PRESERPRESERVINGVING OUROUR MUSICALMUSICAL HERITHERITAAGEGE A Musician’s Outreach to Audio Engineers* Mickey Hart 360º Productions, Inc., Sebastopol, CA 95473, USA istorically we have been im- do we have a chance of winning or even sent, interpret, and make accessible pre- printing sound onto one medi- matching strides with the ravages of served films in archival collections and, Hum or another for over 110 time—a most worthy opponent. And a in doing so, demonstrate the cultural and years. The first person to capture sound worthy opponent deserves a well- historical value of American film and in the field was the ethnographer Jesse planned strategy and fearless commit- film preservation. Of particular interest Walter Fewkes who, on March 15, ment to the fight. are projects that bring preserved films to 1890, walked out into a field in Maine to Although the Phonogrammarchiv in new audiences or communities. record a Passamaquoddy Indian harvest Vienna is the world’s oldest sound 2) Laboratory Grants: These federally song.1 His medium was wax; his record- archive,2 we need to look to the film in- supported grants fund laboratory preser- ing device of choice (there were no oth- dustry for examples on how to create vation work on endangered films. ers at the time) was an Edison wax public awareness of preservation issues. 3) Partnership Grants: These grants cylinder, very similar to the Singer pedal They have the lead on the audio field as distribute preservation services gener- sewing machine, in which one drives a far as public awareness and industry ously donated to the NFPF by laborato- belt with repeated foot movement. Since consciousness of preservation are con- ries and postproduction houses that that fateful day we have imprinted cerned. The American Film Institute work in partnership with the archival sound on tin, wire, glass, acetate, and was created in 1967 to advance and pre- community. magnetic tape. Each of these media has serve the art of the moving image.3 By These programs are useful models for its own set of problems: impurities in 1984 the National Center for Film and the audio community. They function on manufacturing, innate poisons in the Video Preservation4 was created, and multiple levels to: substances, exposure to air, and improp- from that came the National Moving Im- • Increase public awareness. er storage conditions that lead to decay age Database, the Film Foundation, and • Fund scientific and technical re- and rot. Ultimately the death knell is the Digital Archive. As of 2001, the Na- search in the field of preservation. sounded for all of these recordings. Thus tional Film Preservation Foundation • Provide funding for preservation. digitization and preservation become a (NFPF) offers three types of grants sup- • Provide funding for training in race against time for the serious musical porting film preservation and access preservation technologies. archaeologist and preservationist. Will projects: Recently U.S. House Resolution the race be won? Perhaps, if we can: 1) Access Grants: The goal of this (H.R.) 4846 established the National 1) Inventory our collections. U.S. federally funded program is to pre- Recording Registry in the Library of 2) Make the difficult aesthetic choices Congress to maintain and preserve 2 Austrian Academy of Sciences, Phono- recordings that are culturally, historical- on what to preserve. grammarchiv, Dietrich Schüller, Ed. (2000); 3) Identify the technologies that will http://www.pha.oeaw.ac.at/. ly, or aesthetically significant, and for enable affordable preservation. 3 President Johnson signed the National other purposes.5 The Audio Engineering Foundation of the Arts and the Humanities Society (AES) will have a representative 4) Communicate the technical innova- Act of 1965. The legislation created the Na- tions to the music and library communi- tional Endowment for the Arts, which estab- on the registry board. ties in understandable form. lished the American Film Institute as an in- We are just beginning to make other dependent nonprofit organization dedicated inroads. The American Folklife Center 5) Expand preservation grant pro- to: preserving the heritage of film and televi- grams that will focus on our sound and sion, identifying and training new talent, and of the Library of Congress is entrusted music heritage. increasing recognition and understanding of with the digitization and preservation the moving image as an art form; of the largest collection of indigenous Only when the situation is understood http://www.afionline.org/. by the multiple communities involved 4 The National Film Preservation Foundation music in the world. It is a daunting (NFPF) is a nonprofit organization created task, but a great challenge. With over *Presented at the 109th Convention of the by the U.S. Congress to save America's film one and one-half million hours of Audio Engineering