[78-L] Pagliacci set on British Columbia

[Philip Carli]

One little thing to add -- if you do use a tone generator to set pitch, NY pitch (and very certainly on piano recs) was A-435 rather than 440; that was agreed upon by a conference of NY piano manufacturers (in conjunction with other musical authorities) in the 1890s, and it held true up until the middle 30s. Slight but audible diff.  I sent a note and some background on this to UCSB earlier this year. PC
________________________________________
From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com [78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of David Lennick [dlennick at sympatico.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 10:21 AM
To: 78-L Mail List
Subject: Re: [78-L] Pagliacci set on British Columbia

As I recall, Frank Crumit's "Lena from Palesteena" plays at 78. So you do have
to use your ear and a tone generator or pitchpipe rather than rely on fixed
suggested speeds (80, 76 etc). Rocky's Prelude on Edison had to go up 6% (from
78) to play in C# Minor. And there are those Victor electrics from 1929 that
have to go down about 2% for a six month period (and most of Helen Kane's
Victors which need to go UP 2%).

dl

On 12/8/2010 10:15 AM, David Lewis wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> I concur; Columbia speeds are all over the map despite the stated speed of "80." The ODJB record definitely plays at 79, despite some of the reissue speeds which are slower -- at 79 it sounds like any one of their Victor records. The Waldorf-Astoria "The Vamp" is definitely meant to go at 79-80; it seems to me that many of the Banner classical discs run too slow even at 80. Nevertheless, the Archibald Brothers Quartette record of "I Love to Tell the Story" (A-914) is rather slow, running at about 72. That was made in 1910 versus 1920 for "The Vamp;" so perhaps there is an observable trend for higher speed through the 1910s, though I think that it is probably inconsistent and was up to the engineer to establish the speed, whatever was his preference. The "Speed 80" designation may have been meant simply to guide consumers to the idea that Columbia records ran somewhat faster than average.
>
> Uncle Dave Lewis
> uncledavelewis at hotmail.com
>
>
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