[78-L] Speaking of cuing transcriptions..wuz Re: Edward VIII Abdication on records

[David Lennick]

I've had one set of AFRS originals, the King Cole Carnegie Hall concert (now 
issued on Hep). Long overlaps. The BBC recorded programs at 78RPM with 
overlapped sides and would put a spiral at the same place in the audio in each 
disc so the operator playing the discs back had a visual cue where to cross fade.

But Columbia recorded pop and jazz sessions in continuous sides, keeping 
breakdowns, outtakes and alternates, and classical selections in tracks the 
same length as their intended 78 issues. I think sometimes they put more than 
one track on a disc (possibly an alternate take) because you can clearly hear 
major differences in audio quality where a given selection was recorded closer 
to the inside of the disc. On occasion, a track was too long to be dubbed to 
78. Known examples are in Rodzinski's recordings of Tchaikovskiana (one 
variation in the 4th movement was simply left off the 78) and Under the 
Spreading Chestnut Tree (a very awkward fade-up on side 2 of the 78 issue, and 
that was never transferred to lp except on a Cleveland Orchestra fundraiser, 
which dubbed from 78s).

dl

On 7/3/2012 10:03 AM, neechevoneeznayou at gmail.com wrote:
> When the AFRS checked a recording from the line, they recorded a long
> overlap. IIRC 4 minnits of an 11 minnit side.
>
> I would love to see a film about how they did disc to disc editing.
>
> joe salerno
>
>
> On 7/3/2012 1:04 AM, Sammy Jones wrote:
>> You know, they could have rehearsed with pressings, marked them up with
>> grease pencils, and then transferred the markings to a fresh set of
>> pressings or (gasp) the lacquer originals...
>>
>> I tend to think there must have been some mechanism that counted
>> revolutions, much as we have tape counters on modern audio tape decks.  Some
>> where (I can't remember where at the moment) I read that the sound on disc
>> engineers in the late '20s edited the sound by counting grooves and could
>> get VERY accurate, usually withing a frame or two (they were editing to
>> film).  Fast forward 20 years later, and it's not hard to imagine that disc
>> dubbing/editing systems could be quite advanced.
>>
>> Another thought...even if the 16" lacquers were not continuous recordings,
>> but more or less reflected the content of one side of a finished 10" or 12"
>> record, there could have been several seconds to a minute's worth of
>> overlapped content--plenty of time to get the next disc going with a hand on
>> the playback speed control to get everything in sync.  My Jack Benny ETs
>> from 1948 and '49 are recorded over three sides of two 16" discs with
>> several minutes' worth of overlap so that the grooves never even come close
>> to the label area.  I believe these were intended for replay on an ad hoc
>> network put together by American Tobacco, and so the playback engineers
>> would have had to get the next disc cued up and running on the fly.  And
>> with a radio broadcast, there's not really a chance to make the matrix over
>> again...
>>
>> Sammy Jones
>>
>> David Lennick wrote:
>> Tape was beginning to be known, but as far as I know, the first use of it by
>> Columbia was to produce "I Can Hear It Now" in 1948. And for what it's
>> worth,
>> early lps that were done from tape masters in 1949 sound far worse than the
>> earliest ones dubbed direct..I've just been listening to a number of them in
>> the last couple of weeks and some of the transfers are amazing. It probably
>> required a couple of engineers who could read scores and someone to have
>> previously timed the sides, but my question is really..did they mark the
>> start
>> points somehow or did they (shudder) actually cue up the discs? Oh, as for
>> pitch changes, you can hear those. Nothing was perfect. The Prokofieff Fifth
>> Symphony conducted by Rodzinski on ML 4037 changes pitch very slightly every
>> 4
>> minutes, but the joins are beautiful (with some possible overlaps where they
>> were necessary to keep the music flowing). So how dey do dat?
>>
>> dl
>>
>> On 7/2/2012 7:54 PM, Sammy Jones wrote:
>>> I thought tape was available in the U.S. as early as about 1946 or '47.
>>> Wasn't the second season of Crosby's Philco Radio Time edited on tape (as
>>> opposed to disc to disc like the AFRS did)?
>>>
>>> I don't know specifically about Columbia's early LPs, but I have the
>>> impression that methods of disc to disc editing (dubbing from  several
>>> source discs to a new master disc) were pretty refined by the late '40s.
>>> They were pionered by sound on film editors (early Vitaphone, etc.) and
>>> perfected by the Armed Forces Radio Service which edited dozens, if not
>>> hundreds, of radio programs every week to remove whole commercials and
>>> sometimes single words.
>>>
>>> I have an AFRS Fibber McGee show where the quality drops tremendously and
>>> then returns to normal quality during one section within a 15-minute side,
>>> but the edit is otherwise imperceptible.  That says to me that the section
>>> in bad sound may have been edited down to a sub-master disc because of
>>> complications, then played back in to the new master disc at precisely the
>>> right time.  Very complicated stuff...
>>>
>>> That being said, I don't know how they did it!  I imagine there were
>>> turntables that were mechanically linked together and some sort of counter
>>> to count revolutions, or parts of revolutions.  This is a fascinating
>>> topic...
>>>
>>> Sammy Jones
>>>
>>> David Lennick wrote:
>>> Hijacking the thread, thank you.
>>>
>>> On 7/2/2012 7:01 PM, Michael Biel wrote:
>>>>
>>>> That (arrow) is what you find on soundtrack
>>>> discs so that they can be cued up without backspinning them.  It doesn't
>>>> point to the beginning of the groove, but to the point in the disc where
>>>> the sound begins.
>>>
>>> When Columbia began cutting 33rpm microgroove masters for the new Lp
>>> format,
>>> they dubbed from 16-inch lacquers that had previously been used as source
>>> material for 78s. Classical works consisted of movements in 4 minute
>>> chunks
>>> spread over several 16-inch sides (contrary to what people have written,
>>> they
>>> did NOT record the works non-stop). The dubbing team had to be right on
>>> the
>>> note to make the side joins, and they usually got it right, but how did
>>> they
>>> cue to music without back-cuing and ruining the original? Did they work
>>> from
>>> safeties? Did they carefully note the number of turns and cross their
>>> fingers?
>>> Remember, this was all before tape. I've heard one 78 issue (not on
>>> Columbia,
>>> but on Mercury) where the music is preceded by an entire rev of cue
>>> scratch.
>>>
>>> dl
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 78-L mailing list
>> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
>> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
>>
>