Visual Sound

A sound recording was found that predates Edison.New York Times Article This device did not play back the music only record a visual symbol of the sound.

A quote in that article:

“There is a yawning epistemic gap between us and Léon Scott, because he thought that the way one gets to the truth of sound is by looking at it,” said Jonathan Sterne, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and the author of “The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.”

I see no epistemic gap! My brother and I both have jazz text books that for years were only print, without recordings. Finally we both were able to package the actual music with the books. If we had our choice we would throw away the books and keep only the recordings.

Worse is that the music class that meets the general education requirement in most colleges is merely a course about music. Shouldn't you have to actually try to create some music?

I wish I was able to take physics appreciation instead of physics.

Dave