there's the other one like i do so this this worked with my dad but not my ma so i was a child of about five we'll say so not a toddler but like an older child and you start to figure out fuck it if i'm when i'm in so I was in Dunn stores with my da so I realised when you're in Dunn stores with your da and you want something that isn't on the

shopping list like a Toblerone like a Toblerone was very extravagant you're not getting a fucking Toblerone unless it's your birthday but I'd figured out my da would get really embarrassed if I would start crying or creating a scene in Duns so I kind of figured out fuck it if I pick out a Toblerone in Duns and then go up to him with the Toblerone and I'm kind of rude or pushy about it he would then weigh up I better give him

the Toblerone because if I don't he might start crying and that would be really embarrassing so I kind of figured this out and I'd weigh it up so one day I was in Dunn's

and I picked out Toblerone, M&M's, whatever I picked out a packet and I went over to my dad and started pulling at the back of his jumper and going I want this and then the man turned around and it wasn't my dad at all

it was just a man who I didn't know looking at me going why the fuck is this child pulling at my jumper with one hand and holding the Toblerone on the other and it was intensely embarrassing

and I don't think I ever did it again and maybe maybe my early 20s fear of saying hello to strangers was rooted in that maybe my adult history of getting panic attacks in supermarkets because I was scared of doing something that would draw attention to myself

is rooted in that also I had an older brother who in the 1970s had done something similar but far worse so he was about I think it was like nine and my ma was talking to her friend or something so he just says I'm going to the car So he walks over and gets into the back seat of the car. And then starts opening up all the grocery shopping that was in the back. And starts munching into a packet of biscuits. And he's there munching away.

Being a bald boy. Eating too many biscuits because Ma's not there. And then this woman just comes back and sits into the car and starts screaming. And it's like. Who the fuck are you? Why is there a child eating biscuits in the back of my car then my brother starts crying because he's ferociously embarrassed that he's sitting in a stranger's car eating her biscuits and it was the 70s like so people didn't lock their cars he just got into a car and started eating a stranger's biscuits and that I remember that story as being I internalized that story years later when it was told to me as holy fuck I'd hate to do that

that sounds very embarrassing whatever about saying hello to someone climbing into the back of a stranger's car and eating their biscuits that's pretty bad I'm just being reminded of a story as well that my dad told me and in terms of utterly shamefully embarrassing mistaken identity stories this one takes the fucking biscuit pardon the pun it's more of a

an adult an adult shameful mistaken identity story so my dad used to work in Shannon Airport right in the 60s and 70s and the 80s and shannon airport it's a good bit of a distance out from limerick city and the thing is with shannon airport in the 70s or 80s a lot of people worked out there it was very very busy because it was the transatlantic corridor to America so when men worked there when they finished their shift they might just go to one of the many bars in the

airport and drink until they go home at night time so one of my dad's friends let's just call him Mick I don't know his name let's just call him Mick. Mick finished his shift, went to the bar in the airport, had a rake of pints, got really drunk, and then it comes to like 12 o'clock at night, and Mick is like, right, how am I getting home to Limerick now? Because there's a motorway between the airport and Limerick. How am I getting home? Now this is the 70s or 80s.

Taxis aren't as plentiful and as efficient as they are now and people used to hitchhike hitchhiking was a thing it was a part of culture so mick probably did this every fucking night says to himself i'm drunk i'm finished work it's grand i'm gonna walk along the road and put my thumb out and someone who works with me will see me and give me a lift home. So Mick does this and lo and behold it happens. A work colleague pulls up and says Mick would you like a lift home and Mick says yes. So the work colleague is driving and it's the work colleague up front and his wife. Now Mick is in the back of the car drunk. While Mick's in the back of the car he's very grateful that his friend has given him a lift home but Mick also notices that he's smoking a cigarette. He's after bringing

a cigarette into the back of the car and this is quite rude. So as Mick's in the back he kind of sobers up a little bit and he goes fuck it I better get rid of this cigarette that's quite rude to just introduce a cigarette into the back of someone's car when they're giving me a lift home with their wife. So he rolls down the back window to flick the cigarette out, but the car is moving quite fast. So as he does this,

the cigarette goes out the window, but then flies back in. But the trajectory that the flaming cigarette butt took was that it came back in the back window and then went down the back of your man's wife's dress so now she's got a cigarette trapped between her dress and her back and she starts roaring screaming because it's painful Mick then sees this from the back of the car and he starts slapping her back to put out the cigarette but his colleague who's driving the car is unaware of any of this information and now he just sees his wife is screaming to the left while he's trying to drive

and she appears to be screaming because Mick is frantically slapping her back for no reason. frantically slapping her back for no reason so the car screeches to a halt and Mick is kicked out and it drives off but then Mick has to go into work the next day and he doesn't know which one of his colleagues it was because he was too drunk so he had to live the rest of his years saying to himself in this large room full of colleagues one of them thinks I got into the car last night and started slapping his wife's back for fun even if she explains to her husband what happened she may be of the opinion that I deliberately put the cigarette down her back this is a terribly dysfunctional situation from all angles. And he's not going to come to me. And I don't know who he is.

