[ARSCLIST] turntables and John Cage

[Paul Charosh <L78rpm@xxxxxxx>]

A friend preparing an academic paper on John Cage has posed the questions  
below.  I can't help her.  Perhaps someone here can.  Any  responses will be 
forwarded to her.
 
--- Paul Charosh
 
 
[The] paper is on John Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 1, which he  wrote in 
Seattle in 1939. The piece requires two of players to play constant- or  
variable-frequency test-tone recordings, shifting the speed between 33-1/3 and  78 
while the record is playing in order to create electronic sliding tones. Cage  
made a recording of this piece in Seattle, which has only recently become  
available. So for the first time we can actually hear the sounds that  
resulted---some of which are rather different from the what one would expect  from his 
explanations and notation. I have been trying to figure out what  equipment he 
might have had. He was working at the Cornish School in Seattle,  which had 
established a radio school in May 1936, after Nellie Cornish consulted  with 
people at NBC and CBS in New York. On the recording of Cage's work, the  slide 
upwards from 33 to 78 is always gradual but the descent from 78 to 33 is  always 
very abrupt, creating a strong accent on the lower pitch. Since this slow  
ascent-quick descent is consistent through the piece, my assumption is that it  
was a function of the working of the turntable mechanism. (Cage says that one  
needs a "turntable provided with a clutch for change of speed.") Various 
folks  here have drawn me pictures of what they think the mechanism must have 
been, but  I'd like more well-documented evidence---and a photo if possible. . . .



A second question: I have been told that radio stations would have had  
test-tone recordings (perhaps were even required to have them) not only  to 
calibrate turn-table speeds, but also to test for possible interference with  
neighboring stations. Is this information correct and/or can you elaborate for  me 
about the usage of these discs?