Half Time Scores

Recordings available from Half Time Scores

Click here for our own releases (NEW)
Click here for other recordings (usually second hand)

We are pleased to offer a collection of recordings. We have a small selection of largely Schubert recordings that are available - usually duplicate or unwanted recordings from 'job lots'. They may be 78s, LPs or CDs. , and can be found on the other recordings page.

We also publish our own recordings - from public domain sources - which we call the Half Time Scores Historical Performance Collection . A full introduction to the collection is given below, details of the available recordings are on the Half Time Scores recordings page.

Introduction

The Half Time Scores Historical Performance Collection features public domain recordings that we have lovingly remastered onto CD from our collections. Music copyright law is quite complicated, but these are recordings that were available in the UK over 50 years ago, which is the magic time period to put them into the public domain in the UK. At present, all of our recordings are mono.

The recordings have been digitally recorded from analogue sources (early LPs and 78s in all cases thus far). The records are cleaned with our knosti machine and record vacuum. They are then recorded directly to WAV files, and then cleaned with sophisticated software to reduce hum and surface noise. Software is also used to remove clicks and other non-musical noises (most often bumps and whooshes!) where necessary - a partly automated process that also involves a human being doing careful editing. We will always attempt to remove the worst noises, but sometimes that editing can introduce artefacts that are almost as bad as the original noise, in which case the original noise is allowed to stand. Uncompressed sound files are used at all stages of this process - compressed MP3s are generated from finished CDs. This transfer, remastering and editing process takes a variable amount of time, largely depending on how good the transfer from the source recording is. For a really clean source, with few spurious noises, it may only take a few hours, most of which is careful listening for noises to clean up. For more awkward sources, it can take many hours or days. Songs and chamber music tend to be more awkward than orchestral music simply because they have more quiet periods when minor noises that would not be noticed in orchestral music have to be dealt with.

Note that no matter how hard we try, we are usually unable to totally eliminate all extraneous noises from the recordings. In general, we do very well, are proud of the end results, and we have little doubt that you will be pleased with them. However, occasional noises will make it through to the final product, because we have been unable to remove them without generating noticeable distortion to the recording. If you want even cleaner results that these, then you will have to rely upon commercial (and much more expensive) releases that have had access to the master tapes, rather than having to work from LP or 78, or have extremely sophisticated software to restore recordings. We can recommend companies such as Pristine Audio, Pearl and Symposium. Note that, unfortunately, there are also many unscrupulous companies out there (many of which originate from eastern Europe and the far east), including some that simply take restored recordings from other companies as their starting point - these should be avoided at all costs. However (and this is part of the point of releasing them in the first place) many of our recordings are not otherwise available, and are quite likely to remain uneconomic to consider for large organisations.

You may expect the list and range of recordings in our series to grow over time if they prove popular. We have given a list of recordings that are 'In preparation'. In general, this means that we have a suitable source, and intend to release the recording, but the release is not scheduled, and in most cases serious work has not actually started on them. If you are especially interested in any of these please let us know, as that will bump them up the queue to be done. In most cases listed we have got as far as basic transfer, declick, dehum, denoise (which can be largely automated). We can therefore provide these recordings in that state, with no notes, etc., for £1.50.

Unless otherwise stated, all the performances on the CDs are 'complete'. In limited cases, especially with rare recordings where finding another source is very difficult or prohibitively expensive, we may issue a CD with some form of faults from the source, which we will mention in the descriptions. The series will expand to include works from all genres, and perhaps even composers other than Schubert, but there will always be a special emphasis on recordings of Schubert Lieder, and especially the Schubert song cycles. Some of these recordings are quite rare (and thus hard to find and expensive when you do find them), and have never been offered on CD before.

Options and Pricing

Pricing bands

The pricing of the recordings is at two price bands, which we call Standard and Prestige. Currently, Standard CDs are £3 each, and Prestige CDs are £5 each. There is no physical or technical difference between the quality of the CDs, packaging, documentation, etc., of the two bands. Instead, the bands merely reflect the rarity and availability of the source: recordings in the Prestige band will usually be quite rare and expensive, and, to the best of our knowledge, will usually be unavailable on CD elsewhere.

We also have collections which are individually priced. Normally these are collections of CDs that are also available singly, such as a collection of recordings of all three song cycles by the same performers. There will always be a modest price reduction for buying a collection rather than the individual CDs. We reserve the right to ship these as the individual CDs, or as a physical collection of several CDs in a single case with condensed notes.

Postage

Postage for a single CD is 75p in the UK, £1.40 to Europe, and £1.80 to other destinations. Of course, multiple CDs shipped together will reduce the cost per CD, and we can ship without CD cases and/or notes to reduce the weight, if requested. MP3 CDs will be shipped without a case, and thus may be considerably cheaper. Ask about a download option - whilst we do not currently plan a sophisticated immediate payment/automatic download system, we can provide MP3s as downloads to save you all postage costs.

CDs

The standard option for these recordings is for them to be provided on CDs, which are supplied in slimline cases with brief notes about the performers and, if space allows, the work. We will assume that all orders are for this option unless specifically stated otherwise. If requested, we can usually burn a CD with an unedited source - straight from the record player. These will be divided into tracks, but no other processing will be applied. They will therefore contain all the original crackles, pops and bumps. These unedited CDs are £1.50 each, but are not regularly stocked, and have to be burned on request, which may delay shipment by a day or two.

MP3s

If required, we can supply the recordings as MP3s. There is a discount of £1 per recording for using this option (note that this discount does not apply for just a single recording that is posted, since we have the same costs as for a full CD under those circumstances). We can send these MP3s on CD as data files, and this will significantly reduce postage costs where multiple recordings are ordered, as we can get around 10 recordings on a CD as MP3s. MP3 recordings will also be available for download.