So I can explain that there's actually a logical enough reason behind it. He was putting out a cigarette. I'm never going to have this opportunity. So I'm going to have to live my days like this. Or I can publicly announce to the entire staff room what happened. And that's not going to happen. So that's the most embarrassing mistaken identity story i can think of the theme of this week's podcast was not intended to be about

mistaken identities i just kind of went went on a little ramble there but this week's podcast is actually an art history slash music history podcast that's what I want to do I got some lovely feedback for you last week about my podcast about the history of lobsters and value and the color purple so this week similarly I've been doing reading and this reading has led to a nice little hot take that I'd like to talk about but seeing as it's 20 minutes in I think I'll do the ocarina pause now so that the hot take is uninterrupted after the ocarina pause That was the ocarina pause, which meant you heard an advert for something.

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and i earn a living the patreon also keeps the podcast independent so acast um acast hosts this podcast so in exchange for that there's adverts put into it but i'm not beholden to any advertiser a lot of podcasts are beholden to advertisers and advertisers determine or have influence over what the podcast is about. I don't have that problem. I don't have that issue. And I can decide who does and doesn't advertise on the podcast also. Now every week I mention that this is an independent podcast. Why is it important that this podcast is independent and why is it important to support this independent podcast and other independent podcasts because in the past year in particular large corporations have stepped into the podcast space they're throwing money at big names and they're just saying here's a bunch of money

make a podcast we don't care what it's about i don't think you care either we're just going to use your face to sell it and quite a lot of big budget but low quality podcasts are being released all the time and it's creating a sense of saturation and also fatigue for listeners it's throwing certain people off listening to podcasts completely do you know what it reminds me of in the 2000s we had a golden age of what we call box set TV. The Sopranos, The Wire, stuff like that. Amazing quality TV where really passionate people got to use the language of cinema to make wonderful art. And then around 2010 large streaming sites figured out, why don't we just make something with a big budget that looks like the Sopranos or looks like the wire but the writing isn't there the acting isn't there the directing isn't there but we package it as if it is the Sopranos and then we just continually disappoint people over and over again with

oversaturated content until everyone's a little bit fatigued podcasting is becoming a bit like that so support me through the Patreon if you can, if you want to pay me for the work I'm doing. And if you can't, just suggest the podcast to a friend. Suggest this podcast to a friend, post about it on your social media, subscribe to it, like it, leave a review. All that stuff is really, really important because independent podcasters now are up against the big boys who can pay for big giant advertising and bringing big names to their

podcasts because let's not forget the whole joy of podcasts podcasts were where we went to get away from what television and radio had become to go to something where it's like all right it's a little bit rougher around the edges it's a little bit, it's a little bit rougher around the edges, it's a little bit longer, it's not as heavily edited, but fuck it. This thing I'm listening to, the person who's making it,

actually gives a shit about what they're making about. They're passionate, and something about this is refreshing. By supporting independent podcasts, we can keep that alive. You can keep it alive, still keep listening to the podcast that you enjoy and then if you don't want to listen to the shite you don't have

to and that was it that wasn't a bit of a rant that was the first time i've ranted mid ocarina pause but yeah that's just something i've been thinking about recently it's because i'm seeing it online and i'm seeing and i'm seeing it when I'm chatting to people I know I'm just having more and more people saying oh this brand new podcast came out with this really famous person who I admire and the podcast sounded amazing on the tin but then when I listened to it it was actually really disappointing or there's this other new type of... Like about five years ago, there were some really incredible documentary podcasts like Serial or Wes Cork. But then a bunch of copycats came out

and there's all these new podcasts that are a bit like Serial or a bit like Wes Cork. But then you listen to them, you're six episodes in, and you're like, I don't even know if this is good or not. They've just kind of done a really good job of using music and editing and tone to present it as if it is good

and it was made by this giant company and the good passionate smaller independent podcasts are still getting made but we're not hearing about them anymore like there's an incredible podcast called my dad wrote a porno if that came out today you just wouldn't hear about it because that space is being taken up by some other podcast hosted by an incredibly famous person so let's not allow that to happen um so support the little podcast that you like by talking about them that's always the best way podcasts are a word of mouth medium talk about them share them online and i'm not completely shitting on big budget podcasts because let's not forget something like this american life which is one of my favorite podcasts ever and which really started it laid the foundations for what a podcast could be

that's npr that that does have a budget but it's a budget that's used for a lot of really passionate people to make something they deeply care about that's fine it's just right now there's this exploitative feeling people coming in in going, fuck it, throw money at it, call it a podcast, people will listen. Who cares? That's the shit I don't like. So this week I want to speak about something that I'm very interested in and something

I'm passionate about and something I've been doing research on all week. I want to speak about stereo technology. I want to speak about stereo technology. I want to speak about how stereo technology in audio recording changed how we listen to music. And I want to do it via 13th century painting. So that's a massive hot take. so that's a massive hot take so that the second half of the 20th century from about 1950 up to the year 2000 I think will live on for thousands of years as

an incredibly important period in art it will be as important as we said the Renaissance was for painting. Because of music technology. Alright. And it's a hard one to get our heads around. But if you think of. So here's the deal with music. The technology to record a piece of music electronically. And then play it back as much as you like is something we've only seen really in the past 100 years.

