By Tom Mulhern
When I was a little kid in the late ’50s and early ’60s, I used to love being at my grandparents’ house, because they had an old jukebox that played 78 rpm records. I didn’t realize then that I was listening to the past, archived in a convenient 10" disc format. By the time I rummaged through some of those old 78s in my parents’ basement in the late 1970s, that jukebox was a faded memory, and none of the phonographs in our house was capable of playing 78s. At that point, I realized that those discs might as well be bricks, for as little as I was able to listen to them.
Oddly enough, 78 rpm records had the longest run of any recording medium–from about 1915 to 1955, give or take a few years. Before them were cylinder records (think of 2"-diameter, 6"-long cylinders with grooves running around them).Vinyl LP (for long playing) 33-1/3 rpm records have been around since the mid ’50s, and cassettes have been around since the mid ’60s. Technologically speaking, they’re old and moldy. CDs have been around only since the dawn of the 1980s, and minidiscs have been around only for about a decade. DVD? DIVX? Newborns!
What does this have to do with you, the guitarist? Lots. My first garage band recorded on a cheapo mono 1/4" reel-to-reel tape recorder and then on an 8-track recorder. Not eight tracks on a reel, but an 8-track cartridge, a medium that competed with cassettes in the late 1960s and early ’70s, until cassettes put a stake in their heart. Now I can’t even find something that’ll play those 8-tracks, assuming the tape hasn’t deteriorated beyond usability.
The point is that you have to choose your archiving media carefully, if you want to keep your music for the future. At one time, musicians had no choice but to write music and hope that someone else could read it and play it. The problem is, today you can’t hear Beethoven or Bach; you hear an interpretation of them. When you record audio, you leave the real deal: your nuances, choice of tones, blend of instruments, and all the heart and soul that you put into your performance. You don’t want that to be lost, whether it’s for your retrospective boxed set 50 years from now, or just to amuse your kids someday.
Here are some tips for stashing away your demos and finished tracks so that you can enjoy them someday (or pass them on to your kids, grandkids, etc.):
Archive in as many ways as you can. If you have a cassette deck, make a couple dubs on good-quality (preferably metal) tape. If you have a reel-to-reel recorder, make a copy on that, too. If you have a CD-ROM burner, make a couple of CDs. Do as many of the above as possible. Take a Noah’s Ark approach: Two of everything. Three, if you’re really paranoid. If you have lots of sequences, it’s not a bad idea to print them out as music notation, if your software supports it. Use low-acid paper, if you can afford it. If nothing else, someone someday may be able to take your written music and interpret it (perhaps you’ll be known as the Mozart of our time!). Remember, too, that Windows, Mac OS, and UNIX will eventually disappear from the earth. (Don’t worry–Bill Gates won’t starve!) And that means the computers to run your sequencing software will be obsolete, no matter how well you care for your discs containing sequences.
Go for quality. Don’t use cheap cassettes, diskettes, or other media. If you can’t afford better quality, wait a couple of paychecks, or even a couple of months, until you’ve saved enough cash to buy the best. If something’s cheesy now, chances are good that it will only get worse over time.
Avoid dead-ends. Good luck with this one. None of us can know what media will become obsolete faster than others, but a good indication is how widespread a medium has been accepted. Formats like magneto-optical (230Mb) and minidisc haven’t set the world on fire, and while they may eventually catch on, it’s a good bet that cassette or CD players will be easier to find in 25 years than players for these media.
Label your archives.We all have lots of tapes or diskettes, or whatever, that isn’t properly labeled. "Ideas" isn’t very helpful as a label, since it doesn’t say whose, when, or what kind of ideas. Write a date, write your name, write some notes. If they don’t fit on the media’s label, write on a piece of paper, and stash it with the media. Caution: Don’t attach it with a rubber band, because it will deteriorate and may leave a goopy residue.
Divide and conquer the future.Once you’ve made two copies of everything you want to archive, place one set in a well-marked box and leave it at mom’s, or a trusted relative’s house. Plead with them to never, ever mistreat the stuff or throw it away. Assure them it’s not junk, and that it’s important to you.
Don’t let your archives rot.The attic or the basement are poor choices for keeping your archived audio. Attics tend to be too hot, or subject to huge temperature and humidity fluctuations. Basements tend to be too damp, too prone to mold, and ripe for the possibility of flooding. And don’t even think about the garage!
Keep recordable CDs away from direct sunlight or extreme heat because they could damage the dye layer, which is sensitive to light. Keep tape, diskettes, Zips, Jaz, and SyQuest cartridges away from magnets, phones, speakers, motors, and transformers. Rewind tapes every year or so, and spin up those other media, too. And store your cassettes standing up, like books.
Watch out for technological turnover. If you see CD players disappearing from the landscape, or cassette players dwindling, either put yours in safe storage (with the manual!), or buy another one and put it away. Or, as each new thing comes along, transfer your material to the new medium. Supposing that audio material is still recorded years from now at a 44.1kHz sampling rate (like today’s CDs), you may be able to do a straight digital transfer. If not, you can probably play one machine’s audio outputs into another’s audio inputs. It’s not ideal, and some quality may be sacrificed, but it’s better than nothing.