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“COMMAND PERFORMANCE” 1949 RCA VICTOR 78 RPM & 45 RPM RECORD MANUFACTURING PART 1 XD39044
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2021
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PART 2: • “COMMAND PERFORMANCE” ...
This 1942 black and white film (Part 1 of 2, with a 1949 color finale) offers a fully detailed and carefully narrated look at the process by which a 10” shellac 78 rpm commercial audio recording (or a 331⁄3 rpm electrical transcription disc) is produced, mastered, and pressed, featuring footage from an RCA Victor phonograph record plant of the World War II era. This film concludes in color as Periscope Film #XD39044a, which introduces 7” vinyl 45 rpm recordings (TRT: 16:50).
Distributor leader. Title card: “Movie Wonderland, 6116 Glen Tower, Hollywood, California” (0:07). “Radio Corporation of America, RCA Victor Presents Command Performance, A William J. Ganz Production” (0:14). “Narrated by Milton Gross” (0:16). Aerial photography. A splice and jump cut. A man surveys the master recording vaults of RCA Victor (likely in Camden, New Jersey), removing master discs with metallic coatings from their protective sleeves. Still photos of Enrico Caruso as Pagliacci, Fyodor Chaliapin or Shalyapin, John Phillip Souza (0:23). Inside RCA’s record pressing plant. Melted wax is poured onto a hot plate, then covered. A flame touches up the wax, which is then left to cool (1:28). Next, the wax disc is passed to a recording room. A stylus is adjusted on a Scully 501 record disc mastering lathe, and Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz is recorded live by a studio orchestra (2:26). Extreme closeup on the recording stylus as it cuts grooves into the spinning wax. A recording engineer mixes the sound at a studio console. A conductor directs the “Victor Salon Orchestra” (3:46). A medium closeup on the studio master recording. The music reaches a crescendo (4:50). The recording disk is placed in a chamber and coated with gold, then treated with an electrolysis solution of copper sulfate (5:36). An additional copper coating layer is added in a bubbling bath (6:23). The completed master record is produced, and the original wax is peeled away. The master is rinsed and scrubbed, then given a bath of nickel, then coated in a fine film with solution (7:02). Another copper bath. The double disc is separated into the mother matrix and the master matrix. The latter heads to the archive. The mother matrix gets a nickel bath, then a copper coating (8:06). The mother matrix and stamper are separated. Multiple stampers can be made from the mother. The stamper is coated with chromium and placed on a shelf of others (9:24). The stamper is flattened and pressed with hot solder (10:07). The stamper is centered. A magnified look at the record’s grooves. A hole is drilled in the center of the stamper (10:46). The stamper is washed and polished by a woman wearing gloves (11:30). A large 3-story mixer is loaded with scoops of pellets and powdered shellac, which is then sucked up by a vacuum pipe (12:10). A hot, dough-like mixture is pressed into a flat sheet by spinning rollers (13:35). Rotating discs cut the material into squarely portioned “biscuits,” which are then heated on steam tables (13:56). A record is pressed. First, a record label is placed on a stamper, then a hot biscuit is loaded onto it. In an instant, a steam-powered press stamps one side of an electrical transcription disc of the Blue Danube Waltz into shape. A woman removes the shellac disc from the press. A man prepares another heated biscuit (14:18). Woman employees polish and listen to the finished records in a quality control test room (15:03). Women wipe the completed records, then package them into paper sleeves (15:53). Bundles of phonograph records are wrapped in paper and prepared for shipping (16:26).
Film continues in color with a 1949 addendum on 45 rpm colored vinyl records as Periscope Film #XD39044a.
In the early 1960s, Victor demolished its Camden, NJ warehouse, with many studio master recordings tragically still left in the building, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s notably among them.
This RCA Victor promotional film is not to be confused with “Command Performance,” the radio program broadcast from 1942-1949 on the Armed Forces Radio Network (AFRS).
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In 1966 I actually recorded direct to disk with my songwriting partner. The record got played on a local radio station. Quite a memory.