But music has existed for as long as humans have been around. Human beings have been intellectually modern. Is that the right word? Yeah, human beings have been homo sapiens, what we are right now, intellectually modern humans. Humans have been this way for 50,000 years, which means we've been making music for about 50,000 years. Only in the past 100 years have we been able to record music and listen to it as much as we want. So, if you think back 300 years ago and you're living in Ireland and you hear about someone up in Galway is an incredible fiddle player. And they're a virtuoso, they're a genius.

So, you're lucky enough to get to Galway. You might hear the person playing the fiddle, then you leave, and you have to carry that in your head as a memory for the rest of your life. If you existed in the time of Mozart, if you wanted to hear Mozart, you had to go and see an orchestra perform Mozart, and then carry it around in your head as a memory for the rest of your life. Now you could have bought sheet music, you could buy the sheet music, if you were trained you could play it on the piano, but you couldn't record a Mozart symphony and hear it on a record over and over as much as you liked.

And if you're a creative person, if you're a musician, then by hearing something over and over again and studying it, that is then going to improve your creativity. It's going to improve how you respond creatively to that thing, as opposed to just holding it in your head as a memory. And this makes music unique as an art form. Music is the purest form of abstract art. Music is symmetrical vibrations of air that make you feel emotions that's what music is writing is words on a page so if you can have access to the printing press we'll say and print a book then loads of people can read what you've written the more people can read it they can read it as much as they want, and if those people are also writers, they can respond creatively to what you've written,

take it on as an influence, and now an entire movement happens, and the art form of literature changes rapidly because of how it can be consumed. Same with drawing and painting. When you draw and paint something, on paper or whatever, historically, your drawing and painting can be shared seen by a lot

of people and then inspire other artists and then the art form itself changes and develops rapidly music didn't have that music is probably the oldest art form because it would have started with someone singing 50,000, 60,000 years ago. But music never really got to rapidly change and explode creatively until the mid 20th century when records came about and people could afford record players and everyone could listen to music. And that's why in the 1960s, you've got this huge global explosion of different styles of music carrying on into the 70s, 80s, 90s. I think that's going to be remembered in a thousand years or more,

the way we remember Greek civilization. A piece of technology came about that massively changed a form of art that's probably the oldest form of art that humans have and some of us are alive to remember that and one particular piece of technology that spurred that forward it's not just recording but recording in stereo recording in stereo means left and right

it's not just one audio signal but it's your left ear and your right ear that can listen to two different things at the same time that's known as stereo technology. It was invented in the 1930s and became popular as such in the 1950s onwards and that's what I want to speak about today popular as such in the 1950s onwards and that's what I want to speak about today because I believe that it's stereo technology that created the huge creative advancement in music that we saw globally in the last century. Stereo technology as opposed to simple recording recording technology and i want to explain this first by talking about a history of painting of visual art right because explaining music is difficult like i said it's very very abstract so explaining music is difficult so but explaining visual art isn't difficult because we have a stronger our mind's eye for seeing things is stronger than our mind's ear as such.

So with visual art, historically with humans, it's quite complex for our brains to be able to take something that's in 3D space 3D space means it's right in front of you right now in the real world to take this information and then translate this into a 2D flat space like a page it took a lot of effort and many many years for humans to be able to do this and to be able to see it here's a simple example

I spoke on last week's podcast about a theory that the ancient Greeks didn't see the colour blue because they didn't have a word for the colour blue in their language and how scientists tested this out with a culture today, a tribe who don't have a word for the colour blue and they couldn't actually see the color blue a similar story is in the 1800s when France was colonizing the Middle East okay it was around the neoclassical period in painting which was 1800 and something I think but anyway the French were in the Middle East and they were dealing with Islamic nomadic tribes so there were tribes of people that moved around the desert and they were Islamic people and they their day-to-day life incorporated quite a lot of horses they were horse people okay so the french were trading with these

tribes and one day the french decided to give a gift to this islamic tribe out in the desert and the gift was an incredibly realistic painting of a horse right now these people are islamic so within islam and within very strict Islam, visual culture is... Within strict Islam, it's forbidden to, as you know, to visually portray the image of the Prophet Muhammad. Within strict Islam, it's also forbidden to visually portray any of Allah's creatures. So the people in strict Islam in the desert in the 1800s they weren't allowed to draw horses. You couldn't draw a horse because a horse is a creature of God so you don't try and create it on a page. So these people had never, even though they work

