Old, odd tape question

[Brian Olewnick]

Keith Rowe has a tape of a Mike Westbrook concert from around 1963-4, a rare document of the group while he was a member. However, it's in a very odd format. As he describes it, each side of the tape is divided in half longitudinally, so it reads, say, across the top half of the tape, then reverses along the bottom of the other side, then reverses again along the bottom of the first side, finally reversing once more along the top of the second side!! So playing through the entire tape demands four run throughs on a machine that alternates picking up the top and bottom of each side. Bizarre.

Does this sort of thing ring a bell with anyone? We're trying to find a playback system that can transfer the recording to a normal tape (so I can hear it, dammit!)

Thanks.

[Gary Sisco]

It's called a stereo reel tape, recorded on one track only, so that more music could be recorded on the one reel. A reel had two tracks running in each direction for stereo, but it was possible to record on only one if you wanted to. I used to record jazz radio that way because I couldn't afford at the time to buy music. The fidelity and such would suck and be in one-track mono, but beggars couldn't be choosers and all of that.

In fact, my reel to reel machine at the time would auto-reverse (one used a small piece of sensing tape that looked like foil -- when that hit the tape heads, the machine auto-reversed, which in those days meant an actual mechanical change of direction). Auto reverse wasn't necessary, however, as the same one-track kind of recording could be done by merely turning the tape over, to record on the other side.

Any reel to reel machine ought to be able to play it back. Just shut off the playback on one of the tracks and you won't hear the music on the other.

[Brian Olewnick]

Thanks Gary, hope it's that simple. I forwarded your response on to Keith--we'll see if it works.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Why don't you just save yourself the trouble and just buy the cd?..........

[Brian Olewnick]

Why don't you just save yourself the trouble and just buy the cd?..........
Ain't none! This edition of the Westbrook band never had a commercial release, vinyl or disc.

[Pete C]

Does this sort of thing ring a bell with anyone? We're trying to find a playback system that can transfer the recording to a normal tape (so I can hear it, dammit!)

Thanks.

Gary is right, but you should get it transferred to digital, not tape, as long as somebody is going to the trouble.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Ain't none! This edition of the Westbrook band never had a commercial release, vinyl or disc.

Brian, I'm finding it hard to believe that you didn't know I was just funnin' ya................

[Brian Olewnick]

Brian, I'm finding it hard to believe that you didn't know I was just funnin' ya................

Uh, yeah, I did....:)

[Nate Dorward]

Brian--here's what Martin Davidson had to say when I directed his attention to the thread:

I haven't time to log in and all that, but [Gary's] answer is wrong - one needs a four track recorder in which tracks 1 and 3 are the stereo pair in one direction, and 2 and 4 the stereo pair in the other. One would then just use one channel at a time. I have such a Revox machine.

If you use an ordinary two track recorder you will get two channels at once - one backwards. (I suspect this is what happened with Albert Ayler at Slugs - I don't know if this has been rectified since the original LP edition.)

[Pete C]

Martin obviously misread Gary's post. The 4-track 1/4" he describes was indeed the home stereo format, and that is exactly what Gary was talking about.

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm getting slightly more confused, but thanks, Nate!

[Nate Dorward]

Well I can't judge about what Martin & Gary say but anyway it does look like the equipment & knowhow to play the tape is still out there!

[Pete C]

Well I can't judge about what Martin & Gary say but anyway it does look like the equipment & knowhow to play the tape is still out there!

Easy to find 'em on Ebay.

[Brian Olewnick]

I forwarded Gary's and Martin's responses to Keith who said he doesn't think their descriptions of the matter are accurate with regard to this piece of tape but he'll look at it again. Thanks!

[Gary Sisco]

Brian, there have only been so many forms of tape recording. A stereo reel has two tracks that play/record in either direction. (so does a cassette for that matter.)

Doesn't matter which track goes which way, as mentioned above, because any track can be turned off, if only by unplugging the patch cord, if no other way.

I used to record stuff that way all the time, when I was too broke for buying music or even tape. I could record hours worth of jazz off the radio onto one reel, that way. Many hours, depending on the tape speed (though the slower the speed the worse the fidelity). When I was tired of whatever I'd recorded, I'd just do it again and record different stuff on to the same reel and so on.

It's also this same phenomenon, used a different way, that allowed for "bouncing" tracks when making records, back in the days before real multitrack recording as we think of it today came around. What I'm describing on a two-track machine, made records like The Beatles early and mid-period albums and Brian Wilson's "Pet Sounds" possible, though recorded only on four-track machines. You could listen to what had previously been recorded on headphones, while simultaneously recording both it and whatever you wished to add, on another track, by playing with the input/outputs and the playback/record controls.

Indeed, I'm surprised about this discussion happening at all, these practices were so common. Much of the tape-manipulations in electronic music from those periods were done with these and other techniques that used the machines in ways for which they hadn't been obviously designed.

Tell Keith to try this: unplug the left (or right, matters not) channel's patch cord, if nothing else. He won't hear the other track that way, no matter what, and if he wants to record, he can leave it unplugged. Then do the same for the others, one at a time, in the appropriate playback direction. The only thing will be finding out whether the recording began on the left or the right channel.

If in the end it turns out to be a four-track tape, such as has also been described above, the same technique can be used. No one can hear anything on a playback (including your recording machine) if the patch cord is unplugged.

By the way, you can look at a tape and see the different tracks for yourself. It's not magic.

[Gary Sisco]

By the way, given the age of the tape, I'd agree with Pete. Once you've solved the playback situation, which is very easily solved, I'd record it forthwith onto a new medium, whether a new tape or digital, matters not. Those old reels get brittle and deteriorate with time. If he wants it preserved, it's important to consider how fragile these things can be, decades on.

[Gary Sisco]

Another question: Ask him how wide the tape is. That will give us more info about what he's looking at.

[Brian Olewnick]

Again, thanks. Info forwarded.

[Gary Sisco]

Brian, it's really very simple. Two track or four, nothing is heard if you unplug the tracks you don't want to hear. If it's a two track, unplug one. If it's a four, unplug all but the one you want to hear. That's all.

Sheesh. To think that all music was once recorded on these rigs, and that reel-to-reel was a common home medium. Indeed, I was one of its last holdouts (there was a very similar argument about the merits of r-to-r or cassettes, when cassettes got the big corporate push, as there was and is re vinyl and CD today), as there was no question that, properly recorded, r-to-r had the best hi-fi potential. I continued to use it as my medium of choice until my last machine had a crucial part crap out that I couldn't replace. (Today, in a twist of historical irony, given the medium's archaism, I could probably find and buy the part online in the next ten minutes -- not so, then.) I gave the machine away long ago to a punk who, I realize now, thanks to eai and all of that, was busy using broken machines to make cracked sounds in his basement.

Who knew?

[Gary Sisco]

Brian, there's another simpler and perhaps therefore more likely explanation of the problem, which is that the tape itself is already defective. Sometimes if a tape got fucked up, one way or another (age alone might do it), there'd be "bleed through" from unintended tracks. Bleed through would also explain hearing the other, unintended tracks running backwards.

You can tell the one problem from the other with the unplugging of the patch cord, as already explained above. If there is only one track's patch cord plugged in and he's still hearing the other track running backwards, the answer to the problem is that the tape is fucked.