Amy X Neuburg & Steve Espinola: Live Layering/cutting of 78s

[Steve E.]

Amy X Neuburg is an avant-cabaret composer-singer who incorporates looping and layering into most of her work. Steve Espinola is a singer-songwriter who is obsessed with old music and old things. Together, they asked: Were any of our current "electronic" performance tendencies possible 70+ years ago, prior to the modern technologies that inspire and facilitate their use?

This is probably the most insane stunt that I (Steve) have ever been involved with as a record cutter. Stick with it. The end is rather extraordinary, if I do say so.

Live layering using 1930s-40s recording and playback technology: 78 rpm record cutting and hand-cranked Victrolas (actually, one Victrola, one HMV). Composed for a December 13, 2008, performance at Roulette, NYC.

The recording device was a 1946 Wilcox Gay Recordio 6B30 home record cutter. No vacuuming was used, and that's why I'm not giving my full attention to the singing: Swarf tangles had messed up several of the rehearsals.

http://www.amyxneuburg.com

http://www.paleophone.net

It's also featured in the Lathe Trolls blog: http://www.lathetrolls.com/blog/Steve+E./amy_x_neuburg_steve_espinola_live_layeringcutting_of_78s_b-22.html

[Jccc]

Awesome work steve! The recording on the disc sounds pretty well to! Did you plan out the eqing and levels before the show.? Or was it just improvising on the spot?

Either way thats cool!

[Steve E.]

Thank you!

Nothing was left to chance. There was a lot of planning and rehearsal, and certainly optimizing of the recording level and mic placement, but no adjusting the EQ. If you use the crystal mic that comes with the Recordio (restored, of course), the circuitry gives you a pretty decent result, especially on vocals. (In fact, in my experience, if cutting a mix, close-miking a loudspeaker with that crystal mic, in a quiet room, gives a better-EQ'd result than using a direct line in....because of that crystal mic-optimized EQ. Feels crazy and stupid to do that, but it's a primitive machine.)

What's most remarkable about the sound at the end is that it's acoustic playback!! There are no electronics in that final step. The one on the left is an "Orthophonic" Victrola pickup, and the one on the right is an HMV 94 with a variation on a Columbia Vivatonal soundbox (maybe a model #21 or #23). They are both metal diaphragm reproducers designed to handle late 20's-early 30s big-band era electronically-recorded 78s. Loud, bassy records! HMV ("His Master's Voice") was, after 1931, a branch of EMI, which means British Columbia and "The Gramophone Company." Many feel they made the best acoustic machines in that era. Even though the one I used is a 1950 machine, it's basically the same machine they were making in the early 30s. There was not much improvement needed. That was the plateau, and they made the same machines until 1960, for parts of the world that had little or no electricity.

http://z13.invisionfree.com/OTVMMB/index.php?showtopic=42

The only way I've found to successfully play acetates on these machines is to use sharpened new old stock cactus needles, which you can find from time to time on ebay. Steel needles will stop acetates from playing. And even the cactus needles will destroy the acetates after 6 plays. I had a complex spring setup rigged to reduce the arm pressure a little, but I don't know whether it was truly effective.

I tell everyone to get an HMV 102 with a 5A or 5B reproducer (and a working spring). Last I checked (3 years ago?), they could be had for $300 USD, usually including shipping. You may pay more for the ones that come in neon/fluorescent colors. They are common! They were popular, and they don't die: One of mine was clearly submerged in water for a time. It looks terrible and works great. The #16 reproducers that are commonly found on them have to be replaced. They will have rotted, can't be repaired, and they sucked to begin with.

[Steve E.]

It's funny. This chat forum has evolved into the thing it needs to be for the people who use it. And this piece feels almost off-topic to me here, given the current focus of the board. But when I started the site, 3 years before this video was shot, it was primarily with the intent of getting questions answered, specifically so I could do the project documented here. I would love to see more of this sort of thing happening on the board. Because....It's fun! It's the stuff I like! Maybe it's the stuff you like too!

[markrob]

Hi Steve,

The amazing thing to me is how well you were able to get 2 mechanical machines so close in speed that they didn't drift so much. And the drift that did creep in was so cool sounding.

Mark

[Steve E.]

Yeah, we knew a little drift was inevitable, so it was written into the lyrics and song structure. Nonetheless, we tuned the turntables carefully -- I think we cut two records with the same pitch on them, and literally tuned them until there were no beats. These mechanisms can be astoundingly consistent.

An influence on this, conscious or unconscious, would have been the Flaming Lips "Zaireeka," which is an album intended to be played simultaneously on 4 CD players. It also accounts for drift, and it is a wonderful, fun project.

But I don't think the Flaming Lips did any sort of rigorous wordplay games like Amy did here; they simply split up a complicated, playful mix over four CDs. I contributed a little bit to both the lyrics and music, and the original concept was mostly mine.....but Amy deserves all the credit for implementing that insane formal crossword-puzzle-level lyric structure. I doubt my mind could do that. She's all about that kind of thing.

We had to rehearse the song by having me sing my part while multitasking on a whole series of different things; because we knew I'd be distracted by the stress of cutting the record. I had to be able to sing my part without thinking about it at all. Nonetheless, if you notice, I would have screwed the whole thing up, in the second record, if Amy hadn't stopped my skipping a couple measures after the bridge. I'm not used to performing things so tightly.

[Jccc]

Thanks for all the information Steve! I will be on the look out for one those Victrola turntables when i can save some money up. Its really cool how its not powered by electricity.
I like seeing how people incorporate the lathes into different situations whether it be live cutting on stage or out in the middle of nowhere like the people do the the 78project.