In part one I described how my love of sound began with a large reel-to-reel tape recorder, and how I discovered sound effects records. In part two, my interest deepens, and expands, as we move into the 1980s.

Forgive a brief digression before we get back to the main theme.

The history and use of sound effects is interesting in its own right. The use of atmospheric sound effects, created by actors or back stage crews often using mechanical means, dates back at least two thousand years. Creating the sound of horses’ hooves, or weather such as thunder or wind, is still used to supplement the action on the stage, though more often than not these days the effects are reproduced electronically. The techniques transferred fairly readily to film-making, once sound was added to the pictures. The latest technologies were employed to record and store useful sounds, and very quickly large libraries of effects were made. 

The dear old British Broadcasting Corporation was one of the first radio stations to broadcast drama productions. Back in the 1920s and 1930s almost all broadcasting was live to air, as recording technology was still quite limited in duration and quality. Plays and serials would have a floor manager equipped with various implements, up to and including starting pistols, to reproduce footsteps, door bells, doors opening, creaking floorboards and gunshots live as the action required. This technique lived on for a remarkable time, until reliable recording and playback using magnetic tape became commonplace. The BBC created a vast library of recorded sounds, and to help amateur dramatic productions, as well as commercial uses, provided long-playing records of selected sounds. I still have a good collection, much of which now sounds horribly dated in the 21st century.

The BBC SFX (Sound eFfeCTS) library was also produced on CD, but you won’t be at all surprised to learn that these days it’s almost all available online.

Go and have a play. The nice thing is that recordings of transport and other ambient sounds, originally made in the 1950s and 1960s, have preserved a soundscape that is long gone. Where else can you hear a De Havilland Comet IV flying overhead, or a classic cash register, or an SRN6 hovercraft, or actual recordings of a wartime bombing raid on Plymouth?

Ah, yes, my own journey into sound.

It’s the 1980s. Once I’d left school and started working for a living, I had a little extra money available to invest in cool new tech. The first stage was acquiring my own hifi so I didn’t have to keep “borrowing” that belonging to the parents! Back in those days, such exotic items were best bought via a large full-colour printed catalogue, and paid for over many weeks. I selected a hifi separates system from Sharp Electronics, which came with its own shelf system. I was particularly interested in the fact the amplifier had a microphone input, and an electronic echo box. Now, of course, I realise this was trying to cash in on the Japanese love of karaoke, but for me it meant I could record my voice with an echo, and play around with recording it to the adequate quality cassette deck mixed with music or effects.

With tape recorders, the speed with which the tape passes the recording heads is vital. The faster the speed, the less noise is recorded and the higher the quality. For domestic reel-to-reel machines 7-1/2 inches per second (ips) was preferred. Slower speeds meant longer durations, but more hiss added to the sound. Professional gear could hit 15 ips, but that was not for the likes of me. As an aside, the reason for Dolby noise reduction on many cassette decks was to counter the hiss caused by the 1-7/8 ips speed they run at. 

What I still lusted after was a nice studio quality reel-to-reel tape deck, preferably with multitrack capabilities. Sadly, Revox and Teac were so far beyond my limited budget, and they didn’t feature in Mum’s catalogue, that they remained a forlorn hope. I scoured the small ads in the local paper, and eventually found someone selling a secondhand Akai 4000DS machine. This was a step up, and for only eighty quid.

I made an artsy video about the 4000DS II I owned, just before I gave it away to a friend. I had no further use for the machine, and I needed the space it took up for other things. I wonder if I can embed it here?

The 4000DS (Mark II, no less) was a stereo open-reel tape deck. A stereo reel-to-reel tape recorder was mine. The Akai also had a trick up its sleeve: you could play back one track to monitor it, while it and another layer of sound was recorded to a second track. Akai called this “sound on sound”, but it was a fairly common method of “bouncing” sound around to add multiple layers. The problem was, once you got beyond two or three bounces, the original track was lost in the noise, and the overall sound became increasingly mushy. Still, it allowed for some fun feedback loops if you knew how to do it.

Another used tape deck arrived, this time a monstrous Sony machine. Now I was beginning to get somewhere. With a nest of cables, I could record stereo sound, play back while adding another layer of stereo sound on a second deck, and do it a couple more times before it became a meaningless noise. I was nearly able to replicate my hero, Kenny Everett, when he made vocal jingles using a very similar technique in his own home studio. The difference was he could actually sing, and he had much better gear than me! Still, it kept me very entertained for an awfully long time.

Any dreams of a career in radio had hit the buffers, and while I still lusted after more and better recording and studio equipment, the needs of the real world took precedence. It was not until the start of the 1990s, when I met Best Beloved and discovered we shared many interests, including audio and video. My journey would continue.