36 Years Ago

36 Years Ago, Vienna 1971—A Student Journal

Day 290: Ing. Gottwald to the rescue

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Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing & friends.



Day 290 — Ing. Gottwald to the rescue
18-May-1972 (Donnerstag–Thur.)


TRANSCRIPT

Slightly better day.

In morning, Ing. Gottwald helped me make a good copy of my work in the schallplatten studio, with a much more elaborate filter. Unfortunately, the copy is for Prof. Kaufmann and I’m stuck with only a 19cm copy, which I already half-wrecked by entangling the tape.

My horn lessons and playing with piano went fairly good today. Playing later with Dr. Paul—didn’t do too well.


REFLECTIONS

Ing. Gottwald. When you have quality problems from the day before, what do you do? Call an engineer. Engineer Gottwald helps me to make a good copy of Fantasy on Broken Glass in the better recording studio, which seems to have better equipment. Schallplatten = recording. Perhaps this is a radio station or recording studio somewhere else, I don’t remember. Unfortunately, there is only one master copy of the tape for Prof. Kaufmann (to play at concert). Remember that my original tapes had many, many, physical tape splices in them. It’s amazing that it played at all.

Analog quality and tape hiss. The quality issue is most likely “tape hiss.” Remember, here it is, I am manipulating sounds on analog tape, repeatedly—over and over again. Each generation reduces the quality of the sound and increases the tape hiss. If you try to reduce the tape hiss, you cut out too much of the higher frequencies, leaving the sound dull and less bright. So, I am thankful that I have any result with a normally good output. It is amazing that it worked at all. Thanks to Ing. Gottwald.

2009—7 Year Anniversary. Today is the 7th anniversary of my part-time job at a computer retail store. I was one of the original openers of the store and I love their products. (It paid the kids’ car insurance for all those years.) My real day job is in publishing. How’s that for a surprise look at my personal life?

John

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