Andersongs

A safe pair of hands?

 

I heard an interview  on the radio this morning. Announcing a new version of an album, to be released in November. And that reminded me of my small part in the making of the original recording...
It 1978 and I was working for a tiny Soho recording studio called Anemone Sound. I was assistant engineer, working with Derek Hanlon. Anyone who knows Derek as filmmaker might be surprised to know he was also a talented sound engineer. Well, he was. Very talented. But, sadly on that Friday in 1978, he'd gone home early.
I was about to leave myself when the phone rang. Would I stay on for a bit as a record company wanted to do an edit on a new album. I wasn't too happy as I was looking forward to a beer or two, but I said OK.
As I remember, they didn't show up for ages and I was on the verge of giving up and going to the pub when they finally arrived.
I can't remember anything about the people who arrived. I think there were two of them but I'm not sure. They handed me a reel of quarter-inch tape and told me they wanted to extend the first track, side one.
I put the tape on and had a listen. It was certainly different. Starting with speech, then a big string section motif, before the rhythm section cut in. Pretty impressive.
Basically, they wanted to repeat about 2 minutes of an instrumental section in the middle of the song.
Now, back in 1978, the only safe way of doing this was to copy the whole song onto another recorder and then copy the section you wanted to repeat. Then cut the repeat into the copy of the song. That way you didn't touch the master recording. Useful if the edit didn't work or someone changed their mind. But then, the version you ended up with was a 'generation down' and would, even with Dolby noise reduction, have a bit more hiss.
So, it was decided that I had to copy just the repeat section and then splice that into the master recording. This is risky. I had to get the levels exactly the same, hope the band hadn't speeded up or slowed down and I was attacking their precious master with a razorblade.
So that's what I did. And it sounded pretty good, to be honest. There was a slight increase in hiss, but not so you'd notice unless you listen for it.
Which I do. Every time I hear Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds!