Susana Belchior

• PhD in Conservation-Restoration of Cultural Heritage
• PhD at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

In 1897 the first European office of The Gramophone Company is established in London. Two years later, their recording experts, Fred Gaisberg and Sinkler Darby, depart for a several month trip in order to make recordings of popular music in the countries where they intend to implement agencies for The Gramophone Company, or negotiate directly with...

In 1887, Emile Berliner patented the gramophone and its flat lateral-cut records, a format that was the basis of the birth of the music recording industry. The aim of this study is to contribute to the history of sound recording and to the preservation of shellac discs through a better knowledge of the material and immaterial aspects of industrial...

In the framework of the research project “Timbila, Makwayela and Marrabenta: one century of musical representation of Mozambique” one of the priority tasks involved the digitization of a set of 46 open reel tapes, consisting of both cellulose acetate and polyester based magnetic tapes, with very relevant ethnographic music recordings of Mozambique...

In Portugal there is still no National Sound Archive or any institution responsible for housing, preserving or even surveying the Portuguese sound recordings. INET-md, with its 3-year-long project [Grant FCT ref: PTDC/HAH/70991/2006], aims is to study "The recording industry in 20th century Portugal". This research arouse from the lack of studies...

Sound carriers contain material and immaterial information, and both are intertwined. A record is to be played and heard, while the label and the disc have all the other important information to complement the recording, which means that after the transfer into the digital domain, the disc has still a lot to tell. The materials that constitute a 78...

Video aqui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYWzMbE8p7I O Arquivo Sonoro de Galicia (ASG) do Consello da Cultura Galega céntrase, por primeira vez, en aspectos materiais ⸺físicos e químicos⸺ do patrimonio sonoro galego. Ata agora tratáronse contidos (música na emigración, música tradicional…) e xeitos de divulgación (mapas sonoros, industria disco...

Early acoustic sound recordings from the late 1890’s to mid 1920’s have no standards as to their recording speed, groove width, or material composition of the pressed record. Despite the numerous patents accompanying the recording industry’s activities, some stages of the recording process were regarded as top secret, and therefore constantly chang...

Full presentation available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NkM1Q8DErU Early acoustic sound recordings from the late 1890’s to mid 1920’s have no standards as to their recording speed, groove width, or material composition of the pressed record. Despite the numerous patents accompanying the recording industry’s activities, some stages of t...

Presented during the closing conference of the research project "Timbila, Makwayela e Marrabenta: um século de representação musical de Moçambique", it reported the strategies adopted to recover the musical and information contents from a set of open reel tapes and their corresponding paper documents which had been severely damaged by fungi.

This paper addresses the Portuguese label Disco Simplex and its connections to German international manufacturers, and how they were severely affected by the start of World War I.

Debido a que los discos de 78 rpm son medios materiales con contenido inmaterial, proteger uno significa proteger al otro. Los discos nos proporcionan mucha información más allá del sonido que se ha grabado y pueden dar muchas pistas sobre su historia y preservación. Muchos problemas, como el ruido y la vida útil del disco, están directamente relac...

A gravação sonora pode ser considerada um dos mais importantes desenvolvimentos tecnológicos do final do séc. XIX. Passou a permitir a fixação e registo de práticas musicais, materializando num suporte físico práticas imateriais, que podiam voltar a ser reproduzidas e transmitidas mesmo a quem não as presenciara aquando da sua execução. O que era...

"A booklet with essays and illustrations made by the participants of the 1st Soundscape Campus that took place at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of NOVA University of Lisbon." Ivo Louro — Project Anthropolands (PTDC/IVC-HFC/6789/2014), CIUHCT | FCT NOVA — For more information on Soundscape Campus: http://ciuhct.org/divulgacao/exposicoes/s...

Coarse groove discs—commonly known as 78rpm or shellac records—date from the first decades of the recording industry. They have been considered to be long-lasting, therefore few studies have been carried out regarding their chemical composition. Early mechanical recordings have no standards as to their recording speed, groove size or record size, a...

