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"We know how to do anything digitally and with analogue technology."

Uh, yea, about that; go find me an analog pitch shifter. Good luck with that!

Well, obviously the varispeed control on the tape deck will do that. But if you want to change the pitch without affecting the length of the audio, you need one of these: http://www.wendycarlos.com/oth...

See this howto at Wendy Carlos' blog. She recovered the original Tron soundtrack this way.

Magnetic media like tapes and floppies use a binder (glue) that becomes corrupted with moisture over time, allowing the metal-oxide particles to flake off. Dehydrating the media can reverse the condition if you haven't already tried to access it.

I wonder if they'll hire her again.

RS

You probably didn't know that Wendy was also a gifted solar eclipse astrophotographer, did you?

Now that's a woman of note. Cool musician, cool geek.

http://www.wendycarlos.com/eclipse.html

I was confused by the summary at first, and now that I've R'ed TFA, I am no more enlightened.

Don't confuse DRM with copy protection.

DRM != copy protection.

A proposed version of DRM is to watermark downloadable media with information that will identify the purchaser. Such media would have no copy protection, but if it made it onto a P2P network, the original purchaser would be sued.

Thus, with watermarking DRM, honest people can make as many copies and format-shift to their heart's delight.

Likewise, Wendy Carlos watermarks all of her music as a way of signaling that she doesn't want it used without her permission.

Really, they are only hurting themselves (and artists who only make money from CD sales, like Wendy Carlos). At this rate, they will sue themselves out of business, because up-and-coming artists will find other ways to make money.

It's probably possible to make a somewhat reasonable pinkscale monitor device, if you give any credance to musician/genius Wendy Carlos. Check out her oil canvas paintings.
for those who are really lazy; This is an example: this picture is made from white, black and red light alone, yet the human mind will parse it as full RGB mostly. Interesting stuff, imho.

It's probably possible to make a somewhat reasonable pinkscale monitor device, if you give any credance to musician/genius Wendy Carlos. Check out her oil canvas paintings.
for those who are really lazy; This is an example: this picture is made from white, black and red light alone, yet the human mind will parse it as full RGB mostly. Interesting stuff, imho.

It's probably possible to make a somewhat reasonable pinkscale monitor device, if you give any credance to musician/genius Wendy Carlos. Check out her oil canvas paintings.
for those who are really lazy; This is an example: this picture is made from white, black and red light alone, yet the human mind will parse it as full RGB mostly. Interesting stuff, imho.

...her website is: http://wendycarlos.com/

Don't you mean 'his'? : p

Something the article doesn't mention is that Tron also had a futuristic soundtrack by Wendy Carlos, the same woman who composed (at least, she composed the song Timesteps) and performed the soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange.

Check out the website of Wendy Carlos, who composed and performed the soundtrack...her website is: http://wendycarlos.com/

ttyl
          Farrell

In case you find yourself having to recover info from old magnetic tapes (which have oxides that increasingly tend to flake-off over time), here are a couple of articles about baking tapes in order to restore the adhesion of magnetic particles to the substrate:

http://www.josephson.com/bake_tape.html

http://www.wendycarlos.com/news.html#baketape

The Wendy Carlos article is particularly interesting to me since it involves the soundtrack to the movie TRON.

FWIW all the CDROMs I have from 13 years ago are still readable. My early 6 year-old CD-RWs are also still working.

Unless you live in Chile or Argentina. Check out the antipodes map to see where you'd end up.

I feel like throwing in Walter/Wendy Carlos. So here it is.

What is it with you computer programmers?!!!

This guy's still got him beat.

More like Walter/Wendy Carlos with Switched on Bach in the 60's
to be copied by Hans Wurman and Isao Tomita and also a source of inspiration for Jarre, Eno, and other 'Avante Garde' musicians.

I hope that if Tron does get remade, the original synthesized & live orchestra blended musical score is kept. If you can find the CD, it's a blast to listen to (except for a few crappy Journey songs)

BTW, Wendy Carlos composed the sound track to Tron. She is also well know for doing the synthesized music in "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining"

When it comes to electronic music, I think that Wendy Carlos or Brian Eno have nothing to be afraid of.

