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Friday, August 14, 2009

Without Les Paul I wouldn’t be an E-Learning Professional

Les Paul, inventor, guitar legend and sound engineering genius Jimmy Page, 1959 Les Paul guitar, violin bow. Bliss.died yesterday.

While most of the tributes to this most rounded of individuals rightly focus on his contribution to music, both through his virtuosity on the guitar and his invention of his eponymous Gibson instrument. I'd like you to consider this: if you work in e-learning or digital media content development you probably wouldn't have a job without Les Paul’s influence and inventions.

Why?

He invented multitrack sound recording.

Multitrack recording (also known as multitracking for short) is a method of sound recording that allows for separate recording of multiple sound Tascam 16Tracksources to create a cohesive whole. Today, this is the most common method of recording popular music, radio documentaries, and podcasts. Back in the day, I learned to record sound to magnetic tape (including the black art of editing sound by physically splicing bits of tape together), before moving to DAT, mini-disc, and finally recording and editing audio in a purely digital environment about 10 years ago.

Today, I use multitracked audio to create podcasts for distribution on the web and via iTunes, demos, simulations, training videos, and a host of other learning applications.

All of these developments occurred because of Les Paul's innovations in multitracking 60 years ago. He was so influential that modern digital audio editors (and digital media editing tools like Adobe Premiere and Techsmith Camtasia) still use the multi-channel / multi-track timeline user interface paradigm, and still sport controls for cutting, splicing, and cross-fading the content stream, same as in the physical magnetic tape editing I used to do many years ago.

multitrack editor

Source audio for a podcast in a digital multitrack editor

"Big deal" I hear you say, "if he hadn't done it, someone else would have."

Maybe, but he did it. And it was his musical artistry and fame as a recording artist (with his then-wife Mary Ford) that popularized the technology in a way no 'man in a white coat' could ever have.

So thanks for the music, Les, and the guitar.

And the career. Requiescat in pace.

lespaul2

Les Paul (1915-2009)

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