The first time that I came across a mastertape was back in 1981, when I went into a studio as a member of Guardians Of The Ancient Wisdom. A six-hour session at Ariwa Studios in London yielded one track – The Count. The producer of the session was Neil Fraser, aka The Mad Professor, who mixed three versions from his 16-track desk, which were then copied onto the brand-new quarter-inch tape that I’d brought along. Nothing happened with that mastertape till 30-plus years later, when I compiled everything that Guardians Of The Ancient Wisdom had recorded on a 2LP set. The mastertape was in perfect condition, so didn’t need to be baked, like so many other vintage reels, and it was used to supply the original version of The Count, as well as two dub versions that ended up on the album. Everything else was mastered from cassettes recorded at live performances or rehearsals.
Mastertapes, whether they contain music by The Beatles or the Guardians, are a vital component of the music business. They’re different from the multi-track tapes on which the original instrumentation and vocals are laid down in the studio. When the producer and artiste are happy with the mix of a track or album, they’re transferred onto mastertapes. These formed the basis for singles and albums released by record companies until almost everything went digital. After release, the mastertapes were – hopefully – stored and looked after, so when it comes to reissues on CD or vinyl, it’s the audio from the original mastertapes that, in most cases, is deployed.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 2023-Ausgabe von Record Collector.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 2023-Ausgabe von Record Collector.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
The books every record collector should read. Vinyl, you may have heard, has made a big comeback. In 2022, sales of vinyl albums surpassed compact discs (CDs) for the first time in more than three decades in terms of global revenue, racking up more than $1.2bn.
"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.
David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods. For many, 1984 remains the nadir of his Phil Collins” phase; an artistic/sartonial/tonsorial disaster area. But was it really that awful? Forty years on, Matt Phillips explores Bowie's so-called annus horribilis.
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Someone needs to come and empty the bins behind the Lloyds Bank branch in Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s been raining and flattened cardboard slumps next to a flytipped air conditioning unit and a rusting clothes rack. There are two signs at head height on the red brick wall. One warns that you’ll be clamped if you park here; the other, a stainless-steel plaque, marks Nipper’s 100th birthday. Nipper, the dog at the heart of the HMV and RCA Victor logos, was a white terrier with chocolate brown ears, maybe a Jack Russell, Smooth Fox, or Bull Terrier, more likely a mix. This is his final resting place. He was buried under a mulberry tree but, you know, urban sprawl, progress, etc. The plaque was unveiled by the Chairman of HMV Stores on 15 August 1984, while Captain Sensible, Janice Long, and a Nipper doppelganger looked on. Round the corner, at HMV and Our Price, George Michael’s Careless Whisper was flying off the shelves, and every copy turned at 45 RPM.
STARS ON 45s
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THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT
John Coleman celebrates the great art of vinyl collecting on the 45th Anniversary of Record Collector and finds out, in an exhausting series of anxietyinducing sprees, how much vinyl you can buy today, ina variety of outlets, with 45.
Young American
A serendipitous collaboration with David Bowie in 1974 kick-started Luther Vandross' recording career. But he still faced an uphill struggle to succeed as a solo artist. Charles Waring talks to some of the singer's most trusted collaborators about his early years and how he battled to be heard....
MOD ALMIGHTY
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EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.
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David Cassidy was arguably the biggest solo star of the immediate post-Beatles era, yet his fame as well as his boyish good looks and extracurricular excessesovershadow the excellence of his breathily intimate, musically accomplished records. Simon Goddard, RC contributor and author of an acclaimed series of books on David Bowie, hails the work of the tortured pop idol
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There's little sign of slowing down from the 19-year-old Pete Townshend. Currently on the go: multi-media project The Age Of Anxiety; a dance production of Quadrophenia; and Pete Townshend Live In Concert 1985-2001, a 14-disc boxset of his solo in-concert recordings. Not, he admits, that his every whim and fancy are worth deeper exploration. \"Some of them are good ideas, some of them are pretty dumb,\"