This is anothergreat episode of the making of the phonograph records by RCA when i was growing up in the sixties we had a RCA record player with the dog named nipper on the record player
Very close, It's "Nipper"
@@albear972 his master's voice
"Nipper" is the original, but there's also "Chipper" ( to represent NEW tech, as Chipper is a puppy). In the 1990s I bought an exceedingly high-end RCA VCR, And got BOTH the Nipper and Chipper 'plush" dogs with it!. The VCR is gone now..Still have my RCA dogs! The original concept of Nipper was, his head was cocked toward the sound horn of a Victor phonograph, hearing his master's voice on the record...So good was the reproduction of the Victor phonograph, he thinks it IS "His Master's Voice". Pretty good marketing!
It's only the splices in this film that is keeping it together - love it!
I hope these amazing records are preserved.
My folks had a copy of that record & it was something I grew-up listening to & loving.
And I can attest to the sound quality being surprisingly good, considering how it was recorded. The triangle in the intro was clearly heard & always brought a smile to my face... And still does!
Fascinating. So many steps involved. Imagine the chemistry, physics and metallurgy involved!
It was very Artesanal after all. My mom had several 78rpm records. In fact I have them, "Ramona" song is one of those.
Greetings from 🇨🇱 Santiago Chile SouthAmerica
Appreciated
I read that when the RCA Camden buildings were torn down, much of the original master recordings was not saved.
thats depressing tbh
"Mother Matrix" is a good name for a band.
From my understanding, the musical director on this film in the session was Charles O'Connell who was an A&R executive at RCA Red Seal from 1930-44, then went to Columbia Masterworks from 1944-47 until he was unceremoniously fired after he wrote and published a tell-all book.
Very interesting thank you.
If they were made the same way today, the labor itself would skyrocket the retail price to over $1k each!
What a complicated process to make these 78s! Nothing you could do at home. Compared to todays "home-burning" of CD:s on your own home computer!
There were records you could make at home. I'm sure it was expensive
There was the acetate recorders of the 1940s, but didn’t produce the same fidelity as studio recordings did, and wore out fast!
In Australia the records spin the other way.
No matter how careful they were those clicks and pops almost always creep in. The only label that I recall that was almost always crystal clear was Deutche Grammaphone.
Fascinating. Thank you for the revelations.
Handling masters without gloves is not a good idea.
Standards were way different 'back then' . . .
It’s before gloves 🧤 were invented
At least the old Nipper building was saved and is now loft condos.
Lot of jobs were given. Great times.
Wouldn't you feel popular if, 15 seconds before the end of the recording, you let fly with a massive sneeze!
LOL! There was no live recording 78RPM record splicing. You'd be the most hated man in the entire building.
Or a big fart!🤣
Pre-ghetto Camden, NJ.
There are a lot of small sound interruptions in the film, making it hard to understand what the narrator says!
A 72 year old ephemeral film is gonna have it's flaws. This was never intended to be viewed beyond 1951 or so, That it still exists is amazing. I have tape from 1998 that won't even play.....
2:00 They're cooking the records.
My folks had some of the old 78's they sure made good frizbee's
Yikes
Шаляпин порадовал / Chalyapin is very nice 00:55
By the time this film was made in 1949, this recording method was already obsolete, replaced by the tape recorder introduced in the USA by Ampex the year before.
Always wondered how the master was made.
Finisimo , Aun tengo muchos discos de pasta que fueron hechos por RCA en esos años
Where are all these recordings stored today..???
Let’s plate it t again… and again.. and…..
I hope they had plenty of ventilation in those processing areas… plating can take years off of ones life.
How many mikes are used?
They record directly on to the disc without any intermediate medium (e.g. tape) so everything has to be perfect, from the first to the last note. Otherwise they have to start it all over again on a new wax.....
loved the womans power,, in this process!!
"...where the temperature is thermostatically controlled..." Ya mean like my cheap ass apartment in Pittsburgh. 😜
SRO hotel: Bedbugs and cockroaches and mice thrown in by the generous kindhearted landlord to keep you from being lonely, lol
@@foureyedchick Wow, you know my landlord?😜
Too long scenes from the orchestra merely playing. I should want more technical details and insights in such a film about recording and record manufacture.
And especially an early prototype of the Scully 501 recording lathe which was used to cut this record.
