Saturday Night Fever
Ironically, my old audio cassette digitization from the "Tape & Record Show" 1980's archives this evening is a 90-minute special James Stricklin recorded at his house, and first "broadcast" New Years Day in 1983, the original soundtrack recording of "Saturday Night Fever". The irony is this is Saturday night I'm converting it. James added a few non-soundtrack tunes into the mix to pad it out to an even hour and a half. From the revised program description I made as a text file to put in the folder, as a guide, for the digitized recordings including, and other shows, spun off of "The James Stricklin Happy Hour":
"The Tape and Record Show: Episode 382. Broadcast Saturday, January 1,1983 at 2:28am central as part of the annual Tape & Record Show Enterprises New Years Celebration. Theme Music: Runaway(Bill Conti). "Original Soundtrack Recording: Saturday Night Fever". Hosted by James Stricklin. Songs include: Staying Alive, How Deep Is Your Love, More Than a Woman, If I Can't Have You, 5th of Beethoven, Night Fever, Jive Talking, You Should Be Dancing, Boogie Shoes, Bad Girls, Disco Inferno, Call Me, Good Timing, Tragedy, Inside Out, and Dance With Me."
Now, on the technical end of things, for the digital project, since there was no interaction for the most part between James and the music, I COULD have used the CD of the soundtrack I now have to "redo" most of the program for the digital file. However, I'm wanting to keep the digital copies faithful to the original sound quality the tapes had at the time, even though I'm cleaning them up considerably with the audio cleaning software. Also, as with most of the old TRSE recordings, there are unique sloppy editing, pausing, etc. moments in the original recordings I want to leave intact.
These tapes are nearly 40 (yes, FORTY) years old. The cassette this evening had me worried at first. The first few minutes had a slight "warble", but it eventually smoothed out. The "TRS On Location at Skatetown" tape I transferred earlier was on the same brand cassette from the same year, and I had to transfer the tape spools from the original housing to a new housing to get that transfer done, since the pressure pad on the old tape fell off. As I've said in earlier posts, I'm kind of in a "race against time" to preserve these recordings, as silly as they may have been! Just now got the budget to start the project though. Luckily, it's not TOO expensive, otherwise I still wouldn't be able to afford to do it. Already had a newer cassette deck I bought around 10 years ago that still works fine. Then again, it was sitting in the closet most of those 10 years. External hard drives have gotten cheap, so I'm backing up to TWO of those, as a precaution. You can NEVER have too many back-ups. Also saving the files in both WAV and MP3 formats.
Back in the 1990's, I bought a Philips CD-R standalone recorder, and transferred a few old tapes back then. Those expensive blank discs I bought back then ($5.99 EACH), now no longer play in ANY device. Most research I've done currently says spinning external drives are a proven backup, although they can also fail, thus me backing up to TWO of them.
After initial digitization, copies will be significantly quicker and easier. For example, tonight's 90 minute "show" takes OVER 90 minutes to complete. Cassettes have to go "real time". Then there's the wait for the software to encode the file with the added noise reduction, etc. I've noticed, after the final file is made, it only takes a few seconds to copy and transfer to the external drives.
"The Tape and Record Show: Episode 382. Broadcast Saturday, January 1,1983 at 2:28am central as part of the annual Tape & Record Show Enterprises New Years Celebration. Theme Music: Runaway(Bill Conti). "Original Soundtrack Recording: Saturday Night Fever". Hosted by James Stricklin. Songs include: Staying Alive, How Deep Is Your Love, More Than a Woman, If I Can't Have You, 5th of Beethoven, Night Fever, Jive Talking, You Should Be Dancing, Boogie Shoes, Bad Girls, Disco Inferno, Call Me, Good Timing, Tragedy, Inside Out, and Dance With Me."
Now, on the technical end of things, for the digital project, since there was no interaction for the most part between James and the music, I COULD have used the CD of the soundtrack I now have to "redo" most of the program for the digital file. However, I'm wanting to keep the digital copies faithful to the original sound quality the tapes had at the time, even though I'm cleaning them up considerably with the audio cleaning software. Also, as with most of the old TRSE recordings, there are unique sloppy editing, pausing, etc. moments in the original recordings I want to leave intact.
These tapes are nearly 40 (yes, FORTY) years old. The cassette this evening had me worried at first. The first few minutes had a slight "warble", but it eventually smoothed out. The "TRS On Location at Skatetown" tape I transferred earlier was on the same brand cassette from the same year, and I had to transfer the tape spools from the original housing to a new housing to get that transfer done, since the pressure pad on the old tape fell off. As I've said in earlier posts, I'm kind of in a "race against time" to preserve these recordings, as silly as they may have been! Just now got the budget to start the project though. Luckily, it's not TOO expensive, otherwise I still wouldn't be able to afford to do it. Already had a newer cassette deck I bought around 10 years ago that still works fine. Then again, it was sitting in the closet most of those 10 years. External hard drives have gotten cheap, so I'm backing up to TWO of those, as a precaution. You can NEVER have too many back-ups. Also saving the files in both WAV and MP3 formats.
Back in the 1990's, I bought a Philips CD-R standalone recorder, and transferred a few old tapes back then. Those expensive blank discs I bought back then ($5.99 EACH), now no longer play in ANY device. Most research I've done currently says spinning external drives are a proven backup, although they can also fail, thus me backing up to TWO of them.
After initial digitization, copies will be significantly quicker and easier. For example, tonight's 90 minute "show" takes OVER 90 minutes to complete. Cassettes have to go "real time". Then there's the wait for the software to encode the file with the added noise reduction, etc. I've noticed, after the final file is made, it only takes a few seconds to copy and transfer to the external drives.