Quad sound probably isn't as good as you're thinking.

Some expensive Ampex analog tape from the mid 70's was notoriously bad. After a few years the oxide would just start falling off.

The master tapes to the music soundtrack to TRON almost devolved into 'Pure Tree Sap'. Thankfully, Wendy Carlos was able to rescue it for its (legitimate) CD release--of which I own a copy.

Oh dear, it looks like it's out of print (after TWO years!?!?) so I didn't bother with an Amazon link to it--3rd parties are offering it for sale there at the time of writing this post for $28.50 to $59.99 .... :(

On a side note, I am so sick and fucking tired of electronic "music." I don't know about you, but I want my music to be played by a fucking MUSICIAN, wielding an instrument like an extension of his body and putting all the feel and soul into it that ONLY a human can.

OK, so how do you feel about Laurie Anderson , who plays hand-made experimental violins and Pauline Oliveros , who plays Accordian, but not in such a way that you can tell it is an accordian?

And out of curiosity, how do you feel about the music of Wendy Carlos, especially the Switched On Bach series?

I like and have a very large collection of classical music, I just like other music too, and some of it is quite weird, but usually more complicated than "a bunch of wav files you strung together in Acid" (Although that makes me wonder if you've listened to Not Breathing.)

And for clarification, part of what I meant about the limitations of octive based music was looking at stuff like eastern music.

...can be made from PVC/ABS pipe, available from your friendly local hardware superstore. Get the 2.5 inch ID pipe, between 4 and 8 ft long, and Google for digerdoo and PVC.

You'll get better sound quality with a vacuum cleaner hose. :-)

Some people put a lot more work in to their homebrew instruments.

...laura

For the longest time she lamented how the masters for the TRON soundtrack were stored on junk. All of a sudden, the soundtrack was re-mastered and re-released on CD! She baked 'em. She had some experienced people give her the info, BUT if your media is already "destroyed" and unplayable- What do you have to lose?!

here is a link to her tape restoration page

Granted it isn't really a 'consumer item', but it is a great example of how something with simple construction (all analog circuits!), can have almost too many features and capabillities, and can probably fall down a flight of stairs and live to create the soundtrack for TRON.

It will be making an appearance on eBay, BTW.

Yes, tape is a "true backup medium", but it is *not* a suitable medium for longterm archival storage - at least, none of the affordable formats up till this point (like the DAT-derived DDS format) have been. There's a big difference between a backup medium (a copy that's probably replaced every day / week / month and is intended for use in the immediate future) and archival storage (a copy that's intended for use 5+ years in the future).

While the failure of a tape drive won't separate you from your data (unless the drive damages the tape at the same time it fails . . .), tapes themselves deteriorate over time. Here's an article about the problems the National Archives here in the United States have encountered with preserving copies of the Nixon tapes on DDS's audio cousin DAT. An excerpt:

"During the National Archives' routine monitoring of the tapes'
condition, the analog reel-to-reel copies have shown no signs of
deterioration whereas there is an estimated 5-10% catastrophic failure
rate among the DATs in the collection. There appears to be no pattern
to the failures. It has occurred on new tapes that were recorded six
months ago, and it has occurred on tapes that were recorded six years
ago. It has occurred on all brands of DAT purchased throughout the
previous seven years. Accordingly, the archivists routinely reduplicate
these DATS on multiple copies. As insurance, archivists also transfer
DAT copies back onto analog reel-to-reel preservation copies. Unlike
the other preservation analog copies, these copies have not been
filtered and closely "mirror" the original tapes. Therefore, in the
future when technology has progressed, the archivists can retrieve
conversations that are extremely close to the original audio recordings
and enhance these with the latest technology."

Leading audio preservationists have issued their own warning. This company deals with audio preservation, and has some interesting things to say about tape formats - analog and digital.