Society, Los Angeles, heritage. Working with archives and others CA, 2000 September 22–25, Workshop 5: who appreciate film, the NFPF supports recorded material, the job is to identify Digital Libraries, Preservation, and Meta- preservation activities nationwide that ensure the most endangered collections for data. the physical survival of film and improve ac- 1 “Song of Salutation,” recorded in Calaif, cess to film for study, education and exhibi- Maine, on 1890 March 15 by Jesse Walter tion; http://www.filmpreservation.org/ 5 Library of Congress, HR4846; http:// Fewkes, Archive of Folk Culture. about.html. thomas.loc.gov/bss/d106query.html. J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 49, No. 7/8, 2001 July/August 667 PRESERVING OUR MUSICAL HERITAGE preservation, restore them, and then, protect this resource. Without with intellectual property and copy- our voices and music and art, rights willing, give access to the world we are bankrupt as a society. through the Internet. Specifically, the The sure way to success is Endangered Music Project6 at the Li- not only to educate ourselves brary of Congress identifies, transfers, and the public, but to be and subsequently digitizes the most en- proactive in this project. dangered of their recordings for com- Whenever we have the atten- mercial release. Another innovative tion of our elected representa- project is Save Our Sounds, a joint Li- tives and agents, we must brary of Congress–Smithsonian initia- bring up this subject, present Fig. 1. Sonic Solutions digital audio workshop. tive funded by the Save America’s the facts, and secure their sup- Treasures Program.7 Save Our Sounds port. We must become lobbyists for the engineers: archives. We are their voice, and we • Restore and preserve original must tell their story to everyone who recordings. can listen. • Make digital and archival copies. Can preservation and digitization be • Put select recordings on the Web good business? Indeed, and the Grateful and into CD form.8 Dead is a good example. For nearly 30 Leadership is a critical factor: we years we recorded almost every show, have to assume responsibility for our over 2400 performances. Now we are at own world; no one else will. We are ar- a point where many of our tapes are de- chaeologists, preservationists, activists, caying, and so we are in the process of Fig. 2. Early vault at Grateful Dead but mostly, we are lovers of sound. We preparing for mass digitization. Of Productions. must also be you, the audio engineers, course, when we talk of the digitization who can design and build the tools we process, it is not just a simple “let’s- sticky residue. The end result is that the need. We must also be you, who can throw-it-into-the-digital-domain.” Prop- tape is unplayable. implement the technologies to dis- er analog-to-digital conversion, Sonic The situation can be corrected very tribute the music so that it will be ac- Solutions preparation (see Fig. 1),9 and simply by baking. We have a custom- cessible to future generations. We all careful handling and storage of the built convection oven (Figs. 3 and 4) must become teachers. Our first job is source tapes will be necessary to provide that keeps a constant temperature (+- to educate ourselves, our governments, for an uplifting and accurate view of 1/10 of a degree over a specified time). and the public at large to pull together these memorable artifacts. We can bake a number of tapes at a time and preserve this wellspring, this talk- A number of prized tapes in the (four 10-inch reels of 2-inch tape or ten ing book of folk song. Grateful Dead vault (Fig. 2) were 7-inch reels of 1/4-inch tape). We bake What is folk song? Folk song is the recorded during the years between 1976 them for 12 hours at 130o F, with 30- celebration of life in sound. As you and 1981. Much of the magnetic tape10 minute warm-up and cool-down times. know, most of these aural traditions manufactured during that period of time The oven does not really need to be very have recorded their history in song and has exhibited a problem called shedding. elaborate. Any commercial convection dance. So, in essence, these are perhaps When those tapes are played, they will oven and timer can be used. The temper- humanity’s greatest invention and also a either squeal loudly as they pass through ature and time of baking can be varied repository of all the dreams, the history, the tape guides, or they may not play for slightly, although it is safer to go longer and the hopes of the past, the present, longer than a few seconds. The problem with a lower temperature. and the future. These sonic masterpieces is mainly due to the use of the Jeffrey Norman at Grateful Dead Pro- become valuable beyond measure. To polyurethane binders that were intro- ductions (GDP) used the recommenda- allow their demise would be unaccept- duced with the Ampex 406/456 series of able.