with horses all day long, they had never seen a drawing of a horse so when the French presented this tribe with this incredibly realistic painting of a horse they couldn't see it all right they couldn't see the fucking horse it just looked like a lot of blobs of paint on a canvas these people had never seen a 3d horse represented on a 2d space and because of this they couldn't see the horse on the painting now that is a tough one to get our heads around today because we're so absorbed in visual culture but the history of visual art contains quite a lot of this take the culture of Egypt ancient Egypt for instance

so ancient Egypt was a culture an incredibly advanced civilization and it existed for 3000 years 3 fucking millennia that's a long time but if you look at the art of ancient Egypt

mainly the hieroglyphs it doesn't really change for 3000 years if you look at drawings of people and animals in ancient Egypt near the end of the Egyptian civilization and the start the art is kind of the same for 3 000 fucking years egyptian hieroglyphs representations of people and animals they're kind of like really simple flat stick figures so for 3 000 fucking years nothing really changed visually what's that about like nobody figured out how to draw a realistic looking

human or a realistic looking uh landscape or a bird in 3 000 years similarly if you look at art from the real early middle ages or the pre-middle ages the art is kind of i'm not going to call it shit because that's not fair because you have beautiful illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells and stuff like that. But if you look at early manuscripts, when they were drawing animals and people, they were really, really basic and not very realistic looking.

And this is across hundreds and hundreds of years. Same with fucking cave paintings the people in caves were the exact same as people like us why were their drawings of buffaloes a kind of shit why do we only see paintings and drawings that look like what we would refer to as realistic

only in the past 1000 years of human history what the fuck is that about? If humans have been drawn on cave walls 50,000 years ago and the Egyptians existed for 3,000 years, why did art remain so simple and then something changed 1,000 years ago? Well, one of the first changes we start to see is around the 1200s and paintings start to become more realistic as a consequence almost of architecture.

So in Italy, around 1200, in the towns and cities, quite complex architecture started to emerge based on mathematic principles that were established by the greeks the romans and from the middle east as well and there's a painter called giotto from the 1200s in italy and giotto is one of the you don't hear giotto's name a lot but giotto is one of the most important painters of all time as important as leonardo da vinci michelangelo but jotto was around the 1200s and his early paintings they're not much to look at but they were fucking revolutionary for the time so here's the crack with jotto when i was speaking about this is the 1200s and you look back to we'll say illuminated manuscripts a few hundred years before european art a lot of art from we'll say 1000 no no a lot of art from we'll say the birth of Christ to the year 1000

is focused mainly on biblical scenes kind of drawn from imagination Giotto in the 1200s was one of the first artists to start saying I really want to start drawing and painting things that are in real life now that wasn't artists had been doing that before but he really broke from tradition and he was like I'm gonna start painting things that are in real life I want to paint people that are sitting around the gaff. But because Giotto was living in Florence in Italy, which was a very wealthy city, the architecture, as in the buildings that were being built in Florence, they were quite complex.

They were being based on things like geometry. Architecture was actually years ahead of painting. So buildings were being made with an understanding of the mathematics of geometry and lines. So all of a sudden Giotto starts painting people, but because they're indoors, or because there's a building behind them, because he's painting the man-made building

along with the people, he started to create what's called linear perspective. This is a hard one to explain nature doesn't really have linear perspective if you just simply draw trees and fields that's created by nature but man-made architecture incorporates strict mathematics so it has lots of very straight lines so when Giotto started to paint people in the 1200s who are in a room or have a building behind them he's able to use the linear perspective of the buildings to introduce a sense of depth into the paintings by which I mean paintings before Giotto

Which I mean, paintings before Giotto, shit didn't happen in the distance. Everything was really flat up front. But there was no such thing as looking at a painting and going, this object is up front and this object is in the distance. Think of the Father Ted sketch, the famous Father Ted sketch where ted and doogle are in a caravan and ted is explaining these cows are small those cows are far away it took humanity fucking thousands of years to figure that out on a 2d canvas and giotto was one of the first people to do it because giotto was painting in florence and he was one of the first people to do it because Giotto was painting in Florence and he was incorporating architecture, the architects had this shit sorted, they knew how

to create linear perspective and how to understand geometry but they're doing it in a 3D space, like if you look at the sculptures from ancient Greece, statues from ancient Greece, which is 2000 years previous to this, or statues from fucking ancient Babylon or statues from ancient Greece, statues from ancient Greece, which is 2000 years previous to this, or statues from

fucking ancient Babylon or statues from ancient Egypt statues were quite realistic you know, making a statue look like an animal or a person they'd figured that shit out, that looked realistic but the paintings

did not look like real things architecture similarly the fucking they didn't invent a geometric architecture in florence in the 1200s that should have been going on for a long long time but nobody had figured out how to how or why to use geometry to create a 3d space on a flat 2d surface to create an illusion as such now because jotto is painting people with buildings in the background he ends up under realizing holy fuck if i if i just incorporate these lines into this painting that i'm doing even though the painting is flat it feels as if shit is in the distance if I draw that building in the background really small but the lines of that building line up perfectly with the bigger building in the front it feels as if the small

building is far away and that was utterly revolutionary that changed how human beings can see images represented on a 2d space that created the optical illusion of depth within a fucking painting and what it is really it's it's stereoscopy it's using your two eyes if you put your hand over one of your eyes you don't have depth perception when you put if you if you just do it now one hand over your eye it's hard to tell what's in the distance and what's not in the distance but by using both of your eyes together you have depth perception you can perceive what's far away and what's close. That's stereo vision, right? Giotto was the first person to really incorporate that into paintings. And then all he had to do was show other humans.

