Monday 16 January 2017

Digitalisation of Valuable Classical Music Recordings

Rob Barnett, Editor-in-Chief of MusicWeb International and long-time member of the British Music Society has written to me as follows: -
In retirement, I now find myself with time to pursue various long-cherished projects. One of these is transferring cassettes and tape reel-to-reels of off-radio broadcasts and private recordings to CDR.
There is a sad history of valuable and occasionally irreplaceable recordings on cassettes and reels ending up in landfill when the music enthusiast dies. Other enthusiasts still have these tapes and reels in the loft or garage but lack the equipment to play them.
On an amateur, voluntary and non-commercial basis I have since 2013 been transferring such recordings to CDR for friends and colleagues. On occasion, I have travelled to an enthusiast's home and collected the reels and/or cassettes. I then take these homes and make the transfers onto CDR. I keep one copy for myself and return the original reels/cassettes with a CDR to the enthusiast. No charge is made. I do stress that I am not an audio-engineer or in any way a professional.
Obviously large numbers take a long time but I hope that this might be helpful to people and would also extend my knowledge of the repertoire and of performances.
If you are at all interested I would invite people to contact me at 
Thanks Rob, let us hope that some gems come to light….J

1 comment:

Graham said...

I wish him all the best of luck in this project. Some of the most interesting things I've heard over the years have come from people who rather than uploading to YouTube material ripped from cds, have uploaded material that comes from radio broadcasts of works that have never been recorded. I've contacted Naxos on more than one occasion after listening to something I've discovered that way. Hopefully something will come of it.