Horn Recording from the Movies.

[larryh]

A couple long time friends sent me these two links. Both having to do with horn recording. The first is a June Allyson, Jimmy Durante unnamed movie clip. The second is a silent movie short, about how records are made. I hadn't seen either of these before, they may be on here somewhere already, but if not they certainly are interesting. Not too much around when it comes to acoustic record production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cqnATS ... e=youtu.be (how Hollywood saw it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ6KmeL ... e=youtu.be (From the Immortal Voice)

Some interesting things here. I wonder though about the back up orchestra in the first clip. I didn't think strings recorded well enough to use in large numbers like they show. I love it when the dog is shown.

Larry

[melvind]

Thanks for posting these video links. I have run into them in the past, but they are really fun to watch. I got a good chuckle out of the violinists jumping up and down between phrases sung my Melchior.

[phonogfp]

The first clip doesn't feature Judy Garland, but June Allyson. The film is Two Sisters From Boston (1946). The accuracy of the process may be debatable, but the dog is great. Good fun.

George P.

[estott]

Thanks for posting these video links. I have run into them in the past, but they are really fun to watch. I got a good chuckle out of the violinists jumping up and down between phrases sung my Melchior.

I think that having the violinists running about is a bit much, but the singers usually moved away from the horn when not singing. Victor had a small separate horn which fed into the large one & that is where their singers stood- this doesn't show up in publicity photos (trade secret) but a few sketches caught it.

Violins recorded fairly well, though the Stroh versions were more incisive. It was the low strings that recorded poorly unless they were really close.

As with nearly ANY film the orchestra you hear is much bigger that what you see onscreen. Melchior must be miming to his own voice, though since he's singing something he'd sung hundreds of times he could have done it in his sleep

[epigramophone]

The 1936 British film "Calling the Tune" is set in the early years of the recording industry. Among the cast portraying themselves are the music hall entertainers Charles Penrose and George Robey, and the conductor Sir Henry Wood.

Several sequences show the acoustic recording process with varying degrees of accuracy, and the film is still available on DVD in Volume 11 of the Ealing Studios Rarities Collection.

Here is a still of George Robey at the recording horn :

[estott]

I recall seeing a Ca 1916 picture of Robey & the "Bing Boys Are Here" cast in a recording studio, and it just had a little horn sticking out of the wall. Either that was sufficient for soloists with minimal accompaniment or there was another horn out of camera range

[Menophanes]

I recall seeing a Ca 1916 picture of Robey & the "Bing Boys Are Here" cast in a recording studio, and it just had a little horn sticking out of the wall. Either that was sufficient for soloists with minimal accompaniment or there was another horn out of camera range

That picture is reproduced in Gelatt's Fabulous Phonograph. I have always assumed that it was posed statically and does not represent the actual arrangement in the studio. The three singers stand at a right-angle to the horn instead of facing into it, and they are carefully positioned so that their profiles do not overlap.

It is certainly true that more than one horn was used, even at a very early date. Jerrold Northrop Moore's study of Fred Gaisberg, A Voice in Time, gives a picture from 1899 showing one horn pointing at the sound-board of the piano and another for the singer. The Victor recording engineer Raymond Sooy, in his reminiscences (http://www.davidsarnoff.org/soo-editorialnotes.html), mentions using up to twelve horns.

Oliver Mundy.

[Wolfe]

I recall seeing a Ca 1916 picture of Robey & the "Bing Boys Are Here" cast in a recording studio, and it just had a little horn sticking out of the wall. Either that was sufficient for soloists with minimal accompaniment or there was another horn out of camera range

That's not really a little horn in that pic. It looks big enough to stick almost all three of their heads into the mouth of it.

I have seen some other pics of acoustic sessions where the horns were narrow indeed. From memory, Columbia seemed to favor those skinny horns.

As for multiple horns, here's (at 2:17) a clip of Charlie Chaplin conducting Abe Lyman's orchestra for Brunswick. As you can see, there is three horns : https://youtu.be/pn4pr4dMapM