The Locked Groove

Scott and KJ explore the Locked Groove on a record.  What is a locked groove? What creative ways can you use a locked groove on a record? 
Scott Hull - Chief cutting Engineer at Masterdisk explains the who, what, and why and how of locked grooves and other Vinyl oddities with KJ of the Oddysy.




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Music heard :
Steely Dan -  What A Shame About Me   
From the Album Two Against Nature
listen to it on Spotify: What a Shame about me 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hi everyone and welcome to Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. I'm Scott Hole, Chief Engineer and Owner of MasterDisc in New York. Today I'm with KJ of the Odyssey, a good musician and bass player and friend and songwriter, colleague of mine, and he's with us here to talk about vinyl.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Yes, indeed. And the aspect of vinyl we're talking about is something called the lockout, which I've heard a little bit about, but I know almost nothing about. But I've seen examples of it, and uh it's it's very cool. So um why don't you start by telling me exactly what a lockout is?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Well, the locked groove is the final groove that the record cutter cuts in the record. You have to actually kind of watch your needle as you're playing the record. But as your record's over, it quickly goes towards the center of the groove and then it rotates around the label and just keeps rotating over and over and over again. You'll hear a little bump as it goes shh shh as it goes around the locked groove. Uh locked meaning that it's cut right back in over top of itself. So it creates a loop, a perpetual loop that plays and plays until you go and pick up the the needle and take it out of the locked groove. So its purpose is to protect your needle so that your needle, well, and the record doesn't you know pipe out past the paper unless you really intend to do that. But thanks to Jack White for figuring out how to do that. He actually has a record out where the music continues beyond the paper label. Uh and there's a a hidden message in the vinyl underneath the label label.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Of course, Jack White would do that. So you know, it it's interesting. Uh so the the the whole idea of this thing was in the first place was to protect the needle and you know have it, you know, in case you didn't get up right away and and you know, lift it lift up the uh the play arm, this is this would save your your rig.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, and uh and in a related piece of technical nonsense, the uh the speed at which the tone arm moves across the disc um at the end, after the end of music, that's called the lead out. And many automatic turntables will automatically pick up the tone arm during that lead out period. So if you have an automatic turntable, not just a changer, but anything that's got that automatically picks up the arm at the end of the record, you actually will never hear the locked groove. So it makes it a little bit of a mystery. You have to find a manual player if you want to um if you want to get hip with the locked grooves.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So speaking of getting hip with the locked grooves, uh, you know, it went from this technical thing that's you know helpful to you know record and vinyl enthusiasts to some you know sort of an artistic endeavor. People like Jack White and other other people or other artists are using for you know to to provide more interest to this medium. Uh what kind of things are they doing besides Jack White's secret message?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Well, the locked groove is pretty short, so there's not a lot that you can do with it. But what you can do with it is put a little bit of a little recording or a little bit of sound or something of of your own creation uh that gets put in there. It's a challenge to cut it, and we never know exactly how it's gonna turn out until after we play it back. But there are some facts that'll help guide you to creating music or sound to put into locked grooves. I gotta refer to my little handy table here. So at 33 RPM, the disc is making one revolution at 1.8 seconds. So just short of two seconds long is how long your locked groove is gonna be. You might initially think that a locked groove on the outer portion of the disc uh might be longer than the locked groove on the inner portion of the disc, but physics says that can't happen. Uh if you did that, the disc would be very, very, very, very warped. Um so um it's a constant rotation, so every revolution is one point eight seconds. If you do a little bit of math at a 4-4 uh time signature, a BPM of 133.3 beats per minute will give you exactly one four beat bar in one point eight seconds.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Ha. So every being a bass player, everything you said is way over my head, so I'm just gonna go ahead and take your word for that.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Well, BPM beats per minute, um, so that means the tempo of the song needs to be um fixed at 133.3 beats per minute. Uh if you're doing electronic music or um something with a drum machine, you can obviously set that tempo um precisely.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

That part I know, the the math, not so much with the math. You know, yes, you can take the count to four.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

You can take the one point eight seconds as a as a fact. Uh I will.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

