Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Learning to live with recording
- A short take in praise of long takes
- 1 Performing for (and against) the microphone
- Producing a credible vocal
- ‘It could have happened’: The evolution of music construction
- 2 Recording practices and the role of the producer
- Still small voices
- Broadening horizons: ‘Performance’ in the studio
- 3 Getting sounds: The art of sound engineering
- Limitations and creativity in recording and performance
- Records and recordings in post-punk England, 1978–80
- 4 The politics of the recording studio: A case study from South Africa
- From Lanza to Lassus
- 5 From wind-up to iPod: Techno-cultures of listening
- A matter of circumstance: On experiencing recordings
- 6 Selling sounds: Recordings and the record business
- Revisiting concert life in the mid-century: The survival of acetate discs
- 7 The development of recording technologies
- Raiders of the lost archive
- The original cast recording of West Side Story
- 8 The recorded document: Interpretation and discography
- One man's approach to remastering
- Technology, the studio, music
- Reminder: A recording is not a performance
- 9 Methods for analysing recordings
- 10 Recordings and histories of performance style
- Recreating history: A clarinettist's retrospective
- 11 Going critical: Writing about recordings
- Something in the air
- Afterword: Recording: From reproduction to representation to remediation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Discography
- Index
One man's approach to remastering
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Learning to live with recording
- A short take in praise of long takes
- 1 Performing for (and against) the microphone
- Producing a credible vocal
- ‘It could have happened’: The evolution of music construction
- 2 Recording practices and the role of the producer
- Still small voices
- Broadening horizons: ‘Performance’ in the studio
- 3 Getting sounds: The art of sound engineering
- Limitations and creativity in recording and performance
- Records and recordings in post-punk England, 1978–80
- 4 The politics of the recording studio: A case study from South Africa
- From Lanza to Lassus
- 5 From wind-up to iPod: Techno-cultures of listening
- A matter of circumstance: On experiencing recordings
- 6 Selling sounds: Recordings and the record business
- Revisiting concert life in the mid-century: The survival of acetate discs
- 7 The development of recording technologies
- Raiders of the lost archive
- The original cast recording of West Side Story
- 8 The recorded document: Interpretation and discography
- One man's approach to remastering
- Technology, the studio, music
- Reminder: A recording is not a performance
- 9 Methods for analysing recordings
- 10 Recordings and histories of performance style
- Recreating history: A clarinettist's retrospective
- 11 Going critical: Writing about recordings
- Something in the air
- Afterword: Recording: From reproduction to representation to remediation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Discography
- Index
Summary
It may be a shame that many significant performers did not arrange to live their lives in times when recording technology was fully developed, but that is no reason to dismiss their performances. The aim of remastering is to make these performances accessible to a modern audience, in terms of both physical availability and the most informative sonic presentation possible. This I call the music to muck ratio, as its determination is necessarily a subjective matter.
I shall outline the processes involved in remastering from 78 rpm originals, with particular reference to a specific example, George Formby Junior's recording of ‘Rhythm in the Alphabet’, issued in 1938 by Regal Zonophone (catalogue number MR 2890).
Having decided on the material required, a suitable source disc has to be found. Curiously enough, this is often easier with art music than more popular fare which, although it sold in greater numbers, was played far more often and looked after less well, being essentially Gebrauchsmusik. In the case of Formby, the situation is not helped by the ubiquitous banjolele solo, recorded close to the microphone and starting half way through the side, when the average steel needle would already be past its best. Aside from the question of wear, there is also the matter of pressing material to consider. The largest market for George Formby's recordings outside the UK was Australia, renowned for producing beautiful laminated pressings of superb appearance, although this was sometimes achieved by over-polishing the metal parts, causing some loss of high-frequency detail.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music , pp. 210 - 213Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009