2019 Gerhard Kubik's Vienna Tape Archive

From March 14-17, 2019 I was in Vienna with Lester Monts and Kelly Askew to set up a digitizing operation for the audio tape collection of Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik.  If these two links are not enough, just Google him.

Gerhard Kubik outside the door to his Culture Research Archive

Gerhard has been making field recordings for 50 years and has published over 300 articles and books and made over 25,000 recordings.  A great many of these are kept in 2 apartments he has in Vienna: one is his home and the other is his "Culture Research Archive".

The street door to the Home apartment.

The buzzer.

His desk in the home apartment.

The door to the Archive apartment.

The tapes are carefully boxed and labeled, and he has volumes of field notes about them.  It is an amazingly organized collection.  But it is kept in every possible place in both apartments...

Yes...

Moya is opening...

the guest bed...

And here is what we saw!

Kelly, Lester, and Moya inventorying one of the shelves at home.

I set up the new digitizing operation on a library table at the Archive apartment.  We supplied a Focusrite A-D converter, a Windows laptop, and several external hard drives so the work could be backed up every day.  It is also now in UM Google drive space, soon to be placed on a backed-up UM server.

The work table in the Archive.

Tom, Yohana, and Moya at the work table in the Archive.

You can see the UHER and NAGRA tape recorders that Gerhard has used int he filed.  We were able to play back most of the recordings on the same machine used to capture them in the field.

Laptop, A-D converter, and reel to reel tape decks.  Hard drives can be seen just behind the laptop.
Various audio cable arrangements are used to connect each tape deck.  The recordings are mono.

Here is a link to the workflow we set up.

Here are some photos of the documentation filling the book shelves at the Archive.

Well, that's it for now.  Until next time, have a good time!

-t