Tape Recordings Of Wedding Ceremonies

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28702, 27 September 1958, Page 10

Tape Recordings Of Wedding Ceremonies

I Associated Newspapers Feature Services} SYDNEY, September 21. A USTBALIAN couples are getting their wedding services recorded these days as well as photographed.

A new Sydney firm has begun to make gramophone records of wedding services and receptions so couples can have a permanent reminder of the most important day in their iiWs.

And in case some husbands have second thoughts about their wedding day, the discs are unbreakable!

A tiny microphone, the size of a lipstick container, is used to record the services.

Hidden behind a pew or even in the stem of a gladiolus it feeds every sound made during the ceremony into a control unit outside the church. Here operators balance the voices and music and chimes, and tape record them for later transference to a long-playing gramophone record. To make sure there is no chance of missing the bride’s and bridegroom’s usually whispered responses. the microphone used is so sensitive it can pick up voices in the open a quarter of a mile away.

For a full choral wedding, however, as many as four concealed microphones are used —one in the choir, one for the solo singer, one near the altar and one where the couple kneel before the minister.

“We provide two copies of every weddiing record—one for playing straight away and one sealed in plastic as a reserve.” ssid young radio expert, Stefan Sargent, director of the firm recording the services. “But some people order half

a dozen or more copies to send overseas to friends and parents. “We get tape recordings of weddings sent to us from all over Australia for re-recording on microgroove discs. One of them was of a wedding in Rum Jungle. ‘‘The most unusual wedding service we’ve ever done was for a man whose memory was very poor—in fact K he’d just had an operation to try to improve it. “When we got to. the church we found he had hired a movie company to film the service and a.- wedding photographer as well.”

Mr Sargent said his firm also recorded Christmas greetings, amateur theatricals, revues, parties. instruction records—even spoken letters.

One young man who had been jilted by his sweetheart recorded a love letter to her with soft music in the background. Another whose girl friend had married someone else sent her a letter disc complete with thundeo, massed choirs, blues singing arid other sound effects. A young bachelor had a flvehdur party recorded on tape and a disc ciit of its best moments.

“We get all sorts of requests, from people who want to record their singing with special echo chamber effects, to businessmen who want the whistle taken out of their voice on a speech they’ve tape recorded,” said Mr Sargent.

‘‘Revues' and concerts are popular. We made 60 records of the students’ revue at the University of Technology, and even more of a local concert by the Royal Philharmonic Society.”