Once you show people, like it's a bit like, do you ever look at one of those fucking magic eye things? Like a magic eye thing where you have to stare at this image really closely and if you stare at it long enough something is revealed the bigger picture that was a bit like what jotto did he was able to show people now here you go here's 3d but it's on a flat 2d surface i've created an optical illusion using the science of perspective of linear perspective now jato jato just kind of sparked this jato if you look at jato's paintings they're not that impressive but they were fucking impressive for the time they were would have been mind-blowing for people people they would have people would have really seen them as optical illusions. 100 years later in Florence,

a fellow called Brunelleschi, who's an architect. First and foremost, Brunelleschi is an architect and that's what he's remembered for most, building huge cathedrals in Florence. He's one of the most important architects of all time. Now the thing with architecture, like I mentioned, if you're building a building,

it needs the strict science of geometry to understand how weights work so the building doesn't fall apart so Brunelleschi did this experiment because he was also handy at drawing and painting but he was an architect first

what Brunelleschi did he was in the centre of Florence where you have all these really well-made buildings. This is about 1300 and something. And he draws a building that's in front of him. He draws it as best he can, using a ruler, right? Because this is linear perspective,

and he's drawing a man-made thing with lots of lines, lots of perfect lines. He draws this building. He holds it in front of himself. The drawing. And he cuts a tiny hole in the middle of the drawing that he can see through. And then in front of the drawing he holds up a mirror.

And he basically devised this experiment. Where he was able to like visually hack reality he in that moment uncovered an experiment that showed how the human eye sees lines and he created the science of linear perspective at that moment if you want to see how this thing works because it's very difficult to describe over a podcast it's called brunelleschi's peep show that was the experiment he created this unlocked a fucking wave of creativity in the human brain brunelleschi was the first person in 50 000 years to scientifically and mathematically show how the human stereo eye, two eyes interpret depth perception

and how to translate this onto a two dimensional space how we see 3D and once Brunelleschi was able to do it and artists and painters were able to see it then you have the explosion of the fucking renaissance then you have painters like fucking leonardo michelangelo painting things that look like real life the for the first time in history you see paintings that look like real life and you can't imagine what that would have been like

for people at the time you can't imagine and you have to take it back to what I was saying with those, the Islamic tribe in the desert in the 1800s. Because they'd never seen a horse painted on a 2D space, they couldn't literally see it when it was presented in front of them. Brunelleschi and the lads in the Renaissance had unlocked the science of how humans see, and once you could do it and represent it, everyone could learn. And of course what you have then is an explosion of creativity that changes the entire way art is made.

Of course we absolutely take it for granted today, and even if you don't have any artistic skill, absolutely take it for granted today and even if you don't have any artistic skill and you sat down right now and had to draw a road if you have to if you're sitting at the bottom of a road and you have to draw this road even if you've never had any artistic training you can probably draw a road with a house at the distant distance and understand lines of perspective to let me know that house is in the distance and this house is up front and you might be shit at art but you can do that better than the greatest artists in ancient egypt could or in the early middle ages because visual culture has cracked cracked for you how we represent 3d spaces on a 2d space so why am i talking about 12 13 14th century florence in italy in the renaissance when i said this was going to be about music

and stereo recording well because something happened to recorded music around 1950, which is the aural equivalent of Giotto and Brunicelli discovering linear perspective. And what that is, is stereo recording. So again, this is a concept that we are drowned in in today's culture. So it's very difficult to explain what it was like for the human brain before this existed so recording music electronically was something that existed in the late 1800s like in the 1920s people were able to buy and play records recordings of music you were able to buy a record and play it and hear music on it in the 1920s the 1930s but these recordings were in mono and what I mean is that they didn't incorporate both ears it was just one record one microphone down the center and there was no left and right it's all just one like right now as I speak my voice is in mono it's right down the center but the piano in the background is stereo

it's both ears now here's why this is important with mono recordings of the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, with mono recordings of music, all music technology was trying to achieve was simply record a musical performance so someone could hear it back. Just the melody, just the tune. But what wasn't being thought about or taken into consideration if you're if you're okay

