Rant: Shortcuts they took on audio cassettes back in the day

[Dermbrian]

A lot of people here seem interested in a Karaoke function in their jukeboxes/music collections.

Does anyone else get a kick out of playing along on an instrument?  Keyboard and guitar here....and that is why I'm interested in the pitch of the music as I re-rip my vinyl and tape collection, to FLAC so that I hopefully won't have to go through this all again.

As I started out on the process this time, I made sure to get my turntable turning at exactly 33 1/3 rpm as shown on a strobe disk using a fluorescent light.  I then put on an old Columbia album from the late 1950's of Nelson Riddle playing standards for sing-a-long entitled "Sing A Song With Riddle".   The LP set even includes several pages of vocal scores and key signatures.  Sure enough, that album was right on pitch with our recently tuned piano under those circumstances.  Those engineers did a good job of mastering and reproducing.

[rant on]

Now, I've begun ripping any old cassettes I have that still play acceptably.  That would be about 1 in 3.  Most have lost their little felt pressure pad or else squeak horribly as they play.  On the ones that do play, I'm rediscovering a dirty little secret.  Engineers sped up or slowed down individual songs in order to make them fit.  Probably to make them fit on the least amount of tape possible.  Not by a whole note or a flat or a sharp, but usually by something frustratingly in between.

Example:  Peter, Paul and Mary, their cassette entitled "Album"
Their final song "Well, Well, Well" obviously starts out on an E minor chord.  A simple key of G song, easily played on the guitar.  Go find a copy of the song on YouTube and, sure enough, that's what they're playing.  On the cassette, it's closer to an E-flat minor.  On side one, all the songs seem to be consistently slow by some small amount and that could be my tape deck.  On side two, they got creative like that, and no two songs are at the same recorded speed, so their pitch and tempo are off.

I can fix this in Audacity.  It is going to take forever, but I'm going to do it.  Again, though, good thing most of my cassettes are unplayable now due to the other issues with the media.

I've recorded three cassettes by different artists so far, and they've all suffered from tracks being altered to fit.

[rant off]

Thank God I was born just a few years to late for 8-tracks!

Brian



Their final song on the cas

[Barry Barcrest]

AFAIK 8 Track is better quality than normal cassette so you might not see this issue.... Not sure, i'm just saying. 8 Track was also availble until the late 90's in the US IIRC