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Mike Oldfield has stated that the conditions at the Manor were so precarious at the time, he had to learn to use the tape recorder and mixer almost by himself b

by pjbk 2y ago

Mike Oldfield has stated that the conditions at the Manor were so precarious at the time, he had to learn to use the tape recorder and mixer almost by himself because the engineer was never there. Since there were so many instruments on the recordings and the mixer was not automated, it took several people doing acrobatics to operate the faders and dials real-time to mix down the tracks for the album. Therefore possibly those Morse code signals were picked up because an instrument was not properly gain staged before being recorded.

LeoPanthera 2y ago
Given that Tubular Bells is a patchwork of so many different takes, I would suggest that it's a little more likely that the signal was recorded during the final mix down or possibly one of the intermediate bounce stages, since the signal seems to be mostly intact.
- pjbk 2y ago
  When you are close to a low frequency radio station anything is possible I guess. I used to live less than one mile away from an AM radio station antenna. That doesn't mix up well if you want to become an electronic engineer or compose your own electronic music. ;-) The Telecaster guitar and bass used would be my #1 culprit on introducing noise since pickups are virtually antennas. Mike Oldfield even had added an extra high gain single coil BL pickup to his '66 Tele. If you don't gain stage or ground properly the mics that were used for the acoustic instruments, they could have also captured RF noise easily, even if they had a heavy metal housing that acted like shielding. Some Farfisa organs are also noticeable noisy, although I don't know about their EMI or how banged up was the one used for the album that belonged to David Bedford. The electric piano used was a Rhodes, and those were built like a tank. Finally the tracks were overdubbed over and over. This would in all likelihood have attenuated both the audio and noise, but using a mixer or a tape that is susceptible to interference means that you have more chances of capturing noise at some point in the recording. I guess we will never know for sure. Anyway, it adds to the mystique of the record.
  - toast0 2y ago
    > When you are close to a low frequency radio station anything is possible I guess. I used to live less than one mile away from an AM radio station antenna. That doesn't mix up well if you want to become an electronic engineer or compose your own electronic music. ;-) My college has an FM radio station, and the broadcast antenna is (or was) on the roof of one of the dorms. Any sort of speaker would play the station faintly. A block away, in the engineering classrooms, we could easily see the station's waveform on our oscilliscopes probing wall power, just superimposed on the 60 Hz sine wave.

by pjbk 2y ago

LeoPanthera 2y ago

Given that Tubular Bells is a patchwork of so many different takes, I would suggest that it's a little more likely that the signal was recorded during the final mix down or possibly one of the intermediate bounce stages, since the signal seems to be mostly intact.

pjbk 2y ago
When you are close to a low frequency radio station anything is possible I guess. I used to live less than one mile away from an AM radio station antenna. That doesn't mix up well if you want to become an electronic engineer or compose your own electronic music. ;-) The Telecaster guitar and bass used would be my #1 culprit on introducing noise since pickups are virtually antennas. Mike Oldfield even had added an extra high gain single coil BL pickup to his '66 Tele. If you don't gain stage or ground properly the mics that were used for the acoustic instruments, they could have also captured RF noise easily, even if they had a heavy metal housing that acted like shielding. Some Farfisa organs are also noticeable noisy, although I don't know about their EMI or how banged up was the one used for the album that belonged to David Bedford. The electric piano used was a Rhodes, and those were built like a tank. Finally the tracks were overdubbed over and over. This would in all likelihood have attenuated both the audio and noise, but using a mixer or a tape that is susceptible to interference means that you have more chances of capturing noise at some point in the recording. I guess we will never know for sure. Anyway, it adds to the mystique of the record.
- toast0 2y ago
  > When you are close to a low frequency radio station anything is possible I guess. I used to live less than one mile away from an AM radio station antenna. That doesn't mix up well if you want to become an electronic engineer or compose your own electronic music. ;-) My college has an FM radio station, and the broadcast antenna is (or was) on the roof of one of the dorms. Any sort of speaker would play the station faintly. A block away, in the engineering classrooms, we could easily see the station's waveform on our oscilliscopes probing wall power, just superimposed on the 60 Hz sine wave.