This is a found reel-to-reel recording apparently recorded on site in 1966 during a Yale music student’s degree performance. Quality is not bad for what’s essentially a field recording at 3 3/4 ips on a 4″ reel.
Category Archives: Audio Collections
Giving up iTunes for iPod management and moving to Linux- a how-to
I’ve been using a 120gb iPod Classic for years and had only managed it with iTunes. Finally, I’d just had enough with iTunes hogging more and more ram, and the interface becoming more labyrinthine and less useful, I finally decided to get an iTunes and Windows divorce at the same time.
I didn’t walk into it cold turkey- I’ve been a Linux user for years. I’ve managed to move most of my work and entertainment needs over to Linux.The only thing that kept my foot in the Windows world was my iPod and iTunes.
It may an anachronism in today’s streaming world, but my iPod is still essential to my quality of life and active engagement with new music. It’s easy to let an algorithm decide a new song fits your prescribed likes, let it come and go and possibly never make a dent in your long-term memory. In contrast, adding new artists to my library and building playlists takes some effort, but in the process I learn about bands and really get to know their music. The upside of really getting into the music in depth vastly outweighs the downside of lesser convenience, for me.
Moving away from iTunes was stressful. One of the main stressors was just choose where to go from there. GTKPod is frequently the gateway app, but I ultimately decided to go with Banshee. GTKpod is really only a manual manager, and I like to completely redo things periodically. Banshee does have complete iPod sync as a feature.
I encountered some preventable pitfalls along the way that even people sticking with iTunes can benefit from, so I thought I would share.
— If you are going to make the transition, I suggest you manually convert ID3 tags. Some iTunes users report Get info changes ID3 tags, or seems to, then they revert. The safest is manually initiate that conversion for any tracks you update yourself. I DID NOT DO THIS and spent about a week correcting data that made it into iTunes XML and was NOT saved to ID3 tags.
–Convert to MP3, if you haven’t, and override iTunes CD importing defaults, which are set to an ear-shredding 128kbps. It should at least be 192, although for maximum quality I chose 320kbps. This is something I didn’t do for a long time and wondered why my songs sounded dull, sometimes like total crap. I spent a lot of time going back to CDs and re-importing them at 320. Not fun!
Once my library was shored up, I mounted the ipod and made note of the mount point in a file manager. Then I started up Banshee.
Note, I have learned from the wisdom of others, when importing a large collection (I have 44,000 files) at first, do NOT choose the root of your music folder. Rather, go into that folder and CTRL-A all of the subfolders. Banshee got locked in some kind of infinite loop looking for files, went all gray and blank and this was the solution.
Also note, Banshee has a lot of plugins activated by default- some of which need to go out and get data from the web. I disabled all plugins except for the ones needed by the iPod. It ran a lot faster then.
After importing the library, I set about creating some playlists. For my purposes, I have a big catch-all playlist, and a subdued playlist called Sleep. The big catch-all playlist turned out to be more useful than just use basically as a big Shuffle.
When you sync the iPod for the first time, just choose to sync by playlist, and choose the big catch-all list. This is what Banshees uses as the base sync. I had read if you want to have more than one, you’d have to make the second playlist, save it as an m3u, then import that using GTKpod! As it turns out, it’s NOT NECESSARY. ANY playlist you create in Banshee will get imported along with the main one! I guess let that be a caveat as well as a hidden benefit.
So far sync has been blazing fast compared to iTunes on Windows. I am especially impressed with the auto-sync-a feature I had to disable in Windows because it was slow and tedious. It forces you to go to a special screen, even though it’s a process that could take place in the background, interrupting you only if necessary. I always found that irritating. In Banshee, auto-sync happens in a polite little status area below the main window with the number of tracks being transferred and progress info. Fantastic!
All in all, this has been a very positive experience. If you are the kind of person who is fastidious about metadata, and are sick of the interface overhead and bloat in iTunes, this might be a great solution for you.
Dusty Grooves: William Sydeman: In Memoriam, J.F. Kennedy (live radio broadcast)
[this is a part of the continuing Audio Archaeology series, where I explore the found reel-to-reels of past recording enthusiasts.]
In November of 1963, young American avant-garde composer William Sydeman was enjoying his major debut. Erich Leinsdorf was conducting a performance of his “Study #2” by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During the performance, word made it to the concert hall about JFK’s assassination. Leinsdorf stopped the performance and made the announcement to a stunned audience. Leinsdorf found copies of the sheet music for Beethoven’s 3rd symphony, and led the orchestra in a performance of the slow movement- the funeral march- in memoriam. You can read more of the story here as well as hear part of that broadcast.
Three years later, to mark the third anniversary of JFK’s passing, Sydeman debuted a new piece called In Memoriam: J.F. Kennedy. It features a young-sounding EG Marshall reading from a speech of Kennedy’s. Once again, as in the interrupted broadcast, the performers are the Boston Symphony conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
According to the liner notes, this performance was recorded live over the radio. Volume levels are a little erratic, I did my best to level them out. I do hope you enjoy this stirring piece.
