Phonautograms is a unique vocal instrument with a rather remarkable pedigre: chromatically sampled vocal sustains captured over 150 years ago. This original method of recording, called ‘Phonautography’ was invented in the early 1850s, by French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The sounds were captured by projecting the voice and other sounds into a cylindrical horn attached to a stylus, which in transfered the vibration into lines over the surface of oil lamp soot-blackened sheets of paper. These raw archival recordings were preserved by the French Academy of Sciences and finally decoded by First Sounds with the help of laser scanning equipment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

We chose one of the very earliest human sound recordings - a simple vocal scale sung by Martinville himself in a recording called Gamme de la Voix (or "range of voice"). We then hand-crafted each of these samples by splicing, editing and manipulating raw sound into a fully playable chromatic solo vocal instrument. But that's just where we started. Next, we took that modified sound and warped it beyond all recognition using a variety of DSP and sound design techniques to create a diverse and compelling range of different ambient soundscapes, sonic textures, tonal pads, synths, atmospheres, drones and resynthesized drums.

Special thanks to First Sounds for their help and for allowing us to share this piece of recording history with you. First Sounds was founded in 2007 by David Giovannoni, Patrick Feaster, Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey. It's an informal collaborative of audio historians, recording engineers, sound archivists, scientists, individuals and organizations who aim to make mankind’s earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time.