There’s No Noise In It

I always love it when I find home recorded acetates. The records are not actually made from acetate, but they are usually a metal record with a fragile lacquer coating.

The reason I enjoy these is that I never know what I’m getting when I drop the needle. Most of the time it’s someone’s piano recital, or other boring stuff. Then when I find something like today’s post, it makes up for all the bad organ music I listened to.

I found these two 8″ records at a white elephant sale a few years ago, and they are dated 1941 in pencil. The first side was unremarkable piano music in one track taking up the whole side, but the flip side only contained a single short track. On it was children playing with the microphone! A little yelling, which I assume is being done while they are enjoying making the monitor gauge needle jump into the red. Then the child laments off mic that “There’s no noise in it!”, then sings Happy Birthday”. I don’t know why, but I like this random private moment captured in time. Continue reading "There’s No Noise In It"

Dear Mr. Smith

Today’s audio offering is an odd one. This 45 record from Dictation Disc is a practice disc for increasing your shorthand speed. The record is undated, but from the tone of the voice work feels very mid-century to me.

A man in his best 1950′s voice dictates various fictitious business letters in increasing speeds. For example, the second track has our man thanking Mr Smith for his order of butter and asks for feedback about their packaging, but in… very… stilted… 50… words per minute.

These tracks are ripe for sampling. If you are inspired, please feel free to take these and make magic. All I ask in return is that you send me a copy and I’ll group them into a future post.

Continue reading "Dear Mr. Smith"