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Dusty Grooves: Audio Archaeology- Bob Dylan Radio Special
[this is a part of the continuing Audio Archaeology series, where I explore the found reel-to-reels of past recording enthusiasts.]
This is a partial recording off the radio of an audio career retrospective of Bob Dylan. There is quite a lot of commentary by Dylan biographer Anthony Scaduto. We can only speculate about where the story begins, but it’s clear the taper started late, just as the Basement Tapes story begins. In fact, it seems that perhaps the whole rationale for the special was the emergence of what is arguably rock music’s first bootleg release.
There were no program notes accompanying this Scotch 111 7-inch reel, but one thing we can tell for sure is this radio program came out after the release of Self Portrait in 1970 and before the official Columbia release of selected Basement Tapes in 1975. In the recording, Scaduto says more than once what a “pity” it was that the tapes had not been released officially.
After some introduction, four tracks from the Basement Tapes appear. The versions confirm these were bootlegged copies at the time of the radio production. “Nothing Was Delivered” is not the official Basement Tapes version- the only exposure the world at large would have to it for decades would be the plain white labeled “Great White Wonder” bootleg which appeared mysteriously at some record stores in 1969. Several radio stations picked up on this fairly quickly. The special featured here was probably not one of these first-line broadcasts; it does seem to be something produced in reaction to the release, though, apparently within a few years of the appearance of the bootleg. The version here is labeled “Take 2” on various later CD bootlegs such as The Complete Basement Tapes and A Tree With Roots.
After playing four tracks, plus a cover of “Too Much of Nothing” by Peter, Paul and Mary, the story continues with released material. The tape ends as we arrive at Self Portrait. Here’s a complete list of the tracks included:
Nothing was Delivered- Bob Dylan and the Band (unreleased version, alternate lyrics)
Too Much of Nothing- Peter Paul and Mary
Million Dollar Bash- Bob Dylan and the Band (eventually released officially on The Basement Tapes)
Apple Suckling Tree- Bob Dylan and the Band (unreleased version, alternate lyrics)
“Clothesline”- Bob Dylan and the Band (eventually released officially on The Basement Tapes)
John Wesley Harding- Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding)
I Pity the Poor Immigrant- Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding)
All Along the Watchtower- Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding)
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight- Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding)
Girl From the North Country (excerpt)- Bob Dylan (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan)
Girl From the North Country- Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash (Nashville Skyline)
Lay Lady Lay- Bob Dylan (Nashville Skyline)
Country Pie- Bob Dylan (Nashville Skyline)
Take a Message to Mary- Bob Dylan (Self Portrait)
Enjoy.
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Audio Archaeology: A Yale Student’s final project, 1966
[this is a part of the continuing Audio Archaeology series, where I explore the found reel-to-reels of past recording enthusiasts.]
This is the most interesting of my early finds with this collection. Some tapes appear to have been recorded with a portable recorder, then re-recorded onto the larger reels in this collection. Understandable, they wouldn’t want to lug their 50-pound Ampex two-track to Sprague Hall, Yale University School of Music for this performance. According to the sadly brief note, this is the performance of a student’s composition in 1966, “recorded at Sprague, copied at Moore’s.” The only evidence I see at the moment of a “Moore’s” in New Haven is a restaurant called Archie Moore’s. Moore could just be a friend or a hobbyist.
The composition is thoroughly of the 20th century avant-garde strain. It seems the collector’s interest fell firmly in that area- there is a fascinating tape devoted entirely to the avant-garde and musique concrete. Also it was recorded in stereo- I’m getting the idea if a tape is in stereo, this collector valued it.
Without further ado, here is the student’s composition, clocking in at over 20 minutes:
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Dusty Grooves: Audio Archaeology: A trip though a found tape collection
[this is a part of the continuing Audio Archaeology series, where I explore the found reel-to-reels of past recording enthusiasts.]
This is the first installment of a series that will explore the contents of a reel-to-reel tape collection I acquired quite by accident. I’ve had reel to reel machines for years, and occasionally I re-stock tape by taking old reels off of people’s hands. This particular transaction was nothing unusual. I knew the tapes were old and used. They were part of the seller’s parents’ estate. Some notes were associated with the tapes, and as I thought they might contain info about their condition, I asked him to include them in the box.
The postman dropped off a big, heavy box about two weeks later. Inside were 63 tapes. The “notes” turned out to be a meticulous accounting of everything on all the reels, including index numbers for EVERY track. Program notes. Artists and composers. The collection is predominantly Classical, and in mono. A chunk is recorded from album, but a goodly portion was recorded from public radio stations in the New York City area in the 1960s. There are some host
announcements, but like you find in many carefully assembled personal collections, the announcer has been removed except when they share biographical information about the composer or performers. I am still sifting through this treasure, listening for station IDs. I figure across 63 tapes recorded one program per track, two tracks per side, somewhere in there the taper neglected to cut out station information, and I will find it.
As I find interesting things, I will upload them to the cloud and share them here. I’ll be starting with something quite interesting and atypical in the collection, so do tune in next time.