1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana

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melvind
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1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana

Post by melvind »

I am posting this record because I found some interesting information about it. It is a nicely recorded black label orthophonic victor from 1926, but nothing terribly special. That is until I started looking at the detailed information available for it on the DAHR site (https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/ ... Intermezzo#). This take is take 23 of 24 takes. They took place on multiple days and even in multiple instrumental combinations. It seems to be a really excessive number of takes. What I am curious about is if this was due to some experimentation, mike placements, arrangements, etc., etc.

What do you think? The end result is really quite good. But, I cannot imagine too many records would get to that many takes for financial reasons. I just found it kind of fascinating.

[youtubehd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZOTHSTdCo[/youtubehd]
https://youtu.be/FvZOTHSTdCo

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Governor Flyball
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Re: 1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rustican

Post by Governor Flyball »

This is an example of an electric version replacing the original acoustic version under essentially the same matrix number.

If you look into the Victor database, do a matrix search for the original matrix number 4050. The later electric version used the acoustic matrix number prefixed with "BVE".

You will find B-4050 Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo first recorded by the Victor Orchestra Take 1 on June 18, 1908! You will then find it was shortly replaced by a new version recorded January 26, 1909 Take 10. Then the second version was replaced with Take 15 recorded 18 December 1912 (the acoustic version I have).

The BVE 4050 matrix numbers begin at Take 16 and only electric Take 23 was used.

Just like the experimentation for the many acoustic takes, the early Western Electric recording was by a single condensor microphone and there must have been multiple instrumentalist reorganizations to get the right balance!

melvind
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Re: 1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rustican

Post by melvind »

Very interesting and how confusing it is when they re-use matrix numbers for things recorded a couple decades apart. Thanks for the info. I do enjoy the recording in any case. I have a better picture of things with this recording now.

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Wolfe
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Re: 1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rustican

Post by Wolfe »

They couldn't play the wax master of each take without destroying it. Seems like it would be more efficient to establish the balance over the live monitor feed. But certain corrections would still have had to be made to ensure that the wax master wouldn't be overcut, right ?

Do we have any Victor engineers from the 1920's registered on this board ?

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Governor Flyball
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Re: 1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rustican

Post by Governor Flyball »

Wolfe wrote:Seems like it would be more efficient to establish the balance over the live monitor feed.

That is a good point. Checking the logs, it looked like after the 3rd take on the first electrical day, they called it quits with no successful master. The next electrical session the fourth take yielded a master. Therefore I think it may have been a performance issue rather than a technical issue.

Wolfe wrote:But certain corrections would still have had to be made to ensure that the wax master wouldn't be overcut, right ?
The electrical system obviously would include a level meter, so I assume it would not be an issue. Except that the recording characteristic for acoustic (Orthophonic) playback was constant velocity which means that the bass frequency groove deviation could be quite wide. My guess is that the Victor Engineers were still collecting experience with the new technology.

Wolfe wrote:Do we have any Victor engineers from the 1920's registered on this board ?
If an experienced 1926 Victor engineer was 30 years old, that means he would today be 122 years old born in 1896. Since the oldest documented human currently alive was born in 1903, that would likely rule a Victor engineer from 1926 out. Besides I would not trust his memory! :o

Alternatively, is there any detailed documentation describing the 1926 recording process?

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gramophone-georg
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Re: 1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rustican

Post by gramophone-georg »

I don't know if this will have any of the details you're looking for but it's fascinating reading:

http://www.davidsarnoff.org/soo-maintext.html
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melvind
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Re: 1926 Instrumental of Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rustican

Post by melvind »

gramophone-georg wrote:I don't know if this will have any of the details you're looking for but it's fascinating reading:

http://www.davidsarnoff.org/soo-maintext.html
I have looked at this before, but it is really interesting to study a bit. I did see that an early Paul Whiteman recording went to 22 takes because they were trying to get good masters and had to do things on multiple days. I imagine once they had it down and had their newer recording studios things got to be much more predictable. Wow, how fun it would have been to be on the transition of acoustic into early electric recordings? The results must have thrilled the artists and the engineers. Thanks for the post. A good reminder for me and directly related to the theme of this thread.

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