When Robots Have Ghosts

A kind listener recently unloaded a few crates of wonderful music on us, and one of the odder treasures the collection yielded was a souvenir record of a child speaking from the Empire State Building's Observatory deck, probably sometime in the 1940s.

The record itself is a 6" acetate disc, just like the one seen in this photo. From what I've been able to piece together through googling "Voice-O-Graph" and "Empire State Souvenir Record", these hastily-recorded discs were a popular memento with which visitors to the Evil Apple could recall their trip. What better way to bring back the fond memories of NYC than with a sixty second account in your own voice?

Intrigued, I threw the 78 RPM disc on a turntable in WFMU's production studio and was instantly assaulted by some of the most painful surface noise ever to hit my eardrums. There was definitely a voice buried within the clatter of the badly worn groove, but it was too distorted to pick out any discernible words or phrases. I was fairly certain it was the voice of the child, but one of unknown gender. Emboldened by the steaming cup of coffee I'd just downed and also by my vague knowledge of the sound editing software our studio computer is equipped with, I set out to skim off as much of the surface noise as possible, in the hopes of revealing the message of this traveler from long-ago. After a few rounds of reducing hiss, taking noise samples, and bumping up amplitude, I was rewarded with the most pleasing result of a little girl recounting her trip to the Empire State Observatory.

The audio filtering had done a fine job of removing the grating surface noise, but had (weirdly) altered other aural elements in such a way as to give the girl's voice an entrancing and otherworldly quality. Scott Williams walked in while I was working on it, and upon hearing it said: "This is what it'll sound like when robots have ghosts". [Download MP3]

Comments

[protogenes]

wow

[joisy mike]

Hey Mike,

What software did you use for this?

[mike lupica]

Adobe Audition.

[cZui]

Somewhere I have a recorded acetate which appears to be from a TV show-- a little girl is trying to win a puppy (I assumed her parents recorded it off the TV but i don't hear the usually 'cathode ray hum', plus the same recording is on both sides of the disc, so. . . ?), it also has surface noise, but not so much as to be distracting (to me anyway)-- i should make it available to you FMU audio-weirdos.

[cokane]

Well put, Scott! Y'all might have a weirder workplace than I do here in the porno office. Was anyone else wondering how many of those folks she mentioned are dead and whether she is dead, and how her life went after that foray into recording? I think the haunted sound of this lends itself to such morbid speculation.

[craig]

i think the little girl on the record was bebe barron........

[rocketboy]

Hmmm. Did you try bumping up the sampling rate? It cuts down or eliminates the "twittery" effect.
Fascinating bit of audio!

[Carol Ginzburg]

Guess what? I'm that little girl! I was on a trip to the Empire State Building with my Grandma Minnie and we did indeed make a recording. I think we may have walked to the top, but I wouldn't swear to it. Those I said hello to were my parents, my brother, Bobby, my sister, Janice, who is the mother of Jeff, the "kind listener" who donated the records. Jeff is himself a father now of two children, and Cookie, our little black and white family dog.

Cookie departed for the Rainbow Bridge many years ago. Most of the family lives on the east coast except for me. I live in California.

Thanks so much for cleaning up the recording - it ws fun to listen to it.

Carol

[Dale Hazelton]

I have a Voice-O-Graph recording that is impossible to discern ANYTHING on...the record looks like it has no grooves and is nothing but the high-pitched whine apparant on your recording. Any info about the equipment these things were recorded on originally?

[Dale Hazelton]

Scroll down the page to see the innards of one of these booths...pretty amazing!
http://www.marvin3m.com/arcade/voice.htm

[Michel LeGrisbi]

I have a copy of this little "gem" as well. I also had the exact same problem with it. I can only hear crackles & underneath a faint hum that I'm guessing is human.

[Employee #6817]

I jump for these things whenever I go digging. I have a small collection of them now including a small binder of them that came from an radio station internal cutting machine featuring people goofing off on the unused portions. It's great stuff. ;)

[Marcus]

Hi Mike
I loved this bit of audio so much it inspired me to put a bit of ambient music behind it. With your permission I'd like to play in in my podcast: www.electricsoupkitchen.com I will of course link back to and credit WFMU. Your'e already in the links section on our web page. I just wanted to clear it with you first.
Thank you for your time
Marcus

[aj]

I have a voice-o-graph recording, but there's nothing when I attempt to play it on a 45 turntable (don't have a 78 tt)
Any suggestions?

[Sean Sweeney]

I ran a recording studio for about 15 years here in IL and had a lot of fun with these recordings! A lot of people would bring them to me, sometimes in PIECES! The software you were using is a little dated (even for a few years back!), and I'm at a loss as to why you added the reverb (did you take a wrong turn and couldn't get back?). Sometimes it can help to wet the surface with silicone water, if the media isn't absorbent. These things basically cut records with primitive lathes, with no regard for the condition of the disc (whereas pro cutters used a heated cutter), and often ravaged the surface more than recorded on them. couple that with the heavy tone arms from back then and you only had a handful of plays before the record was useless! The Biggest challenge I ever had was a red cross field recording from early WWII on a cardboard disc with a thin celluloid coating! The celluloid had become checked and was peeling! But I love a challenge! long story short, that soldier spoke to his relatives for the first time in over 60 years!