Of course, DDS tapes have supposedly been manufactured to a higher standard than their Audio DAT cousins, sport finer particles and stronger binders, and the format includes additional error correction and redundancy. Still, these issues with a modern tape format like Audio DAT are not an encouraging sign for those seeking to perform archival storage using DDS and it contemporaries. HP for example only claims a 10 year archival life for DDS. Contrast that with the 75-100 year lifespans Kodak and TDK are claiming for CD-R.

These longevity issues won't just be confined to older tape backup formats though, if history is any indication. It's the nature of the medium. I think Sony is currently claiming a 30-year lifespan for AIT, and HP something similar for their new format, but of course we only have a couple of years' experience with them so far, and given the incredible data density of those formats, if something should go wrong with either of them the results could be catastrophic. Unexpected deterioration has certainly happened with tape before - witness this article composer and synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos put on her website, as well as her own experience with her older tape masters.

Hard drives certainly aren't a great archival medium either, but I wouldn't be so quick to assert that tape is superior. At least drives have the advantage of being sealed from the outside atmosphere, and contain within them all the logic and hardware required to extract that information in the future. The only big issues I can see are, will there still be equipment to interface with them in 10 to 20 years (probably, since IDE is so widespread) and will the drives still spin up in 10 to 20 years (who knows). It's that second issue that's the real buzzkill for HD's as a longterm storage medium. Manufacturers won't even issue a decent warranty on drives anymore. What does that say about their planned longevity?

Me, I think your best bet is DVD. But if you really want to be able to read that data in the future, I'd suggest copying it to at least two different formats, perhaps AIT *and* DVD. Don't forget to check on it every few years, too. If there's any sign of deterioration, you'll hopefully be able to make another clone before the failure becomes catastrophic (perhaps to a superior format that hasn't even been invented yet). If you want something you can just throw in a hole and forget about, sorry - that media doesn't exist.

Yes, tape is a "true backup medium", but it is *not* a suitable medium for longterm archival storage - at least, none of the affordable formats up till this point (like the DAT-derived DDS format) have been. There's a big difference between a backup medium (a copy that's probably replaced every day / week / month and is intended for use in the immediate future) and archival storage (a copy that's intended for use 5+ years in the future).

While the failure of a tape drive won't separate you from your data (unless the drive damages the tape at the same time it fails . . .), tapes themselves deteriorate over time. Here's an article about the problems the National Archives here in the United States have encountered with preserving copies of the Nixon tapes on DDS's audio cousin DAT. An excerpt:

"During the National Archives' routine monitoring of the tapes'
condition, the analog reel-to-reel copies have shown no signs of
deterioration whereas there is an estimated 5-10% catastrophic failure
rate among the DATs in the collection. There appears to be no pattern
to the failures. It has occurred on new tapes that were recorded six
months ago, and it has occurred on tapes that were recorded six years
ago. It has occurred on all brands of DAT purchased throughout the
previous seven years. Accordingly, the archivists routinely reduplicate
these DATS on multiple copies. As insurance, archivists also transfer
DAT copies back onto analog reel-to-reel preservation copies. Unlike
the other preservation analog copies, these copies have not been
filtered and closely "mirror" the original tapes. Therefore, in the
future when technology has progressed, the archivists can retrieve
conversations that are extremely close to the original audio recordings
and enhance these with the latest technology."

Leading audio preservationists have issued their own warning. This company deals with audio preservation, and has some interesting things to say about tape formats - analog and digital.

Of course, DDS tapes have supposedly been manufactured to a higher standard than their Audio DAT cousins, sport finer particles and stronger binders, and the format includes additional error correction and redundancy. Still, these issues with a modern tape format like Audio DAT are not an encouraging sign for those seeking to perform archival storage using DDS and it contemporaries. HP for example only claims a 10 year archival life for DDS. Contrast that with the 75-100 year lifespans Kodak and TDK are claiming for CD-R.

These longevity issues won't just be confined to older tape backup formats though, if history is any indication. It's the nature of the medium. I think Sony is currently claiming a 30-year lifespan for AIT, and HP something similar for their new format, but of course we only have a couple of years' experience with them so far, and given the incredible data density of those formats, if something should go wrong with either of them the results could be catastrophic. Unexpected deterioration has certainly happened with tape before - witness this article composer and synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos put on her website, as well as her own experience with her older tape masters.

