[23-July-2008] Thirty-four years after graduation, while unpacking long forgotten boxes, I came across a pile of reel-to-reel tapes. Three of them made up the 1973 June Week Cadet Chorale Concert. These tapes are copies of the original reel-to-reel tapes made on the Arnold Hall sound system. After at least a dozen moves I feel lucky to still have them; I was not so fortunate with my A-jacket, it went missing years ago. I borrowed a reel-to-reel tape deck from a colleague at work and digitized the recordings. During the editing I tried to remain faithful to the original recording, the only portions I removed were isolated coughs and extended silences. I did use some advanced audio signal processing to remove clicks, pops, background hiss, and reconstruct clipped waveforms - for those of you interested in the technical details I used Audacity and Matlab. Scans of the program from the 1973 June Week Cadet Chorale Concert are included as image files on the CD.
The June Week Concert filled more than one CD so I added some other Chorale recordings to the second CD. This link will show you all the audio tracks on the CDs.
The recording of the Gloria from Mr. Boyd’s Opus1 is, to the best of my recollection, from the 1971 June Week Cadet Chorale Concert. This recording was made from the audience using my personal reel-to-reel tape deck. I included this because it is the only composition of Mr. Boyd’s that we ever performed.
Again, to the best of my recollection, the Chorale recorded the Christmas carols during the Fall of 1970. I remember the bus ride to Denver and going through take after take in the recording studio. Photographs of the front and back of the LP sleeve are included as image files on this CD.
If you can confirm or correct my “recollections”, or if you have recordings of any particular selection
you would like included in a revised edition of this collection, please let me know.
The CDs were burned as Audio+Data CDs using Nero 6.6. These play well in CD and DVD players but, for reasons unknown to me, some computers only see the data files and won't play the audio tracks. Perhaps some Windows wizard out there knows why and can clue me in?
The two CDs are packaged in a double DVD holder with the track lists as the cover art. These are not professionally packaged products, but then I did this for fun not to make money, and it took a LOT more time than I first thought it would. So if any of my fellow '73' grads has professional CD production experience I would be delighted to let him turn out more of the CDs.
So enough of the disclaimers and puny bellyaches, if you've read this far you want to know how to get a set of the CDs. I can send a set of the CDs via Priority Mail anywhere in the USA for $9.50. The Post Office announced a big increase in Priority Mail rates effective 18-Jan-2009, but they are still less expensive than UPS! This price is only for USAFA grads and their families.
Brian Beard
10600 Lilac Place
Silver Spring, MD 20903
bbb@frys.com