stuff

Virtual Instruo filter with cutoff and resonance modulated at audio rates

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Oh heck do I love the old Brüel & Kjaer lab gear...  a type 1405 Noise Generator feeding Pink Noise into two hand cranked 1621 swept bandpass filters.  The recording was made with two overdubs - one with the filters set to a 23% slope and one to 3% slope.   Each filter was hard panned resulting in pure analog generated eeriness!

Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2021.

Brüel & Kjaer: Twin 1621 Winds... (SFX With Lab Gear)

Warping time using FM encoded tape... here two intertwining arpeggiated patches from my Blue Zone Kontakt library were recorded at 240bpm using only keys from the top two octaves onto two (out of 7) tracks of a TEAC MR-30 Laboratory Analog Data Recorder at 38cm/sec.  The FM encoded audio was then played back at 9.5cm/sec thus restoring the pitch but time stretching everything around it including reverb, delays and modulation effects.  The result is quite magical – not least because the tape machine itself adds a load of mojo in terms of smearing/limiting/filtering/noise resulting in a sort of crusty sonic Sepia effect.

No additional reverb has been added - its mearly the original reverb and delay tails ending up 4 times longer due to the tape speed reduction.

The MR-30 was originally intended as an Instrumentation Recorder to capture mainly slow DC signals (yes, it will record CV in parallel with audio!) and vibrations from transducers in laboratory experiments but it turns out the unit is capable of recording 7 tracks of audio concurrently well into the audio range (about 10KHz)and can playback and record at 6 different speeds from 1.2 to 38cm/sec.  In max speed a C90 lasts less than 10 minutes!

Here is the recording... warts and all.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2020.

1983 TEAC MR-30 Slo-Mo: Molécules d'eau (Lo-Fi FM Encoded Tape Experiment)

TB-303 Test Run...
Sent through Hughes & Kettner "Metal Master" Tube Distortion.
A Million Times heard, but it still rocks ;-)

TB-303 Test Run

A mysterious recording found on a reel of steel recording wire on a Bakelite spool that was bundled with a WWII 1942 Armour Research Foundation (ARF) Model 50 wire recorder (originally built for the US Airforce) I purchased several years ago.

I don't know why but it just seemed right and I felt compelled to preserve this vintage slice of life on amateur radio from yesteryear.  My guess is that the recorder was purchased, like so much ex postwar kit, from a surplus store by a radio ham who used it to capture long distance two-way SSB "DX" radio conversations he'd managed to setup and work.

I love the aesthetics of analog SSB SW radio - it is as alien as it is as human with all its bizarre pitch shifting and phasing artifacts - a truly analog phenomenon!

Unlike the flight recording I discovered on another wire reel, some research into this one ultimately turned out to be very fruitful thanks to the community spirit and great record taking of countless DX radio hams around the world over the decades.

The recording itself was probably from the early 1950s and the recording was clearly made from the UK side of an historical shortwave DX radio conversation between an operator in Stockholm and a radio ham in the UK.

SM5RM aka Olof Fridman was an extremely enthusiastic and well equipped radio ham from Stockholm. In this recording he is talking to a friend G2JZ aka Jack Rushton from the Midlands in the UK telling him a story about an old friend and a strange coincidence....

Here is the text of SM5RM's original QSL card:

"SM5RM of Stockholm can give linguistically-inclined DXers workouts in fluent English, German,French, Spanish, Italian and three Scandinavian languages. Olof runs 150 watts on several DX bands, is building a 500-watt final amplifier, owns a printing business and has been hamming for 30 years."

Mr Olof Fridman was born on October 29, 1909, but died in late 1971, only 62 years old. He lived in the capital Stockholm where he owned a printing company named "Masterprint". He printed thousands of verification cards from the late 40's to the late 50's.

ARF built around 2000 Model 50 wire recorders for the US military during WWII. A spool of ultra fine wire, 15,000 foot long, could hold 66 minutes of recording on one spool of steel wire.

On the machine is a serial number plate marked USN Bureau of Aeronautics Special Devices Division Contract No.3153. It was built in the early 1940s.

Unfortunately I learned the hard way that when one of these crazy machines suffers a wire spill the resulting tangled carnage literally leads to tears as the wire is so thin untangling it without snapping the wire is near on impossible!

Transfer & Audio Restoration by D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020.

Legless "Silence the Mind" Exceprt

AMERIKAN EREKTORS