Early acoustic sound recordings from the late 1890’s to mid 1920’s have no standards as to their recording speed, groove width, or material composition of the pressed record. In spite of the numerous patents accompanying the recording industry’s activities, some stages of the recording process were regarded as top secret, and therefore constantly c...

Resumo da investigação que tenho feito para o meu doutoramento em Conservação e Restauro - no domínio da História da Tecnologia e em laboratório - sobre o processo de fabrico e os materiais que compõem os discos de 78rpm no período acústico.

Nesta apresentação procuro mostrar como a Conservação e Restauro de suportes de Áudio se pode interligar com as outras áreas que contribuem para os Arquivos Sonoros - nomeadamente a Etnomusicologia. Partindo da disciplina de Conservação e Restauro - ela própria fruto de conjugação de vários ramos da ciência - procuro investigar suportes de audio de...

Among the several characteristics of shellac discs, surface noise is one of the most important aspects regarding sound quality. It presents itself as one of the key factors affecting the signal to noise relation. This particular kind of noise results from the microtexture of the disc surface where the audio information is encoded. The study herein...

The first Portuguese recordings on disc: notes on the research and the technical adjustments made for the forthcoming release of the Portuguese Berliners from 1900 on CD by INET-md

Following my presentation at the 15.Diskografentag, in Berlin on "The process of quality control during the first decade of record production by The Gramophone Company (ca. 1899-1911)", I shall focus on a specific year, 1905, and a particular report that covers most of the topics I mentioned before, which were: o The collaboration between The Gramo...

This presentation is focused on the process of quality control during the first decade of record production by The Gramophone Company. It is based on technical documentation addressing collaborations between companies (Victor and The Gramophone Company), materials research (reports and proposals by their engineers, pressing factory mixing experimen...

Em 1897 é estabelecido em Londres o primeiro escritório europeu da The Gramophone Company. Dois anos depois, os seus técnicos de gravação, Fred Gaisberg e Sinkler Darby, partem para uma viagem de vários meses com o intuito de realizar gravações de música popular nos países onde pretendem implementar agências próprias ou negociar com agentes locais,...

Em 1897 é estabelecido em Londres o primeiro escritório europeu da The Gramophone Company. Dois anos depois, os técnicos de gravação Fred Gaisberg e Sinkler Darby partem para uma viagem de vários meses com o intuito de realizar gravações de música popular nos países onde pretendem implementar agências próprias ou...

The presence of the recording company BEKA in Portugal in their early years of activity in the beginning of the 20th century. Includes label examples and reference on some of the artists and repertoire recorded.

Entrevistas com os coleccionadores José Manuel Osório (Museu do Teatro, 20 de Setembro de 2010), Luís Penedo (Portela de Sacavém, 21 de Setembro de 2010), Nuno Moreira (Porto, 23 de Setembro de 2010) E Daniel Gouveia (Linda-a-Velha, 30 de Setembro de 2010), Nuno de Siqueira (Lisboa 6 de Outubro de 2010), Luís Cangueiro (Almada, 7 de Outubro de 2010...

This paper aims at understanding the connections between the Carl Lindström Company and the publication and trade of early phonograms in Portugal, up to the EMI merger in 1931. More specifically, the paper will focus on: - Surveying Carl Lindström labels which were commercialized in Portugal in early 20th century with Portuguese recordings, like Be...

A conservação preventiva engloba um conjunto de princípios teóricos inseridos numa metodologia científica que pretende monitorizar e controlar toda a envolvente dos bens culturais, de modo a criar um conjunto integrado de acções que promovam e prolonguem a conservação do Património Cultural. É preciso ter “em conta que a degradação é um processo di...

Relatório de estágio do Bacharelato em Conservação e Restauro da Escola Superior de Conservação e Restauro, realizado no Instituto José de Figueiredo sob orientação de Elsa Murta entre Outubro de 1996 e Maio de 1997: investigação histórica, técnica e artística e desenvolvimento de um tratamento de conservação e restauro de um baixo relevo em madeir...