put it this way if you're sitting in a room and someone is singing and playing guitar and you're present physically in that room and you're listening to a person playing an instrument you're using both of your ears and you're not simply just hearing the guitar and their voice. What you're also hearing is the presence of the room that you're in. When you're physically in a room with someone playing music, the sound of the guitar subtly echoes off the wall. So does their voice. subtly echoes off the wall so does their voice

and both of your ears together interpret this in your brain as a sense of space you don't just hear the musician you hear the entire room and how the music feels inside that entire room that's a very important aspect

of experiencing music. Similarly, if you are using your two eyes to look at a beautiful lake and some trees in real life, you're using both of your eyes together to see with your brain a 3D image. But early mono recordings of just a musician, where it's mono, just one path, not both ears, early mono recordings are the aural equivalent of a flat drawing that doesn't have depth perspective. And because the technology for stereo recording didn't exist in 1920,

when someone's recording a jazz band or whatever people didn't have a language or understanding for what that feeling of live was they didn't understand music sounds different in a room because both of your ears together are create are interpreting a stereo signal and then giving this to your brain as depth. Two ears together in stereo makes you hear a space. One ear just makes you hear an instrument, a recording. And we didn't have language for the presence of being in a room because technology hadn't really invented it yet.

Nobody has shown it to us. Well stereo recording was like Giotto or Brunicelli discovering linear perspective. When I speak about music you know I'm always interested in how the environment where music comes from influences what that music is. Well stereo recording is quite similar. So stereo recording is very much a post-war World War II thing that becomes desirable in what you'd call suburban sprawl in the 1940s and 1950s in big cities in England and big cities in America. 1940s and 1950s in big cities in England and big cities in America so before World War II a lot of American people lived in cities okay and they lived in cities in very small apartments

and in cramped conditions and the thing is with a lot of people living in a city you had access to better amenities so if you were a poor Italian or Irish person in the 1920s in New York City then you still might be at the weekend be able to go to the pub and hear live music or you might be able to go to a concert and hear a jazz band you had access to these things okay and what you had access to when you went to see a live band in New York even though you lived in a little small apartment what you had access to was the live experience of music hearing it with both ears hearing the presence of all the band together in a room but you don't have words or language for what this is yet. You just call it live music. After World War II, you see what's called white flight.

A middle class, because like Britain and America are racist countries, countries that are based on structural racism. After World War II, people who are white left inner cities for the suburbs. And they left these inner cities and they went out into the suburbs. And all of a sudden in the 1940s and 50s, what they have are not cramped little apartments, but they now have a large house with different rooms and a living room. But what they don't have is access to the amenities that they would have had, we'll say, in the city. They now can't go and see a jazz band.

They can't go and see these things because they live miles out in the suburb. So what you start to see emerge is people getting really interested in listening to records at home. So you'd have your person in the 1940s or 50s in their suburban house and they're listening to their mono jazz records or mono blues records. And they have their little turntable with one speaker and the band or the musician was recorded with one microphone. And they're listening to the music and they're going, this is good, but it's not the same as when I'm there.

And I don't know what that is, but it's not the same as when I'm there and I don't know what that is but it's not the same as when I'm in the room I don't really have a word for it yet but this record sounds like the tune but it's not the same as when I'm in the room and because these people are physically becoming detached from the spaces where they can attend gigs or hear live music, they start to desire and fetishise the experience of Carnegie Hall or a jazz club in Harlem. They start to fetishise this experience in their living room. And technology comes around, and the technology that can kind of offer this is stereo technology so what starts to emerge by the 19 late 1940s early 1950s in the suburbs of britain and mainly america is what's referred to as audiophiles people who are obsessed with audio technology people who have a lot of disposable income living miles out in the silence of the suburbs

now with these really really expensive stereo systems at home and a stereo system basically just meant you've got two speakers you have two speakers you don't just have one think back to the old gramophones

it's a fucking record and then one like metal horn where the sound comes out now you have people with two speakers trying to get stereo sound and it was incredibly expensive but here's the weird thing the records so these people living in the american suburbs in the 1940s and 50s who had stereo systems who could afford it the records that they were purchasing weren't music this is the mad thing the earliest stereo records that these people were buying were stereo recordings of trains the sounds of busy cities recorded with two mics

and they'd invite all their friends over and they'd be sitting around their fucking $2000 stereo system not listening to music but listening to the sounds of trains and one thing that was incredibly popular the most popular stereo record that was sold recordings of ping pong matches because with ping pong you have one mic at this side of the table and another mic at the other and the person sitting in their suburban home in 1950 is sitting down with their friends, listening on a stereo to people hitting ping-pongs left, right, left, right.

So I'm going to play you an example now of, this is a record from 1957, which is called Sounds in Space. And this is one of these records that was sold to suburban people who could afford a stereo system. And it's just fucking bizarre to think that people were sitting around with their two speakers and this is what they were listening to. Shh. Let's see. What's the best way to explain rca ステレオファネクサー ます p エース simple way メイクエイティングクイックリー

Make everything quite clear. Let me think. I've got it. So that there is a record from 1957 that these people who had stereo systems would buy and play. All it is, is, you know, if you're listening to that with headphones, you'll hear it properly. It's the sound of a person's footsteps going from left to right, left to right. And this was mind-blowing for people.