Hard drives certainly aren't a great archival medium either, but I wouldn't be so quick to assert that tape is superior. At least drives have the advantage of being sealed from the outside atmosphere, and contain within them all the logic and hardware required to extract that information in the future. The only big issues I can see are, will there still be equipment to interface with them in 10 to 20 years (probably, since IDE is so widespread) and will the drives still spin up in 10 to 20 years (who knows). It's that second issue that's the real buzzkill for HD's as a longterm storage medium. Manufacturers won't even issue a decent warranty on drives anymore. What does that say about their planned longevity?

Me, I think your best bet is DVD. But if you really want to be able to read that data in the future, I'd suggest copying it to at least two different formats, perhaps AIT *and* DVD. Don't forget to check on it every few years, too. If there's any sign of deterioration, you'll hopefully be able to make another clone before the failure becomes catastrophic (perhaps to a superior format that hasn't even been invented yet). If you want something you can just throw in a hole and forget about, sorry - that media doesn't exist.

Wha'?? No mention of Wendy Carlos and the wonderful Tron soundtrack??

Wha'?? No mention of Wendy Carlos and the wonderful Tron soundtrack??

It's TRUE! You do look like a total jackass!

OT: Just say "Texas Style!" after everything you say. It's fun, and it confuses the hell out of people. Texas Style!

And for those interested in a history lesson: Wendy Carlos Tangerine Dream Kraftwerk Larry Fast/Synergy

It makes for a fascinating story, especially considering the future of classic works -- will they be lost forever when the media disintegrates?

I bought the $100 special edition laserdisc set a few years ago -- so I'm a bit peeved now.

But in happier news, Wendy Carlos reports that the soundtrack is finally coming out on CD.

Read the story HERE

I've got some of Walter's earlier music on CD, such as Beauty in the Beast, and somewhere packed away a vinyl (!) of TRON.

I'd love to have a remastered CD of TRON, particularly that which wasn't included in the first go-round.

I've got some of Walter's earlier music on CD, such as Beauty in the Beast, and somewhere packed away a vinyl (!) of TRON.

I'd love to have a remastered CD of TRON, particularly that which wasn't included in the first go-round.

I've got some of Walter's earlier music on CD, such as Beauty in the Beast, and somewhere packed away a vinyl (!) of TRON.

I'd love to have a remastered CD of TRON, particularly that which wasn't included in the first go-round.

Coming from the "music making" side of the game, I still can't stop wondering about those audiophiles. Sure, good speakers and amps matter. But there's more idotic stuff to be found in the scene than just inchwide speaker cables. The german computer mag c't just recently tested a CD-Demagnitizer. Of course it didn't change anything but one of those audiophile crazes really had the guts to send a letter in the reigns of "It's not my problem if you can't hear it, I certainly can !" Didn't CDs work with Lasers and stuff ? But how in god's name can music sound "better" in a home environment than in the studio ? It might sound "different" (because only a handful of studios have THAT expensive speaker equipment), to what the musican (or the engineer) heard, but can you really claim that it sounds better ? Doesn't it (philosophically speaking) always sound worse, because it doesn't match the intentions of the creator ? If I only could afford those Tannoy Reveal monitor speakers... A few very interesting points have been made by Mrs. Wendy "Switched on Bach" Carlos who has some good points on yer beloved vinyl platters and other hi-fi matters www.wendycarlos.com

If I don't miss my guess that one is by Wendy Carlos, and is justifiably famous. I found it for you: http://www.wendycarlos.com/+wcco.html. The original record is out of print and the transcendent benevolence of the record companies never saw fit to release it on CD- looks like Wendy Carlos (also, interestingly, the Residents) found some sort of small label to do this (distributed by Rykodisc- I'm not sure if this is a vanity indie or not). Carlos has recently regained rights to a lot of her music from the record companies- God knows how :)

Most of Wendy Carlos' early recordings have now been remastered (by Wendy) and are available as the "Switched On Box Set". Check Wendy's web site for more info.