AUDIBILITIES
By Emmet Robinson
King Street Recording Company
Professional Audio Services for Any Purpose You Can Think Of
Video and Photo Too!
Celebrating Fifty Years in Business!
610-647-4341
www.kingstreetrecording.com
Blog: www.emmetrobinson.com/wp/
kingstreetrecord@aol.com

Volume 67, Fall, 2017

What Are You Waiting For?

If you’re even remotely typical, somewhere inside of you is a singer, songwriter, poet, musician, radio personality, author, trainer or professional speaker yearning to be free. Deep within your soul there may be a powerful creative urge trying to get out.
So, what are you waiting for?

Yeah, I know. Real life gets in the way, so you put it off. You wait for the ideal time, a better opportunity, the perfect time to start.
You wait until after exams…
or you’re more settled in the new job…
or the kids are older…
or your cold gets better…
or you get a better guitar…
or until the weather gets better – next spring, maybe…
or the economy improves…
or your credit card balance is lower…
or until…whatever.

There are so many ways to avoid making the commitment to yourself to start what you really want to do. Popular excuses include:
• All of your original hand-written notes have been lost.
• Your overweight neighbor sat on your guitar and smashed it.
• The dog ate your original song sheets.
• Your computer crashed and lost everything you’ve ever written.
• The new baby takes all of your time and attention.
• Your company has just transferred you to Finland.

All of these delays seem perfectly logical and reasonable. And then one day you find that you’ve waited too long. Your skills have faded. You’re no longer able to sing, speak or play as well as you used to, and all of your creative opportunities have been lost. How would that feel?
Seldom – if ever – is there a perfect time to do anything. Okay, what does that mean to you? Simply this:
Millions of creative people never take the bold step of expressing themselves fully – and go to their graves “with their music still in them.”
Don’t let that happen to you! Find out what you’re truly capable of!
Have you written a song? An educational, motivational or training program that needs to be heard? Do you want to be a singer? A radio voice? Professional speaker? Have you written a poem, a novel or short story?
Well, what are you waiting for? Schedule a recording session
and do it now!
Call 610-647-4341 or e-mail kingstreetrecord@aol.com for your FREE in-studio consultation. Don’t wait any longer. Call or email now!

IN THE STUDIO
Voices
Over time, so many messages can accumulate on a cell phone that the sheer volume of them becomes problematic. Memory and storage capacity have limits. When the internal memory of the phone is reached, callers may receive a recorded message that “the mailbox is full.” As a result, an important call may be missed altogether.
Eventually, decisions must be made about all of all those stored
messages – which to keep, and which to delete. Some are fleeting in their importance, while others are heartfelt messages from those who are dear to us. There may even be the occasional old message from someone no longer with us.
Why lose any messages at all?
A recent client brought in his cell phone for message transfer to disk. Duplicate copies were made, including an archival disk for long-term storage here. Finally, all messages were backed up on multiple hard drives. Now, the internal memory of the phone may be cleared for new messages in the future. How many messages are in your phone?

FROM THE ATTIC
Audio
When the professor passed away, he left a veritable treasure trove of old open-reel audiotapes – more than sixty of them! How to convert these recorded treasures to disk in an organized manner?
A few of the tapes were wound on standard seven-inch reels, while the rest were a mixed bag of smaller sizes. The smallest of these required extra care. The huge motors in a professional recorder exert a tremendous amount of force that can result in damage to an irreplaceable recording. So, for safety’s sake, these tapes were transferred to much larger reels in order for the transfers to be made.
As a further challenge many of the tapes had been recorded at the extremely low speed of 1-7/8 inches per second. On professional equipment, they play at twice that, and voices sound like the three chipmunks on helium. What to do?
A combination of both analog and digital techniques resulted in the necessary speed correction and successful transfers of all – each one requiring 7 1/2 hours to complete! All of the audio files and technical notes will be kept for a year in case any of the recordings require attention in the future.

Necessary Surgery
Recorded more than thirty years ago, the audiocassette was of an interview between the client’s father and grandfather. Over the years, an internal splice had failed, leaving the clear leader tape separated from the actual recording. So, before the actual transfer to disk could begin, it was necessary to perform surgery.
Step one was to crack open the original cassette shell and carefully remove both the tape and the leader.
Next, I opened a professional-grade cassette, saved the reels and leaders, and discarded the tape.
Then, after re-connecting the leaders to the original tape, it was loaded into the new shell and tested.
In its new shell, the tape performed perfectly, revealing an excellent quality recording of family history from long ago.

