Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1953)

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154 BE A GOOD MIXER-ON TAPE! DENIS M. NEALE WHEN magnetic tape first was applied to amateur movies, users began racking their brains to devise a way of mixing together two recordings, such as voice and music. Well, the brain-racking has subsided now, to leave us with a handful of possible methods. Here are some of the alternatives : ( 1 ) Simultaneous recording of speech and music, using separate volume controls to adjust the balance (see Tips on Tape Recording, William Messner, Movie Makers, September 1952). (2) Playing music through a loudspeaker near the commentator's microphone. By riding the volume of the phono amplifier, you can insure that the microphone receives speech and music in the correct balance (see Notes from Magnetic Notebooks: 1, Haven Trecker, Movie Makers, December 1952). (3) Recording the commentary first, then playing it back and mixing it with music for re-recording on a second machine (see More on Magnetic Recording, Warren A. Levett, Movie Makers, May 1951) . By adding a second R/P head on the reverse track, you can do the whole job on one twin-track tape recorder. (4) Adding the commentary without completely erasing the musical recording. Each of these methods has points in its favor, but each has drawbacks too. Method 1 gives excellent quality, but it is difficult to judge recording levels without monitoring on headphones. The second system gets over this, but the music is likely to be distorted by defects in the speaker and microphone. Method 3 cuts out the worst of this distortion because re-recording need not impair quality, provided you don't do it via a speaker and microphone. On the other hand, you need two recorders or you must adapt one by adding another Record/Playback head working on the reverse track. Finally, method 4 can be carried out with only minor modifications. On some machines it may be sufficient simply to disconnect the erase head when adding com With one easy-to-make accessory, here is an ingenious method of mixing voice and music in tape recordings. mentary, since the supersonic bias in the R/P head tends to erase an earlier recording. But you will find that the music is distorted because the high frequencies erase more readily than the low. MANY A SLIP With the exception of method 3, all of these schemes fall down in one respect. Suppose you have painstakingly assembled sound for the greater part of a travelog. You have recorded a suitable piece of music and arranged that, whenever a piece of commentary is spoken, the volume of the music falls to about half and then rises again at the end. In a state of tension, you reach the last passage of commentary. Everything depends on speaking this correctly. In your anxiety, you stumble over a word. What now? Of course it is easy enough to erase the mistake and record again. But you can seldom get your new recording of music to fit exactly onto the first. Thus, unless you can find a suitable point at which to match up, you must erase the whole passage, successful commentary and all, to correct one error. At the second run-through you are more nervous than before . . . and few people have the heart for more than four attempts in one evening! A NEW APPROACH To combat these difficulties, I have devised yet another way of mixing sounds on tape. Its chief features may be listed as: (A) It enables you to record sounds one at a time so vou can easily do the job single-handed. (B) Timing is easy because the addition of commentary automatically reduces the level of the music. (C) You can correct errors in commentary without affecting the music. So mistakes don't matter much — and this means you don't make many! (D) You need little or no additional equipment. (E) Quality is good because neither sound has been re-recorded. Nor is a partially erased sound used for playback. First of all, I run through the pilot commentary and mark the tape at the beginning and end of each part which will have spoken commentary in the final version (see Making the Most of Tape, Movie Makers, January 1953). Then at one run I record all the music for a [Continued on page 165] FIG. 1: The elevated ends of this simply-made guide fork, when inserted under the tape, raise it slightly so that erase and record heads act on only half of pre-recorded track. FIG. 2: Some recorders may require this more complex type of fork to control both edges of the tape.