Nigel Gatherer wrote: | David Francis wrote: | > ...Jimmy Shand was renowned for his ability to hit the right tempo | > and keep it ticking along...Beware the early Shand recordings though. | > They go at an unbelievable lick. One theory is that this was to | > accommodate the limited recording space available on the old shellac | > records. Or maybe it was the wildness of youth.... | | I think the latter, Dave. I remember reading that it was at a | particular point in his career, after the Beltona recordings I think, | that Jimmy decided to study tempi and made a big effort to get it right | from then on. Or you could blame earlier recording artists such as the | Wyper Brothers; it's fairly obvious that Shand listened to their 78s a | great deal.
Something else to take into consideration is the sloppiness of the recording industry with regards to tempos. I've heard re-releases of old recordings whose tempo differs by 10% or more. This is a big difference to dancers and musicians, but not to recording companies. It explains some of the strange keys that you find on recordings. Sometimes you can ask the original artists what key they played it in and adjust your variable-speed player to get that key. Otherwise, you really don't know. (You do have variable speed record and cassette and CD players, don't you? ;-) Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