All right, so uh so um yeah, so you've got 1.8 seconds. What what's um I mean what's something cool to do with 1.8 seconds?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

You can s say a message, you can loop one bar. Um so if if there's something you know that you want to say musically uh in the end of your gro at the end of your record. One interesting other bit is that uh for the locked groove at the end of the record, uh you can play into the locked groove. So I've done a couple things recently where the music at the end of the last song kind of disappears into an ambient cloud. You know, think um the flaming lips or something like that. Okay, so or or even this jazz record that I did where the last piece was uh recorded on the street. So there's a lot of street noise, ambient noise, horns honking, people going by, conversations. So the last piece ended as if it was recorded on the street, and we looped that street noise into the locked groove so that you're on a manual turntable, it just plays perpetually. Now the loop of you know 1.8 seconds is kind of short, so you'll obviously uh identify it as a loop, but uh it's just something you know fun and groovy to do and something different to do.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Actually, now that now that we've talked about this and now that I know the terminology, I have to say one of my favorite records um of the past couple years uh from Glass Animals, I think it's called How to Be a Human Being, and they have uh the side B ends with this uh they they just leave the synth part going. And it sounds, I mean, the sound by itself is actually pretty awful, and it it the reason it sticks in my mind is because it forces me to get up off the couch no matter what I'm doing and lift up the needle because it's just this kind of thing. It's it's amazingly annoying, but I I sort of I I kind of have to give them props for you know for doing something like you know, tongue in cheek like that.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

There's been a couple records that back in the day, so I started mastering before uh CDs were um invented, and uh when we first had to try to remaster for digital, there were a few records that had uh music in the locked grooves, and we had to decide what to do about it. And in a couple instances, we actually dubbed the vinyl back to digital and looped it about 80 times and then put that on the end of the CD.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

That's awesome. Yeah, what an amazing problem to have. So uh so locked grooves, um, they're not just for the end. Can you I mean you you people use them other places?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah, it's often used as a DJ tool. It's not unusual for a DJ to have two copies of the same record so they can, you know, beat match and do their own remixes live as they're doing it. So if you've got a record that's got um something close to this 133 BPM, on the back side of it, you could have a bunch of samples from that record, you know, one bar of each one of these little bits. And so the DJ just has to find the groove that has the the group the groove sorry, the terminology I can't help you here. He has to find the groove that has the groove that he's looking for. The beat that's gonna be a big thing. And then um he starts that, uh bumps it slightly to get it to play synchronized with the music that you're hearing, and then he can slap over to his B table and play this locked drum beat or you know, keyboard beat, or right, you know, a looped pattern that would then let him grab something else and mix with it. I'm not a DJ, I've seen some people do this. Obviously, DJs uh will write in and and tell my clearly don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But to give you ideas, you can actually put multiple locked grooves on the side of a record to create essentially samples of the song that play back uh infinitely until the user picks up the needle and moves to the next groove. Um they can be preceded by the actual song, so each one of the songs could end in a lock locked groove. Only thing really to note is that if you've got about, you know, 18 minutes or so or 20 minutes of sp time that you can put on a side of an LP, if you put a bunch of locked grooves in, it chews up a lot more additional space. It really depends on the patience and skill of the operator to to squeeze as many of these things on as possible. It's a novelty for sure. It can be rather annoying to the listener to have to get up and move the needle each time, but there you are messing with your listener's head and forcing them to interact with your record. And uh that in itself could be appealing.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

You know, in a world of Spotify and ho humdrum MP3s and you know, to to have a different to have a different experience, a physical experience. That's why I like vinyl in the first place. So, you know, I don't really want to be pulled off the uh you know, out of my chair every after every single song, but it does seem cool that there would be an opportunity for some interactivity with this. And I think that a smart creative artist like Jack White, we always sort of come back to him. Um, smart creative people, you know, using these tools to, you know, to make the experience that much better. It it feels like a a step in the right direction to me.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

