Categories
Uncategorized

Turn your turntable into a tape machine! (1952)

From the pages of AUDIO ENGINEERING, ’52: the Presto TL-10.

Next in this series: Turn your tape machine into a CD Player!   Followed by… oh shit then it’s the end of physical recorded music media.

Categories
Uncategorized

Speak-o-phone: Turn your PA amp into a record-cutter! (1940)

Records on Acetate or Aluminum discs!  Click here for more info on this early recording service/hardware manufacturer.  

Categories
Uncategorized

Popular Science: Basic Radio Techniques c. 1946

Nothing too notable in this book; just love the cover graphic.

Categories
Uncategorized

1943: A Dictionary of Radio Terms

From “A Dictionary of Radio Terms,” published by the Allied Radio Corp., 1943.

Categories
Uncategorized

1940: Radioman Romance

Was electronics repair ever a ‘sexy’ profession?  “RADIO NEWS” March 1940 seems to make this case.  Wishful thinking, I imagine…

*************

*******

***

*************

*******

***

Categories
Uncategorized

Magnecord INC archival factory-film now available online

Thanks to H. Layer: A never-before-available Magnecord, INC factory-film circ 1955 (???) is now available on YouTube.  These are the people that built the machines that powered broadcast tape-recording on the 1950s.

Click here to see the video on YouTube

Loads more Magnecord INC history and related information on PS dot com… just click here!

Categories
Uncategorized

Beyond Four Tracks

Sansui six-track cassette format c. 1989

Otari Compact 8-track 1/2″ format c. 1989.   Also, SECK mixer.

Toa 8-track cassette format

…and you better bet TASCAM made one too.

Above: some short-lived “more-than-four” home-recording formats that were available between the 4-track cassette and ADAT eras.   It’s kind hard to imagine how significant an issue ‘track count’ (IE., the number of available tracks of a particular multi-track recording machine) was just a short while ago.  It’s not unusual at all these days for me to make a production for an artist that has 80 or even 100 tracks.  And I am not talking about some crazy orchestral or prog-rock epic; I am talking about just a well-produced indie pop song.  Modern music means layering.  Lots of it.  When I, and many other folks started doing this, we dreamed of someday having more than 8 tracks to work with.  Well, as it turns out, ‘more’ didn’t mean 16, 24, or even 48: it meant infinite.  “Be careful what you wish for…”

What will be the next technological barrier to fall in the world of audio production?

I wouldn’t mind seeing all those goddamn wires go away, for one…

Any other ideas?

Categories
Uncategorized

Ladies and Gentlemen of 1989 (pop music division)

Cyborg chick with some sort of midi-synchonizer

I play the keyboards (for Bon Jovi)

(pointy guitars are) impossible to (avoid) / (resist)

“Well I like your style too, man.  Got a whole cowboy thing goin…”

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Wendy Carlos in her home studio 1989

Although I don’t necessarily agree with super-aggressive enforcement of certain copyright laws, OR the fact that she tried to sue one of my favorite recording-artists after he released an affectionate tribute-song about her, I don’t want anyone to think that I am hating on Wendy Carlos.  Given the remarkable and really uncanny life of this great composer, who can really judge?  Pictured above: Carlos with cats and synthesizers.

Categories
Uncategorized

Live This Wednesday 6.25.12 New Haven CT: Tomorrow Tomorrow

This Wednesday at BAR in New Haven CT I will be performing as part of Tomorrow Tomorrow, a new group organized around Meredith Dimenna.  Tomorrow Tomorrow is the first full-length album that I’ve produced in my new spot Gold Coast Recorders and it is very exciting to be bringing it to life for the first time.  Meredith is a truly gifted vocalist and the music is unique hybrid of raw country and psychedelic drone.  TT is opening for Daughn Gibson, a fine singer who was been getting acclaim for his new record on the White Denim label.  If you’re in the area, come on down; the show is free and Bar serves some of the best pizza in world too.