Day 282: Noise, rauschen, clicks
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
282 — Noise, rauschen, clicks
10-May-1972
(Mittwoch–Wed.)
TRANSCRIPT
Spent all day in electronic studio. Worked on another
run-through “mischung” – finished it. But many
aggravating problems—“immer knacks.” I found out that
every time someone is enshaltele
with light in
the whole building, it results in “knacks” in the
recording. What a f___g pain. Excuse me, but I was
really angry.
After much corrective splicing and some problems, the
compositional result is pretty good. However, there
is the presence of too much noise (rausche) and thus,
in say making a copy-19 from this original, there is
perhaps too much rauschen. So, as an original
original,
it lacks. I will thus try to next make a splicing
original to have better quality.
Did much work on written part of project.
REFLECTIONS
Noise,
noise. Today, I
am performing more mixes in the electronic studio and
appear to be finished with the mix of
Fantasy.
It appears that I am trying to make final copies of
the composition on tape. I state there are problems —
always “knacks.” Knacks would be “clicks”—slight
clicking noises that sound like a “click” above the
music or sound. You don’t want clicks on your final
tapes. In the analog world, clicks can be caused by
electrical switching, and indeed, I learn that,
whenever anyone in the entire building where the
electronic studio is located, turns a light switch on
or off, it produces a click in anything being
recorded in the studio. The “clicks and pops” you
hear when playing old-fashioned LP vinyl records are
the same type of noise. Today, in the digital realm
of recording clicks are produced by the digital
signal going over a certain threshold, thus producing
clicks as well. Again, you don’t want clicks in your
recording.
Splicing
the click. In the
analog world of the musique concrète studio, the
clicks must be edited out of the tape by splicing the
click out of the tape. Remember that I am editing
actual physical 1/4” magnetic tape with a splicing
block, splicing tape, and a razor blade. You locate
the click on the tape by “scrubbing” the tape back
and forth with your hand, marking the tape, and then
physically splice (cut) it out. When you are splicing
against some type of music or sound background you
are going to hear the splice. That is probably why I
sound a bit frustrated in today’s post. And this is
the first time I truly swore in this blog. Sorry.
John
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