by CRAIG STARK
DON'T JUST DUB FOR many owners of tape-recording equipment, its primary use is to record live music or dub discs. But there are dozens of other ways to use tape, and perhaps it's time for you to pay some attention to them. What brings this to mind just now is the abundance of battery-operated cassette recorders, some with built-in microphones, that you can hold in your hand to record with.
The ease with which these units can be carried about and operated has led many students to record professors' lectures instead of taking written notes. As a college teacher, I am often approached by students requesting permission to tape my remarks. Done openly, with explicit permission, this is a high form of flattery. But except for very special lectures (or perhaps taping for a friend who may have to miss class), I do not think such tapes are very effective study aids. It is true that students' notes often bear no recognizable relationship to what was actually said in class, but it takes just as long to hear the lecture again on tape as it did to listen to it originally, and few students can afford to double their lecture -listening time in order to get more accurate notes.
Making recordings for "shut-ins," however, is an entirely different matter.
Tapes of the religious services from the parish or synagogue where an ill or aged person has deep personal ties will mean far, far more than any basket of flowers from the Altar Guild or its equivalent.
And "service" tapes are so easy to provide. In a small congregation all you need do is sit in the front row with a C-120 cassette in your machine, and you'll be amazed at how good a recording you can make, completely unobtrusively. And in any large church there will be a public address system that you can almost al ways tap into to provide a feed to the high-level (line or aux) inputs of your recorder. You won't even need a mike.
What you want for this sort of work is a cassette machine with some sort of automatic volume-control circuit. On the machine's spec sheet this feature is called AVC or ALC (automatic loud ness control), and most of the better cassette portables have it built in. With hanging microphones, a multi -input mixer, large-scale VU meters, and all the trappings, you could no doubt get a "better" recording. But for the purpose at hand all you want is to make a soft-spoken prayer audible and a large choral "Hallelujah!" undistorted, and that is precisely the function of an ALC circuit.
It automatically raises the recording level of low -volume sounds and lowers that of high-level signals, keeping the range within the limits of machine and tape.
Another interesting project, perhaps closer to home, is to record your children's voices, year by year. The record becomes, as it were, a sonic photo album in which you can trace a youngster's progress in speech all the way from coo's to conversation. And, of course, a newborn's first sounds at home are as individual as his first steps. I've often thought of submitting my daughter's tapes to Bell Labs to prove she could hit a high C an octave above that of any known operatic soprano--a sound far more precious to me now than when first heard some years ago at 3:00 A.M.
Then there are the sightless. What could be more rewarding than to give the gift of education by reading onto tape for a blind student? You can make local arrangements, work through a tape club, or through a national organization. Al though the American Foundation for the Blind uses only professionals, Recording for the Blind, Inc., has studios in eighteen cities nationwide for volunteer readers. Write to Mr. Gilbert Field, 215 East 58th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
And if you have good open-reel equipment and can pass a voice audition, you can even record at home on tape sup plied under a program administered by the Library of Congress. Contact Mr. Bill West, Coordinator of Tape Volunteers, 1291 Taylor St. N.W., Washing ton, D.C. 20542, for information.
Also see:
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF NEGLECTED FRENCH MUSIC--There are still many gaping holes in the specialist's library, RICHARD FREED