Toxic manufacturing processes...wonder how many of these workers got sick from it?
Ha! you would never see any new records produced if they had to go through this process for every artist ... now everything is done digitally...the music is played straight to the master then the stampings are made
I thought that a conductor's hands went up on the beat, not down....
Where are these masters now?
See my comment above.😒
Thanks.
I was less than a year old when this film was released. What a strange world I was born into . . . there are no women in the orchestra! 😳
OK guys we only got 3 minutes to get it right the first time....
I am sorry but I cringe when the ladies grab each record with their hands at the listening section of the record making process.
How much nuance and high frequency must be lost in all the plating, peeling and dunking ? All analog copies, positive and negative.
I'm an old (60 YO) man, and I am SUPPOSED to believe that SOMEHOW analog audio recording/playback is "better" than digital, Phooy! A damned good amount WAS lost in this "pure" analog process. You had a first generation loss from the actual studio recording, then (as you point out) the reversing and re reversing of (decidedly imperfect) material just to get the FIRST run of records. Then re-released records are made from the end result, not directly but from NEW stampers.... creating ANTOTHER generational loss. Don't even get me started on surface noise (on the original masters, the subsequent stampers AND finally the production records...). I'm sorry, (Not!) Digital recording and reproduction is VASTLY superior. No gen loss, No speed variance. You don't even need "lossless" digital (beyond editing). A recording of your own garage band, recorded on an inexpensive ($200) TASCAM DP-008 and "rendered" down to a decent Mp3 file is VASTLY better than what even the BEST record production facilities had up until the 1980s. NOW is the "golden age" of sound recording. It sucks that today's music is autotuned mush-mouth "rap" and generic pop songs. (some of todays songs COULD be good...with decent singers and no autotune!) I'd love to hear how the Beatles or the Doors would sound if they had the fidelity in recording equipment that I have..on my desk! Don't get me wrong, Given the technology of the time, 45 RPM records and LP records were amazing. But it's so much BETTER now. I know us "boomers" are supposed be stuck in the past, But NAH, Give me digital audio and video over analog ALL DAY LONG!
@@jamesslick4790 Amen brother!!!
@@jamesslick4790 I agree. I wasn't yearning for the shellac or vinyl days, only stating that in the analog domain each copy tends to be inferior to the previous one. There were a lot of copies before the final one was stamped. I'm even older 70+ and happy to have good digital recordings, but most of my choice music was recorded on tape first. Still, good digital is better.
@@hugh007 I'm sorry if I sounded like I was implying that you were yearning. Ironically it's the 30 something year old "hipster"s that try to tell me that "vinyl" sounds "better". More humorus than that are the ones who think "vinyl" sounds better than tape, without stopping to realize that their favorite vinyl records were made from studio master TAPES. PS Tape was a great format. A factory made reel to reel version of an album (even at 3.75 ips speed) is better sounding than the LP version due to less surface noise.
@UCME1SK781QsgZTm3KLYIWBw Yep! Since reel to reel tape is thicker and the signal is physically more "spread out", The recordings suffer less "print through" and other deterioration that can plague cassette recordings. I have many 3" 5" and 7" tapes made by family members going back to the 1950s that still sound like they were just made! I of course long ago digitized them and now have multiple copies, and have given copies to relatives. (another nice thing about digital: Costs almost nothing to make copies! SD cards that hold 100's of hours of audio for less than a good blank tape cost these days!)
Neat video, although the timecode and skipping is mildly annoying
It's not skipping. The film was spliced in all those blips. Probably the sprocket holes were ripped.
@@yodoglover400 it's skipping entire words though... it's kinda hard to follow along at points
Some of those old films are in bad shape. You're lucky to get what's there. Don't sweat it. Can't be helped.
@@yodoglover400 ah, makes sense
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films similar to this one have been lost forever -- destroyed -- and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like these online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes.
In the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous CZcams users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content! We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to spend precious time dealing with policing thievery -- and not what we devoted ourselves to do.
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This film is marred by too many skips.
They probably did the best they could. Better than to have it lost forever.
Ads SUCK
So did that cheerleader nicknamed 'Electrolux' in high school. Don't complain. Just smile and say 'thanks' when it's over.