Middle Ear Media

Audio Restoration and CD Cover Design

November 19th, 2009

Music is a beau­ti­ful thing. I’ve been work­ing on an audio restora­tion project lately. The group was called the Calyp­so­ni­ans and they played authen­tic Calypso. The record­ings were made with a portable cas­sette recorder in the early six­ties. My job was to trans­fer the audio from the orig­i­nal cas­settes to a dig­i­tal form (ulti­mately a CD) and do what­ever I could to enhance the sound quality.

Here is a short sam­ple from a track called “Take Me Back To Jamaica.”

As well as the audio restora­tion, I also designed a cover for the CD. My idea was to use as much his­tor­i­cal mate­r­ial as pos­si­ble. To accom­plish this, I scanned in a cou­ple pho­tos of the band and took pho­tos of the cas­settes. I used one photo of the band for the cover and the other band photo on the inside. The let­ter­ing on the cover is actu­ally the orig­i­nal hand­writ­ing from one of the cassettes.

The mag­netic tapes were dete­ri­o­rat­ing, but now the music is safe in a dig­i­tal form. I feel blessed to have got­ten the chance to work with and restore a record­ing that’s nearly fifty years old.

Tags: Audio Restoration, Calypsonians, CD Cover Design, Graphic Design

This entry was posted in the Audio Production, Graphic Design category.