Home » People » texasradiofish » "A Motherless Child"

A Motherless Child

uploaded: Sun, May 24, 2015 @ 3:04 AM last modified: Sun, May 24, 2015 @ 3:37 AM (replace)

by	texasradiofish
Featuring	Paul Robeson, Snowflake
length	2:44
BPM	116
Recommends	Recommends (11)

Together again for the first time
Paul Robeson and Snowflake

Was looking around the internet for ideas on Motherless Child accompaniments. Found a (posted as) pubic domain recording by Paul Robeson on archive.org. Decided to remix a vocal duet featuring Robeson and Snowflake. A bit of piano is heard in the Robeson recording.

If I had know how difficult it is to down grade a modern vocal recording using a good full frequency microphone to sound like this unknown remix of a 1920s era vocal recording, I would have kept looking for another idea. Gave up trying to mimic Robeson’s recorded voice using effects on Snowflake’s voice. Finally, just added a de-esser and chopped a lot of top end frequencies off of her voice.

Raised Robeson’s voice one step and then it seemed to fit with Snowflake’s voice. Converted his MP3 track to mono and doubled it for thickness. Didn’t try to fix the wobbles and other artifacts from the original recording or the remix.

In the 1920s, commercial audio was recorded monophonic. Could not get Robeson and Snowflake’s voice to play nice together in mono. The voices are panned like stage positioning.

https://archive.org/details/Paul-Robeson-collection-01-10

Btw, The currently playing HBO movie Bessie, the Bessie Smith story, well depicts an early 1920s recording studio. Queen Latifah does an outstanding job singing and playing Bessie Smith. Great biopic of the famous blues artist from 1920 to 1935.