Klarinet Archive - Posting 000437.txt from 2005/01

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Edison recordings
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:26:24 -0500

Bill Hausmann wrote:

> It is easy enough to adjust playback speeds to produce the correct key
> and tempo, and it should be done as a matter of course, as is now
> being done with old silent motion pictures. Filtering to remove
> scratches and surface noise is entirely acceptable, and to the extent
> that frequency balances can be altered to recreate the sound of the
> original PERFORMANCE, rather than the sound of the original RECORDING,
> I see no reason why it should not be done. This is not something so
> drastic as "colorization," but more on the order of film restoration.
> Of course, suppression of the original is not the intent.

In the case of motion pictures, I think that's inexcusable. These were
the finished works of directors and altering them in terms of speed etc.
is akin to rewriting. We seem to forget that the technical limitations
of artworks are an important part of their nature. That includes
recordings, I think. And where it's simply a case of our equipment not
being able to process them properly then we need to alter our equipment,
not the data.

I can understand people using technology to try to explore the history
but it's inappropriate to use it to *rewrite* the history. Even in the
case of recordings, where one can indeed point out that one is trying to
recapture the performance, I think it's important to preserve a sense of
what was done *at the time* in technical as well as musical terms.

On at least one major album I know (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band) the digital remastering process actually resulted in alterations
to the content of the work. In addition that album in particular was
inherently designed to be *an LP*. These things matter in my opinion.

-- Joe

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