Klarinet Archive - Posting 000482.txt from 2005/01

From: "Scott Morrow" <scottdmorrow@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Edison recordings
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 15:04:16 -0500

With regard to the speed of old audio recordings and film:
National Public Radio had run a story several years ago on the sound lab at
Princeton Unviersity (if I remember correctly) and how they were trying to
preserve old recordings (including "correcting" pitch). One thing they found
was that old recordings tended to be so far off the correct pitch because of
discrepancies between recording speeds and playback speeds. One exampla they
gave was of an opera singer whose recordings were very popular: everyone at
the time thought he was a tenor, but the modern "corrected" pitches
suggested that he was really a baritone!
As far as early silent motion pictures are concerned, the cameras were
cranked by hand during filming, so the recording speed varied while the
playback was constant. In many silents, action scenes tend to play back
slower because the cameraman would get more excited and crank faster, and
the "dramatic" scenes would play back faster because he would get bored and
crank slower!
-Scott

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