Oh my God, it sounds like real life. It was like wearing 3D glasses for your ears. They couldn't believe that they're sitting in their living rooms and what they're hearing on their speakers sounds like what real life sounds like. It's the exact same as the paintings of Giotto from the 12th century. A piece of technology now exists to show people how the human ears hear sound. But still, humans didn't really have language for what it was. Where's the music is what you're thinking.

Where's the stereo music it's a fucking record why are you sitting around listening to people's footsteps or trains or why are you listening to ping pong matches where's the fucking music and the mad thing is in 1957 that was almost too big a creative leap when these audiophiles when it was suggested to them stereo music people were saying things like what do you mean stereo music when i go and see a band the guitar player doesn't like move around the stage what do you mean stereo music i don't understand and people didn't get it they didn't we didn't have the language for it we it it had never happened before we'd never had to think about it it was too advanced it's like why do the drawings not look real i don't know

no one has shown me what perspective is yet. This painting is a horse. How the fuck am I supposed to know? I've never seen a horse painted before. I've just seen a real horse. It's like saying this music is in stereo. How the fuck am I supposed to know? I've only ever heard music with my two ears. I need to hear stereo music.

I need it to be made and shown to me so that I can properly understand what it is. So finally, a person had a hunch and figured out what to try and do. So in 1959, there was a fella called Enoch Light. And Enoch Light was a jazz band leader in the 30s. So Enoch Light is a little bit like Giotto when Giotto discovered linear perspective. I mentioned Giotto in the 30s. So Enoch Light is a little bit like Giotto when Giotto discovered linear perspective.

I mentioned Giotto in the 12th century was trying to draw reality, but because he was in an environment where there was buildings around him, that accidentally caused him to see linear perspective. Well, Enoch Light being a band leader meant that he, his job, for years he was on the fucking stage, right, leading a jazz band where there might be six or seven musicians all

around him but because he's on stage, not out there in the audience, his proximity, physical proximity to the musicians meant that how he heard jazz on stage is different to how the audience hears it. So he's on stage, very close to all the musicians leading him, and he notices through years and years, yeah, sure, the fucking, the saxophonist was on my left, and then the drummer was on my right, and then the bass player was right down the middle. and then the bass player was right down the middle so he through his job like jotto with the buildings had this natural understanding of stereo in music because of the environment so enoch light is very interested in this emerging stereo movement and very interested in the fact that there's all these suburban homes listening with

stereo players and listening to records but the fucking records they're listening to are recordings of footsteps and recordings of ping pong matches and he's like what the fuck is this about why aren't they listening to music well someone needs to make proper stereo music that showcases the system and he by listening to he took direct inspiration from the ping pong recordings so Enoch Light noticed these people in the suburban homes they want to hear ping pong matches they're getting a kick off on the left speaker you hear the ball getting a slap and on the right speaker you hear the ball getting a slap and it goes back and forth and this creates a very explicit and obvious sense of space and this is exciting these people how can i do this with music so in 1959 enoch light released an album called persuasive percussion and again this album wasn't even it wasn't like musical it wasn't like a piece

of art it was a piece of music it was it was it was recordings of music just for these people with stereo systems so it wasn't even a piece of art it's like here's another sound effects album for you to showcase your system with except the sound effects happen to be musicians so this here what i'm about to play you it's the first ever it's jotto this is a jotto painting but music it's the first ever attempt at here's how music should sound in stereo and what i find so beautiful is the opening lines of it you can hear that the cunt was inspired by the ping pong match albums. Thank you. So what you have there, that's a very important piece of history. That is... That's the birth of a new art form right there.

Persuasive Percussion is the album, 1959. And it's not created as a piece of art again it's created as something to showcase a stereo system you'll notice there that the bongos went immediately from the left ear to straight over to the right ear and back down the middle it's still

considered like a sound effects album but that's the Giotto painting there that's no longer music was being recorded for 50 years before that but they were just recording performances in mono now you've created something new you can't do that on a stage that's now using technology to control the stereo, how humans hear music left and right and now creating an image, an audio image. That's a new art form being born right there in 1959. And that obviously sold incredibly well with people with stereo systems. Stereo then started to become more

popular. More people had access to stereo. And then in the 1960s, you start to see pop music being made in stereo. You start to see audio production and how music is recorded and mixed being an art form in itself that's the renaissance that album that stereo album is Giotto discovering linear perspective with fucking Brunelleschi and then

the music that came afterwards in particular the Beatles the Beatles in fairness in particular the Beatles that's the Renaissance. Someone has discovered how the human ear hears music. Now we're taking that knowledge and we're going to create a new type of art.

