(tesar) very, very early days, some phonograph recordings were cut right to wax.d stand in the room, and the cutting lathe would cut the original master right into wax, which, by the way, had to be very soft, so it had to be very hot. so a lot of the old-time musicians will tell stories about the early days of recording like almost stripping down in their underwear and going in this room and recording for three minutes. it's 130 degrees in this little room because it's got to be hot enough for the wax to be soft enough for the lathe to cut it, and everything was done live right there. [jazzy keyboard music] certainly, things are pretty easy. we've got air-conditioned studios now, and this instrument doesn't even need a microphone. the sound is coming out of a wire and going directly to the tape recorder. (bill tesar) with the advent of multi-track recording, you can actually record yourself several times on one piece of tape without erasing what you've already done. each person is recording on a different line on that tape. so the tape recorder is recording me on