Beth Ertz

Recording, Transcription & Choreography

Customer Experience

I’ve been a Superscope fan and user for the last quarter of the last century! I used the practically indestructible top-of-the-line Superscope and “Superscope Marantz” professional cassette player/recorders in the ‘80’s, creating books for Hal Leonard Publishing. I transcribed the music of Stevie Wonder, Chick Corea, Lee Ritenour and others, including every note of every solo played by the whole rhythm section, in addition to the piano or guitar. I had two backup Superscope machines, because my deadlines didn’t allow any down time. But in all the years I used them, I only had to turn to a backup once...after hundreds and hundreds of hours of punishment. When you’re trying to hear every note of a rip-roaring solo, the rewind button takes terrible abuse (along with your eardrums)... and after a dozen tries at capturing 64th and 132nd notes flying by at warp speed, you’re not always so gentle with the poor button... physically or verbally! So while a new rewind button was being installed to replace the one I’d killed, I turned to one of the backups, which also performed like the proverbial Energizer Bunny. I try not to spend too much time imagining the things I could have done with my time if the PSD340 or the PSD300 had been around then. You could slow the old machines down by half an octave, but that of course changed the pitch. But often I had to do that with some of the impossibly fast solos, but because I have absolute pitch, I then had to transpose what I’d transcribed. Then I had a modification done on one of the machines that enabled it to slow down enough to pitch it an octave down. But try transcribing a John Patitucci bass solo pitched an octave down! You get an idea of the challenge. Fast forward 20 years... sigh... I could have slowed down music up to 75% without changing the pitch, I could have used the A-B feature to loop a troublesome phrase indefinitely, a phrase at a time and I could have..aaarg...it’s too painful to think about.

Despite the need I had for this adorable machine’s charms, I left the poor thing in the closet for a year. After all, it still was a machine and my techno abilities were pretty much limited to killing rewind buttons. But one fateful day that all changed. I was accompanying a vocal student, helping her prepare a demo tape. She wanted to sing an Alan Jackson song that had no written music available, so I was just going to listen to the CD she brought and record an accompaniment on piano. Then I suddenly had an epiphany... I recalled reading about one of the PSD340 features in the Quick Start Guide just before I stashed it in the closet... something about being able to reduce the lead vocal on a CD recording so that you just hear the instrumental accompaniment and backup vocals... IF it was mixed in the center of the stereo field. I didn’t begin to understand that, but that was a pretty powerful flash and I had to follow it. Boy could this save time and trouble IF, please God, IF the lead vocal was centered. Only problem was that I had never used the machine except to play a CD once before I chickened out and put it in the closet... of course after I checked to see if the rewind button worked...nostalgia for old times, I guess...or maybe the possibility of another murder? But with a sudden attack of courage, sweaty palms and a racing heart, I asked the singer to bear with me while I read the voice reduction section in the manual and then if I could understand it and if the vocal was centered, I’d try it out. Well, she did and I did and it was!!! So I managed to record her, singing with Alan Jackson’s band and backup singers (putting it up one key higher to fit her voice, by the way... .my courage knew no bounds by then). She was ecstatic and I felt like a real stud (ok, studette). I then named my new friend (the PSD340) Donny, after Superscope’s Don Stockfleth.

Recently, I was assisting a major Broadway composer in New York City. We prepared and put on a staged reading of a new show. The director was preparing to hire a recording engineer to bring in a recording rig and record the show for archival purposes. I offered to bring in the PSD340 and save them the money. They were a bit dubious about little Donny until I did a test recording for them, using only the built-in mic, but having a couple of external mics with XLR plugs ready. They were so happy with the sound of the recording with the built-in that we went with that... never even used the externals.

Also...I work a lot with dancers, choreographers and dance teachers. Most dance studios outside of big cities don’t have the budget to hire live accompaniment for all their classes, and some that do can’t always find a good dance accompanist that can cover ballet and modern styles. So they’re quite accustomed to using CDs, being at the mercy of the recorded tempo, and racing back to the CD player to restart the section they want. Many teachers have gotten pretty skilled at this because they’ve had no other options. But... enter the PSD340 and the PSD300. I brought Donny with me to a couple of dance instructor friends’ classes to have them experiment. Now they’re talking to the studio owners about making the PSD340 part of their studio equipment. The teachers brought in some of their favorite dance CDs that they’ve always wanted to choreograph dances to, but the tempos weren’t quite right and they saw how very simple it is to adjust the tempo to taste. One teacher looked at the Quick Start Guide and brought in vocal CDs and asked me to use the voice reduction feature. She loved these particular songs, but didn’t want the association of the lyrics to color the dance. These vocals were properly centered, so the reduction worked, and for her, the spirit of the songs was retained without the distraction of the lyrics. The teachers all said they’d probably be even more excited about this if they had the optional wristband or necklace remote (the RC300) so that they could change tracks and tempos on the fly without having to hold the remote control while teaching combinations or creating dances. I didn’t happen to have that to show, but it’s another wonderful option.

Something I’m really excited about doing when I have a bit of time on my hands... recording my old LPs. I have hundreds of old treasures that I will never get rid of, yet I rarely play them because I’m so spoiled by CD technology. It will be simple to just hook up my turntable (yes, I still have one, and I don’t even use the needle to scratch the records) with some RCA cables and start transferring. Same with old cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes. Let me end with a couple of family stories... over the holidays, I visited my family and brought Donny with me to make family recordings. I had my 86-year-young singing father make a CD... 12 songs (me on piano and my sister doing backup vocals). I used a CD-RW so that we could erase and rerecord at his whim. I brought the recording home and sweetened it in my studio... full “orchestra.” My formerly mild-mannered daddy turned into a divo (isn’t that a male version of a diva?) and he demanded that we make copies for all his friends who now see him as a late-blooming recording star. One more story... at a 60th wedding anniversary party for some beloved cousins, I brought Donny and he and I went around to all the guests, asking for stories and verbal love letters. After each one, I just pressed the pause button and when I released it for the next guest’s comments, it created a new track, so I was able to make a CD jacket listing each storyteller as a track name. It was their favorite gift

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