SH Spotlight A reminder about recording terminology --- TAPE HISS

People,

Just a reminder, recording tape first started to be used by the MAJOR American record labels only in 1949 after the union "recording ban" of 1948 was over. Capitol and Decca started in May of 1949 and Columbia and RCA-Victor soon after. The smaller labels like Chess, Sun, etc. did not start actually using recording tape in their own studios until 1953-55. Anything recorded BEFORE that time would have been done to acetate disk or wax biscuits.

When you talk here on the Forum about a song from the 1940's having "tape hiss", well, you mean something else.

Okie dokie? It's confusing to some..



Thanks!

Shellac swoosh.

Not much before. Bing Crosby got Decca to use the Ampex (they had the third machine, ABC had the other two to tape the Bing Crosby radio show). Other companies followed when they discovered that a master could be spliced to save it if an ending went wrong, etc. HOWEVER, most studios including Decca only used mag tape as a safety backup. Everything was still cut LIVE to wax or acetate well into the early 1950's....

Thanks, Doug.

It's an interesting story, isn't it?

Totally, yes, but most of the big studios used the 200. It was a big monster though.

You cut the acetate at 33 1/3 on a 16" disc. You pick the "OK'D" take and rerecord it to 78 RPM. Crude but it worked. Better way was to waste wax (as Jack Kapp used to say) and cut direct to 78 RPM discs.

Yeah, 1949 for the 300, 1947 for the 200...

If you're interested, I may elaborate, in as it concerns Nat's catalog. Someone may correct if I get anything fudged here, I'm gonna type right through this... In the late 1930's in the US, when Nat began recording, there were essentially 5 media onto which you could record:

1) 78 rpm disc, mono of course. This was the most common medium in the music biz and is the same format as the release media.
2) Optical film. This was the most common medium in the movie biz after the early 1930's. The movie biz and music biz obviously had totally different approaches to recording. The movie biz would record using multiple optical film tracks during sessions, which would be mixed down to mono for release. For example the multis for 1944's Meet Me In St. Louis survived and were used to make a stereo mix in the 1990's. I guess one might say that in many ways, the movie biz was more like the modern music biz.
3) 33 rpm 16" disc, mono of course. The original discs were glass iirc but otherwise resembled the microgrove LP more than a 78. This medium, longer playing and higher fidelity than the 78, was generally used for transcriptions (for radio) and optionally to "cover" entire sessions. For releases to radio, selections would be dubbed to another disc, and for releases on consumer media, 78 shellac, selections would be dubbed to a 78 disc.
4) Wire recorders, which were not a good medium and not used in studios.
5) Acetate discs. Within the biz, they might be used to make single or small number copies to hand out say to the artist or producer. Amateurs used what you might say were "portable" disc cutters. They wear easy.

Nat's 40's sessions, for Capitol and for radio transcriptions, were recorded on #3, the 33 rpm 16" discs, starting from the founding of Capitol (1943) to the introduction of tape (1949). Over the years, many of the 16"-ers were dubbed to another disc, or later, to tape, usually the master takes only iirc.

Many of the glass discs were destroyed over the years, intentionally and unintentionally. Many still survive. The Complete Captiol Recordings of The Nat King Cole Trio on Mosaic used those first gen 16" session masters whenever they existed, which was most of the set, luckily, and used the tape dubs or disc dubs when they had to. The DCC of course also used the best surviving source for the pre-tape tracks.

After 1949, Nat's sessions were recorded to mono tape, and starting in 1956 at the Tower, in both mono and stereo on occasion (simultaineous, both stereo and mono tapes are first gen).

The 1945 session Nat did with Buddy Rich, An Anatomy of a Jazz Session, was recorded on #3 and the CD (Black Lion label iirc) is a transfer of the whole extant session from those 16" discs.

Mno, a detail here: in the case of Nat anyway, the tape was used simultaneously with a disc. The tapes are first gen. They sound absolutely fantastic in the Mosaic set, where the tapes survive, which is almost all of 'em! The early tape machines were not that reliable and the tape was an unknown yet in durability etc. Therefore they took the precaution of recording to both disc and tape, and if not, to make a copy of the tape to disc. Some labels copied the disc to tape, but it appears all the early tapes of Nat are first gen. Either way, as Steve says, the tape was considered "backup" and the disc considered the master. Tape proved itself over the coming years and they phased out recording to disc.

Now that was a great product.