The unsteady lathes of early Victor

[Wolfe]

Happens quite often on these early Victors...

http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/index.ph ... _the_north

The cutting lathes for many had severe flutter and wow. Yet they kept issuing them that way? Didn't discerning customers complain?

[barnettrp21122]

With bagpipes, how can you tell if it's right in the first place?!!
Seriously, though, I think what you're hearing in the melody are all the flips and trills common to bagpipe playing. The "drone" reeds seem to be steady throughout.
Bob

[CptBob]

If there was wow & flutter you'd hear it in the drone, and you don't on this recording. The intonation is pretty sour if what you're used to is classical equidistant tuning, but this is traditional music played on a traditional music. It's not compulsory to like it and from experience it's best not to be in the same room as someone playing the Highland pipes.

[HisMastersVoice]

As a minor collector of bagpipe records, and also a bagpipe player, perhaps I can offer some insight here.

The record linked to above is actually very well recorded. Back then pipers would play as though the devil were chasing them (as my instructor always used to say when I was playing too fast), perhaps more or less so in order to fit the entire tune on the recording. Pitch was not standardized until later in the 20th century, as the instrument was normally just tuned to itself. Pipe band competition and the desire to play at A440 with "modern" instruments (as in post-18th century) has changed that. Even the original pipe chanter than came with my 1967 Grainger & Campbell bagpipes would not be able to play in tune with a modern pipe chanter. The "flips and trills" Bob mentioned are the embellishments or gracenotes that makes bagpipe music unique.

[Henry]

Well put. The drone note is somewhere between b and c (a=440), absolutely steady throughout. Now, who wants to restart the discussion of recording vs. playback speed(s)? [He ducks for cover as the brickbats fly...]

[Wolfe]

Guess you folks have made fair points. I still find that early Victors often don't play with the truest rotation.

Perhaps I can rustle up a better example.


I happen to enjoy bagpipe music and have taken in several concerts over the years.

[victorIIvictor]

Wolfe wrote, "Perhaps I can rustle up a better example."

Look no farther than George Walker and Bert Williams' 1901 Victor sessions. Some scholars have argued that these sides are so rare because of the harm to the performances that the fluctuating speed of the recording turntable caused. The Archeophone CD release of Bert Williams: The Early Years has notes on the pains that company took to correct this defect.

No doubt there are many other examples, albeit less famous.

[howardpgh]

I would be more worried about a record being stamped with an off center hole.

[Wolfe]

I would be more worried about a record being stamped with an off center hole.

Well, those are plentiful, and remains a problem in record production to this very day.

[Viva-Tonal]

I wonder if the wow-laden Victor lathe(s?) was left over from the Berliner era, as those records are almost never recorded at a steady speed? And isn't it remarkable that Columbia's early discs don't seem to suffer this form of wow. (Although I've known some Columbias, even some made in the WW1 era, to have slight long-term speed drift issues.)