 In addition to recreating recorded sounds by placing the stylus on the cylinder or disc and rotating it in the same direction as during the recording , one could hear different sounds by rotating the cylinder or disc backwards . In 1878 , Edison noted that , when played backwards , " the song is still melodious in many cases , and some of the strains are sweet and novel , but altogether different from the song reproduced in the right way " . The backwards playing of records was advised as training for magicians by occultist Aleister Crowley , who suggested in his 1913 book Magick ( Book 4 ) that an adept " train himself to think backwards by external means " , one of which was to " listen to phonograph records , reversed " . In the movie Gold Diggers of 1935 , the end of the dancing pianos musical number " The Words Are in My Heart " is filmed in reverse motion with the accompanying instrumental score incidentally being reversed . 
