Investigating Early Bluegrass Recording Techniques

Author

Lincoln HensleyFollow

Honors Program

Fine and Performing Arts Honors

Date of Award

5-2020

Thesis Professor(s)

Nathaniel J. Olson

Thesis Professor Department

<--College of Arts and Sciences-->

Thesis Reader(s)

Nathaniel J. Olson, Daniel Boner

Abstract

This paper is about my investigation of early bluegrass recording techniques and the processes they used. After doing some extensive research, and compiling a database of black and white photographs from the time period, I felt I had enough information to assemble a team to try and produce the sounds, tonal qualities, and energy those recordings have. So John Kornhauser, Joshua Gooding, Hunter Berry, Sarah Griffin, along with myself, went to BigTone studios and tracked for two four hour sessions. BigTone studios has all of the vintage microphones, tape recorders, echo chambers, and out board equipment I need to replicate the same signal chain that was used on the early recordings. After the recording process, I mixed and mastered the songs to match the early recordings as closely as possible. We also recorded one song at ETSU’s studio that was all digital with new equipment to show the differences in the sound of analog versus digital recording. I have included both so that you can listen to each and determine for yourself if there is an audible difference, and if that difference is worth pursuing.

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Withheld

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Hensley, Lincoln, "Investigating Early Bluegrass Recording Techniques" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 597. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/597

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.