[primal tapes] Soli Video Gloria (ogg)

[Sam_Zen]

This is a soundtrack for a movie I made around 1980. With the Synthi AKS in conjuction with the Randrum pulse synthesizer.
Soli Video Gloria - 5:15

The movie was part of a contest, invited by a dutch club of home-made filmmakers.
As a participant one could have the opportunity to lend a black and white camera plus a video-recorder, still with reel-tapes.
So I took it. The actual video is gone into history, but I still got the soundtrack.

Of course I made a quite experimental video with recordings of a feedback situation with the camera, pointing at the tv-monitor.
Resulting in some kind of 'mandala' like pictures. With me, with my hand, in between camera and monitor, to modulate it.

The final 'thunder' part was illustrated by a recording of an aquarium filled with water, dropping a little black ink into,
with the camera upside down.

The winner of the contest made some movie with much wooden shoes, flags, and windmills ... Well, obviously..

[uncloned]

very nice Sam - the thunder is extremely good.
the main melody is meditative.

[Louigi Verona]

Guys, I am impressed. You constantly release "something from the 1980s", soundtracks, albums, songs. I think Sam here can release absolutely with no problem like a 7 DVD compilation of works and there will still be some b-sides left unshown.

[uncloned]

To be fair we release material from the 70's as well but the quality of my 70's material drops off really quickly earlier than 76. I have some where between 100 to 200 tapes left to go through.

Cassette tapes are relatively cheap and where some people write a diary I recorded tape.
I did have material on reel to reel and 8 track but mercifully this no long exists. I seriously started to play instruments, mainly guitar, in 74 I'd guess, on a department store guitar and console organ. (Both from the venerable Sears and Roebucks - the organ was my fathers).

[Sam_Zen]

As Clones said, I guess we just recorded a lot from the beginning.
So far, my reel tapes conversions are nearly completed. Still have a lot of material on cassette tapes.
I wanted to do the reel tapes first, because, strangely enough, those tapes were far more faster in deteriorating, than cheap cassettes..

[uncloned]

Sam,

I don't know about your view on this thought.

I find that using a real instrument is much more spontaneous and direct and easy to do once some skill is acquired. On the other hand you are limited by your physical skills and talents.

My point is I think it is far easier to generate lots of material with a real instrument than it is to code it. Of course there were / are options like driving MPT with a keyboard or FT II 's "key jazz" - but then the computer just becomes a (somewhat) traditional instrument.

Of course quality, at least in my case, could be considered an issue. Life isn't perfect.

[Sam_Zen]

I agree about quality. Some of my tapes are considered to be good for my archive, but not enough for publishing.

Playing a realtime instrument, being the pc keyboard, or whatever, always expose the spirit of that moment.
And showing the skills of course. But it's no use to compare things, to see which one way is superior.

Composing with codes, and/or mixing the result is just another way of working, and achieve things.
Two different fields of art.

[Louigi Verona]

Publishing standards are irrelevant. And it is not just an angry statement towards very formalized approach to sound quality in modern recording labels, it is a very important concept. If you recorded a tape - this is what it is. It can't be "not good enough" for publishing, because publishing is making available. Old records are what they are and their hiss is part of what they are.

So I personally would have no problem releasing such material and listening to such material. People who do... limit themselves greatly... to one standard, one type of sound, one type of music.

[uncloned]

In my case I meant composition quality. Before around 76 my ability as a player and composer was not good in my opinion.

[Sam_Zen]

I too meant composition quality. If it was recorded on an old medium, is not relevant.
So I agree with Louigi about this formalized approach, like 'if it's not 48 kHz, the composition is not good enough'.

But if I select such a work to be published, I do pay attention to the sound quality as well, before uploading.
So I don't go along with "their hiss is part of what they are".
You don't expose a painting with a coffee-stain or spiderdust on it either.
I have sophisticated tools now to remove hiss, or other background noise. So why not use it ?

An example of a synth sound (made by Tristram Cary), recorded from a vinyl EP disk :
Raw : http://www.louigiverona.com/webarchive/samzen/samps/examples/sideB0.ogg
Cleaned : http://www.louigiverona.com/webarchive/samzen/samps/examples/sideB_0.ogg

So all tape pieces I publish here are first de-noised.
As far as it goes of course. If done too heavy, then digital artifacts will appear.

[uncloned]

To be honest I find the trade off on my tapes to be:

Hiss and high end clarity.

or

No hiss and muddy sound.

[psishock]

i would pick the untouched first. Of course, if the job can be done without loosing significant quality, i would take the second.

[Sam_Zen]

2 Clones
I understand that, because somewhere you were talking about 'filtering' these things, but that's not the right approach.

Of course hiss contains high frequencies, so if just using EQ to filter it out will mean loss of other, valid freqs.
Hiss, click or noise reduction should be done like in CEP. It renders a 'profile' taken from a few secs of the noise.
Then remove it out of all other things in the track.

So to be able to remove this background 'profile', it's necessary to start the recording with some 'silence', before the playing starts. Or stop the recording a bit later after the end of the song.
So the actual background noise is there, nothing else. The material you need for the calculations of the profile.

If the recording just starts and stops, then sometimes this can be found in a short piece of pause somewhere in a track.

[uncloned]

I've been running the profile over the whole piece. perhaps that's not smart. I'll try your approach and see if it helps.

Thanks

[AppO]

I like the texture (hardware behind it ) and the stereo field. A wiseman's tune.

A