MAKING RECORDS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 93, 14 January 1929, Page 8

MAKING RECORDS

AN INVOLVED PROCESS VISIT TO A BIG FACTORY (By Nellie M. Scanlan.) Dominion Special Service. London, November 21. A young man stood in his shirt-sleeves coaxing the syncopated melody from his orchestra. A lighted cigarette was his baton. Between bars he smoked. His persuading fingers combed the air as he brought in fiddle, clarionet, drums. The young conductor swung to the piano, rode it vigorously as he carried on the theme, swung out again to catch a burst of saxophones, and lead them safely to a sudden pause, and on to a peaceful finish. “Cut out that bar and a haff . . . . make it a long pause . . . now. A dozen pencils marked the score. Again they played it through, again, and yet again. Through a tiny window, a man watched from the adjoining room. The conductor and he exchanged glances. A red light flashed on; a warning for silence. Again they played it, and inside the little room adjoining a trembling needle wandered over a disc of white wax. They were making a gramophone record—a trial record.

immediately they stopped the record was played back to them. They gathered round to listen, each face alert, listening for his own part. The young conductor analysed it with amazing precision as it was being played, his ear straining for any faults.

“Tony .... that passage wants to go smoother —da-da-da-da, not ta-ta-ta-ta- . . . Gilbert, bring out that D and E flat. . . . the saxies were smothered there . . . mind that bit, boys. • A slight adjustment of chairs to emphasise or subdue the tone of certain instruments. by bringing them nearer the microphone, or taking them further away. A singer sometimes takes his top note with his back to the microphone, and his face to the wall, to achieve a certain They start again, another trial record is made, and yet another. Whether it is a simple dance orchestra or a Melba, the process is the same. These had been working all the morning over this merry little dance tune. It was noon before they made the master record—two of them. These are not played back, but perfection being assumed, it is sent on its mysterious journey to the factory, where a permanent master record in metal is built up. It is from this that the matrix is taken, and from the matrix, which is a metal impression, the record or commercial product is made. It was at Hayes, twelve miles from London, that. I watched gramophones and records being made.

When you buy a record, you have no conception of what an involved process goes to its making. I watched men weigh the five materials as carefully as the ingredients for a Christmas pudding—the materials from which the record is made. First, there is the crushed rock, ground to the finest grey powder—the filler. Cotton flock, and gum from India, give it texture and cohesion. Lamp black supplies the colour, and shellac provides the glossy, satin finish. Ground and mixed, and baked, it is finally run through great rollers, and emerges a thick, black sheet, marked in 6 inch squares. Cooling as it crosses a metal runway, it hardens and is broken into 6-inch biscuits, and stacked ready for use. It is still, however, dull black, and rough. I had imagined a highly polished black disc awaiting the imprint of the record, but I was mistaken. Rather like the printing of a newspaper in some ways, it is a short, surprising operation. A matrix, that is, the impression on the record in metal, is set, one in the upper, and one in the lower face of a hydraulic press. Three “biscuits,” which have been, heating to plastic stage on a metal plate, are rolled up like a lump of black putty, put in the middle of the matrix, the press closed, and in a-minute or two, when released, out comes the polished record, shining and complete, except for the trimming of the edges. , . Now begins the process of inspection. Girls look them over for cracks, scratches, blemishes. Under a dozen different headings, they may he rejected. In one room a dozen girls, wearing earphones, were each listening to a record,' listening for defects. In another the records were undergoing an endurance test, and three needles, adjusted at different points, were travelling over each record at once. What a row. These were afterwards tried on a gramophone, to see how they had stood the test. This test is like eating one bun out of each batch, to see if the mixture was right. Even the needles are tested. Not all of them, but a few from each lot. Fitted into a little magazine, and passed before a lantern, each needle point is thrown on a screen magnified 250 times. A girl runs them through quickly, noting each imperfection. The fourth is bent, the tenth is too thick, the twentieth too short. These defective ones are picked out afterwards. It is scarcely 30 years since this industry began. To-day this factory alone employs 6000, and on all sides extensions are being built. The whole is modern, convenient and efficient. Melba performed the opening ceremony to one of the extensions to this factory. Recently the King and Queen have been down to see how gramophones are made, and they have both made speaking records. . Dance music, they told me, is the “best-seller” of all records; orchestral pieces are more popular than bands, and the only speakin~ records that have a sale are humorous ones. Vocal records, of course, are immensely popular, but these also have gradations. The life of a popular dance tune is growing shorter and shorter, and now two months is recognised as its brief span. One very complex phase of making records is cop-right. No song or music can be recorded without the author’s dr composer’s consent. But once consent is given to any one firm, any other firm can make records. A staff of lawyers, with a knowledge of copyright ramifications in every country, are kept busy with this problem, and then there are the patent rights and the royalties to be dealt with as well. As I came along a corridor of this little gramophone world I met a neat maid with a trolley of afternoon tea. delivering a cup at every office door. An excellent restaurant is on the premises, and canteens for the factory hands. They hare their own ambulance and dressing station, and fire brigade, but what looked like “lack Maria” was not a police wagon but a travelling recording van. And finally I watched an automatic gramophone 'with Rabot hands placing twenty records on one after another, discarding one if you did not like it, and shutting itself off when the twenty have been nlayed. while von listened from an adjoining room. I fejt that next time I see a gramophone I shall doff tny cap” to it in passing, a simple gesture of my immense respect.