Day 082: Techie day—recording and editing sound
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day 82
— Techie day—recording and editing sound
23-October-1971
(Sat.)
TRANSCRIPT
Morning—doing electronic music work (splicing tape).
It took a long time and this is one of the problems
of electronic music—it takes so long because of its
complications.
Practiced a little guitar. I enjoyed it and hope I
can do it more often.
Got letters from Lenny and Anjali. I enjoyed writing
to them and I enjoy reading their letters also.
REFLECTIONS
Today’s post is mostly for music techies, music
majors, and composition majors who might be
interested in a look back at the vintage techniques
of music concrète and music composition. If this is
not you, then skip ahead to tomorrow.
The
basic tape studio. On
Saturday, I’m back in the electronic music lab
working on learning the lab techniques. I mention
“splicing tape.” I should explain a little bit about
the actual equipment. The lab had, I believe, four
commercial-class tape recorders. These used 1/4”
magnetic tape and 15” reels. There were microphones,
a mixer, a patchbay, audio equipment for equalization
and filtering, and, I believe, possibly a reverb
unit. (Not certain.) Certainly, there was other
equipment as well.
Classic
tape splicing. After
recording sounds onto tape, you isolate them by
splicing the tape—using a razor blade, a splicing
block, and splicing tape, separating the sounds with
plastic tape leader. You take the 1/4” tape, place it
in the splicing block and make a diagonal cut (ha—the
diagonal cut was a type of “micro-fade in” to avoid
pops). You did the same to other splice points. To
join pieces together, you place the adjoining ends in
the splicing block and join them with a piece of
tape. Laborious, but it worked. I think I may still
even have my splicing block somewhere. 
The recording-editing process. The
process of recording and editing sound involves (1)
recording sounds, (2) creating a library of sounds,
(2) manipulating and splicing sounds into motives,
rhythms, fragments, layers, textures, and other
musical constructs, (3) modifying sounds with
filtering and effects (perhaps reverb), (4) recording
new combinations of sounds, and so on. The composing
process was creating, editing, manipulating, and
organizing all of this “sound” into a composition. It
was a time consuming process. It was a creative
process. It was exciting to meet the challenge.
This is the same process in which audio tapes had to
be spliced for the old recording and film studios.
Here is more detail on the recording-editing process
back in 1971:
• A microphone is connected to a preamp, which is
connected to an amplifier. The output of the
amplifier is patched to the tape recorder input.
• Sound is recorded from the microphone to the tape
recorder. (During recording, speakers must be off to
avoid feedback.)
• Audition the tape by playing it back, through
speakers or headphones.
• Begin the editing and organizing process, using
tape splicing.
• Continue to create new sounds and textures by
layering, filtering, changing the speed of the tape
recorder and manipulating the sounds. Use editing to
“chop up” sounds and reorganize them. For example,
playing a sound backwards.
• Continue the composing process by continually
splicing, layering, organizing, structuring, and
combining sounds to create musical textures, layers,
rhythms, melodic fragments, and so on.
Today’s
world. In today’s
world, musique concrète and electronic music
techniques have been replaced by digital processes,
software, hardware, and sophisticated keyboards. In
universities, some composers create computer music,
writing programs to have the computer generate the
sound and the music.
In a school environment, these techniques can be a
tremendous teaching tool to discover musical concepts
and musical composition. At all grade levels, even in
elementary school.
Teaching
with tape. After
Vienna, in my teaching career, I purchase two 1/4”
home tape recorders (Sony), one professional 15” tape
recorder (Tascam), microphones (Electrovoice), a
mixer, and other audio equipment (with my own money)
to supplement my teaching grant for electronic music.
The students learned and performed the same
techniques mentioned above. In our program we used a
non-keyboard synthesizer (ElectroComp). Students were
very carefully supervised when editing. Thankfully,
today, splicing is not required—everything is done in
audio editing software, digitally.
Caution.
The
primary caution when recording with microphones is to
only use headphones, and to turn off your speakers.
This is why you always see singers in recording
studios with headphones on. This avoids “feedback”
which is dangerous to your hearing and your speakers.
In modern software, if your recording input is set to
“microphone,” “monitoring” should be set to OFF. Use
caution and common sense.
Moving on.
Lenny’s
Letter. Lenny, my
best friend, sends me a letter. He is my friend from
junior high school age onward, even to today. He is a
talented sax player (and computer programmer) and has
written a song that won a Billboard song competition.
Lenny has a great sense of humor and I can credit him
with perhaps making me a bit more outgoing. At
Montclair State College, he was popular and kept the
music school alive. We have played in pop/rock bands
together for many, many years, starting from Jr. high
school. A Lenny letter is fun.
Anjali’s
letter. Anjali and
I are writing. Yes. I remember how I looked forward
to reading her letters and then responding back. We
wrote many, many times. Absence makes the heart grow
fonder. There’s some truth to this saying. I remember
that our letters were normal, funny, and innocent.
They were fun to read and write.
After I got married, I found many old letters from
friends and from old girlfriends in the attic. I
threw away almost all of these letters.
Now, I am sorry. I could
have used them in this journal. They would have
brought a smile to my face.
I did find one letter from Anjali in the journal
itself, from a few years after Vienna. I haven’t yet
read it. I will do so, after this year’s blog is
finished.
Enjoy. Until tomorrow.
John
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