[78-L] Music Hall. 'Speeding' Query.

[Spats]

Hi!

Actually, these Winners are from 1919, but above 78rpm? Definitely not.
These were recorded in London, by the way.

I know all about keys. You forget that I'm a professional musician! ;-)

I have found, however, that many early records (of-course, lots of 
exceptions) seem to have been recorded at around 75rpm.

Earl.

At 8:09 am -0800 04/11/2008, 78-l-request at klickitat.78online.com wrote:
>At 13:46 04.11.2008, you wrote:
>>Interesting.
>>
>>Actually, listening to voice quality, vowels etc., I thought that the
>>Winners should be played at 75rpm, rather than faster than 78rpm.
>
>Exceptions prove the rule, as the old saying goes. Depends also from 
>which years the records are - from the late 1910s until 
>early-electrical period Winners tend to be on the fast side (80rpm 
>or more), but maybe some early sides are slower. IIRC they also 
>"inherited" some masters from German-based companies when these 
>closed down at the beginning of WW1, and such sides originally from 
>Beka, Dacapo, etc. would of course follow different patterns.
>
>If you keep in mind the preference of the accompanists for "simple" 
>keys (on a brass instrument that means A-flat, E-flat, B-flat, F, C, 
>G) that should be no insurmountable problem. Once you have put a 
>record in *any* key and noted the speed, the decision becomes easier 
>as if that speed doesn't sound correct, the remaining choices are 6% 
>steps up or down to reach the next higher or lower transposition 
>(just multiply or divide the speed found originally by 1.06) which 
>usually are different enough from each other to easily decide which 
>of them is the "real thing".
>
>Example:
>
>1- At 78rpm a record comes out between B-natural and C
>2- The most obvious correction would be to speed it up slightly 
>until it is exactly in C at, say, 80rpm
>3- If the voice and tempo don't seem right, readjust in 6% steps: 
>(80 x 1.06) = 84.8 rpm gives D-flat, (80 / 1.06) = 75.5 rpm gives B, 
>and (75.5 / 1.06) = 71.2 rpm gives B-flat. Speeds in-between these 
>steps are out of the question as they fall between keys. Very 
>probably one variant will sound more natural than any of the others, 
>even if you are unfamiliar with the particular voice and piece of 
>music.
>
>Standard pitch in Britain was probably 438-439 Hz at the time (close 
>enough to modern A=440 to neglect the difference for practical 
>purposes), but with obviously brass-band accompaniments bear in mind 
>these might be by a military band tuned at A=451. If you only have a 
>modern pitchpipe to tune to, you can of course calculate the correct 
>speed for such records after pitching to A=440: divide the found rpm 
>by 440 and multiply the result by 451 (or multiply the rpm by 1.025).
>
>Hope this helps!
>
>Chris Zwarg