How to add sound to amateur films (1954)

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sound. Then the final split track recording consists of two tracks, each only half the normal width. (On a twin-track recorder, therefore, you have got two quarter-width tracks down one side of the tape.) When you play back the tape, the record/playback head reproduces both these narrow tracks at once. As before, the apparently simple method proves awkward to use. The others, though more involved to describe, are easier to handle. Let us consider each in turn. Mixing from Gramophone Records If two gramophone records can be mixed for mood music from discs, why should you not record the result on tape? There are plenty of reasons. First of all, it presupposes you have two turntables and pick-ups. But unless you advanced to tape through the twin-turntable-and-disc system, there is no reason why you should have. Even if you are fortunate in having the necessary equipment, however, you will still have to find at least one assistant to help you use it. One of you will have a full-time job handing two turntables, pick-ups and volume controls. The other will manage the tape recorder and keep an eye on the projector speed. This arrangement works well enough until you want to use a microphone for one of the sounds. Then, as we have seen already, you come up against projector noise troubles. Even more pressing is the question of adjusting correctly the relative volumes of speech and music. If you try to listen to the result on a loudspeaker you will have trouble with microphone howl. To overcome this you must have the speaker in a separate room, or else use headphones to check the balance. As a third alternative you can mark scales against the various controls (p. 26), and determine the right settings by preliminary experiment. No matter which way you do it, the procedure becomes much more cumbersome than it appeared at the outset. 81