Now, it wasn't just the Beatles. Many artists in the 60s started to experiment with stereo sound and enhance the art form. But the Beatles were the ones, they really, really went at it. It's fashionable at the moment to shit on the Beatles. It's fashionable at the moment to shit on the Beatles. And there's many critiques you can lay against the Beatles. You often hear people say, the Beatles are just a lot

of white lads from Britain and their earliest stuff they took music from black artists and became popular with it same with the Rolling Stones that's a legitimate critique that's a legitimate critique the Beatles because of their their their white skin essentially were able to become very very popular on America with sounds that initially were taken from black artists that's a fact and that's deserving of critique but what the

what the Beatles what's going to have the Beatles remembered in a thousand years time and I do believe that in the way that I can speak about Giotto in the 12th century Beatles remembered in a thousand years time. And I do believe that. In the way that I can speak about Giotto. In the 12th century. And his use of linear perspective.

To show how the human eyes see in stereo. The Beatles would be remembered. For how they. Used. Emerging technology. To change what music is. Okay okay music had been recorded for 50 years the Beatles weren't just making songs they weren't just making songs that were to be performed live but with a lot of the artists in the 60s in particular the Beatles they're going this is something new this isn't about just making songs that are nice and that you record live and you

play them for an audience no no no we're using technology to deliver music to people via records that they can now listen on a stereo system and we can do new things with sound and music that have never been possible before because the technology didn't exist. This is a new form of art and music has been around for 50,000 years but this is new. This is a new type of musical art that the human brain hasn't experienced before and of course I have to give credit to George Martin often called the fifth Beatle who was the he was the Beatles producer George Martin was the studio person who had years and years of experience who was an audio nerd who would have been the one who pushed the Beatles towards exploring in stereo and the first proper Beatles album that was so a lot of earlier Beatles albums were recorded in mono

and then mixed into stereo afterwards but the at the 1969 album Abbey Road was the Beatles album that they literally recorded it in stereo with stereo in mind with the actual use of stereo, as in both speakers, creating the art. And the best example of this, I think, is the song Here Comes the Sun, which is actually, George Harrison wrote it. George Harrison was the guitar player in the Beatles. And I'm going to play this for you now, and hopefully it won't get the fucking podcast taken down, because I know playing the Beatles music is dodgy,

but I'm playing this because I'm backing up a fucking argument so this 1969 song is the perfect example of stereo being used to change an art form how stereo is used to tell a fucking story so I'm going to play the first 30 seconds of Here Comes the Sun what I want you to be listening for is how the placement of sounds between left and

right speakers creates an actual story the guitar starts on the right speaker then the vocal comes in on the left with a little bit of a synthesizer and then everything comes together down the middle with the drums that's a three-act structure and it's hard for us to listen to this now and hear it as revolutionary because it's so fucking revolutionary it's just become standard but this at the time it had never been done before it's like in 1959 some cunt came along with a jazz album that did left and right now we're truly incorporating this

to create a new form of art that enhances music in a way that live simply cannot Here comes the sun Here comes the sun I say it's alright So of course every fucking song sounds like that now But like And I know I've just For any music nerds

I've just completely Swaded over the entirety of the 60s and the massive, massive musical advancements that were made by other artists in the 60s. I know I did that because for me to go through, I could fucking literally do a podcast year by year for the 60s regarding how technology changed the art form of music but for the hot taker in me here comes the sun is just a perfect example of that's the culmination of the stereo experiments of the 60s and going here's how it becomes art here's how you tell a story it's storytelling using the placement of sounds and incorporating how the human ear hears sound left and right together a stereo image and that's why i'm talking about giotto and bruno brunocelli at the start of the podcast they discovered how the human eye sees in stereo how two eyes perceive depth stereo sound is how the human eye sees in stereo. How two eyes perceive depth. Stereo sound is how the human ear perceives depth in the very, very abstract space of sound,

which is symmetrical vibrations of air. And that's why it took... That's why we discovered stereo sound a thousand years after fucking stereo vision because it requires higher technology you know right now what technologies right now are what technologies right now do we not have a verbal or perceptual language for i would guess uh emerging vr technology virtual reality things like the Oculus Rift headset these things are really only becoming available to people

in the past 10 years and if you've ever used a VR headset you know a lot of the video games and stuff on it, they're not very good, it's, the video games are there more to showcase the technology rather than to be a truly

enjoyable experience and it's it seemed right now with virtual reality we're like the people in the suburbs in the 1950s listening to records of ping pong matches that's where we are right now with virtual reality we're exploring this technology within the limitations of our language and perception and something needs to happen what virtual reality needs to do is to truly deeply simulate the lived experience of being a human existing in a 3D space and we haven't figured that one out yet with VR so instead you just have

rollercoaster games that make you feel a little bit of butterfly in your stomach but I think VR is where we're at right now that's the next thing that's just me guessing

alright that was my hot take I hope you enjoyed it I hope you listened to that episode with headphones on so you could understand that I'm talking about fucking stereo God bless I'll talk to you next week

You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece symphony exploder april 5th at roy thompson hall for tickets visit tso.ca Продолжение следует...