Old Favorites
In looking back over fifty years, some assignments stand out in memory. Some were routine, some were informative, a few were entertaining – and some truly inspiring!
• In Philadelphia in 1967 for a major conference, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave an hour of his valuable time to make a brief presentation at Barratt Middle School. As he was introduced, the audience roared their welcoming approval! His heartfelt twenty-minute talk was both inspiring and motivational. Did I keep a copy for myself? You need to ask?
• Another fave is a live recording I made of a very young John Denver when he was performing at Bryn Mawr’s Main Point back in 1969. John was one of the most professional entertainers I’ve ever met. When ticket sales for an unadvertised late show were less than we’d hoped for, I asked if he still wanted to do the show. Smiling, he asked, “Did they pay the same as everyone else?”
“Yes.”
“Good! Go introduce me – I’ll be right behind you!”

FROM THE ATTIC
Video
Home Movies
The original silent movie films had been previously transferred to VHS videotape by someone else. My assignment, then, was to convert the tapes to DVD and, in the process, make whatever minor improve-ments that seemed necessary.
After starting production notes, the tapes were reviewed and num-bered. The two duplicates were set aside and the rest imported to the computer in numerical order. Making technical notes along the way allowed keeping track of any anomalies that might need adjustment.
The completed videodisks will allow younger family members to learn about the lives and lifestyles of relatives from two generations ago.

Changes
In working with vintage videos there are occasional challenges. A disk arrived in the mail of a combination of home movies and still images. One of the still images contained text, which needed minor revision – just one character needed to be changed! Seemed simple enough, right?
Unfortunately the video format doesn’t edit in that way. It was necessary to literally take the video images apart, alter the individual images, then paste ‘em all back together again just in order to change a single number!

Olde Time Road Rocket!
Built in 1902, the Jamieson automobile was not like today’s cars – not at all! Started with a hand-crank and brute muscle power, the Jamieson was a wood-bodied, open-top vehicle with large spoked wheels – and a tiller instead of a steering wheel!
I was first introduced to this unique mode of transportation four years ago, when a California client provided original videotapes of the complete restoration of a Jamieson by a doctor in Michigan. After carefully transferring the tapes to disk, I made an extra archival copy – just in case.
Sure enough, this year someone in Belgium completed yet another restoration of the Jamieson and made professional quality videos of the entire process – and the first test-drive on a local road.
The video format was somewhat unusual and was a little tricky to work with. With that accomplished, the archival copy of the original restoration made it possible to combine both of and new videos on a single disk. Wanna take a ride?.

FAQ
Q: How have your services become so widely diversified? You do things here that no one would expect from a traditional recording studio.

A: Every new service has somehow been related to the original core business. For example, doing a voiceover for a radio commercial led to narrating a long series of corporate training programs. Reading so many scripts led me to write some of my own. Out of that came fifteen years as a professional speaker, a long series of articles and publication of my first two books.
Now, in addition to everything else, I offer private coaching in verbal presentation skills.
Starting out in 1967 with a single tape recorder, I never dreamed my future would look like this! How can I retire when the work is so varied and I’m having so much fun?

FROM THE PHOTO SHOPPE
In Loving Memory
When a brilliant mind is lost to illness, it’s a loss for everyone. Someone had the presence of mind to gather photographs of her, from early childhood to adulthood, and transfer them all to DVD. In need of just two more copies, the original was brought here for duplication. For reasons beyond understanding, the original would not play on a standard DVD player – but the copies would! Ahhh, digital technology – ya gotta love it!

Assistant Shopper
Just because you’re not computer savvy – or just don’t have one – you should still have access to the Internet.
I was happy to help someone out in shopping for vintage music on the web. He had specific titles in mind, and provided a detailed shopping list. It was interesting to explore the many nooks and crannies of the Worldwide Web to find what he wanted. Listings on websites change on the instant, and a specific product available at the moment may disappear in the next instant.
Now the client can have the music he wants – without having to buy a computer! What do you need that you don’t have time to look for?

A Word About Space
As storage space here is becoming increasingly limited, please remember to pick up your completed order in a timely manner. Lack of shelf space dictates that client materials left here past 60 days will incur a $10 monthly storage fee. Materials not picked up within one year will no longer be retained.