Klarinet Archive - Posting 000498.txt from 2005/01

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Edison recordings
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 12:30:46 -0500

At 08:02 PM 1/28/2005 +0000, Scott Morrow wrote:
>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

Regardless, if, for any individual recording, playback speed = recording
speed, maximum fidelity to the original performance is achieved. As far as
the movies are concerned, action scenes should probably run FASTER and
dramatic scenes SLOWER than correct speeds for maximum effectiveness, so
unsteady hand-cranked camera speeds worked AGAINST the actors. And
eventually they did have cameras with electric or spring-wound motors for
more even film speed. And even the variations of camera speed can probably
be minimized on a digital/tape transfer with careful editing, variable
speed projector, etc.

Bill Hausmann

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

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