It is. Um CD was a particularly peculiar format in that it was um in invented to solve a particular problem, but it it wasn't described or built in a way to be flexible or to have you know plugins or uh added architecture added to it. It was, you know, all the smarts were built into the player and the disk was made to be very simple and just to contain the data. And you literally would have to modify the player, and if you put extended features on your disk, then it wouldn't be compatible with the huge installed base of players. There was obviously a different way of doing that, but at the time they were solving the problem of the day that they had. But then after, you know, 10 or 12, 15 years of of everybody's CD looking the same and performing the same, people tried all different sorts of ways to be get creative with the content on it, but they all kind of fell short of being novelty. Um, hiding a track after 59 minutes of uh of silence, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

That was the one I was gonna mention. The one the only one that occurs to me is is that that was the only one I ever found interesting or cool and you know, something that people talked about, which brings up another point about this uh using these sort of um, you know, alternative techniques in a in a medium is sort of creating a little bit of buzz. Um I I didn't know it before, but my friend Otto uh told me about a Jack White record that had a little this little thing on it. I don't remember if it was the message you were talking about or some some crazy thing, uh other thing that he was doing, but it became noteworthy. And that's an interesting sort of almost promotional tool for an artist.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Well, sure. Um I I think Jack looks at these things as let's try it, let's see if it can be done. We don't know anybody that's done this before, but uh, you know, let's let let's try it. And it becomes the thing that you talk about. Um there's a one of his records has um uh liquid in the middle of the record that actually spins, and there's this these little items, these little plastic bits inside the record that move around while you're playing it. Are you kidding me? It's got liquid in the center, and I don't own one of these things. It's pretty expensive. What is what is the liquid? Uh you know, I actually don't know. Um look up Jack White's liquid record, I think you'll find it. Um it's um I don't know what it's going for these days. It was it was um basically handmade. I I really don't know how many copies were made. I've I've heard of it, I've seen pictures. I I actually had one in my hand. It's one of those, like, oh wow, that's really pushing the boundaries pretty far. Seriously.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Yeah, but again, hats off, you know, thinking outside the box a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Sure. Oh, I I got another small detail to add for our listeners who are thinking about doing this on their own, and that is at 45 RPM um the numbers all change. So the disk is retur uh rotating faster at 45 revolutions per minute. That means one revolution is 1.3 seconds long, so the locked groove is shorter, and that translates to one four-beat bar at 180 BPM. So there you have it. That's um everything you ever wanted to know about making a locked groove. Seriously.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Um, what about the technical aspect about this? I mean, you know, for the you know, for the listeners who who've never, you know, who don't know about this, uh, you know, the this black art, this alchemy that happens. I've stood, I've I've stood there in the studio next to Scott and watched him on this uh amazing Neumann lathe that he's got um uh in the studio. And uh the just making a regular record uh seems to me to be this this incredible thing. You know, just uh I I'm my mind is always kind of blown. Um, but I've never seen this particular part of it. So just give us a just a little taste of what the technical aspect of of creating one of these things is, in in the regular sense uh at the end of the record, and also you know, the sort of kitschy, kind of cool Jack Whitey kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Um depending on the nature of the music and how precisely synchronized it has to be. It can either be easy or it can be one of the hardest things we've ever had to try to do. So the easy one. Um, like you mentioned, uh the record you mentioned that ends in a s in a loop of uh sound. Um it doesn't really matter if that loop goes around four times or five times or twenty-five times before it hits the lockout. We just we're gonna create a big long loop of that audio at the end of the side, uh at the end of the digital file that we're gonna cut this from. Uh we'll have the audio edited onto the end of it so there's a big loop of audio playing. And when the lathe is finished cutting the record, it will go through its automatic process and lift the needle up off the disc, and well voila, your you know, audio in lockout will be played. That's easy. Uh we almost don't even have to we barely have to work to do that. But if you want your music to go to silence and then cue a particular moment in time and you have this precise 1.8 seconds worth of audio that you want to be in the locked groove, that's really, really, really, really, really hard.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Give it give us a taste of why is it so hard?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Well, the the synchronization of it, well, what first thing is the the the groove has to be cut in real time. And if it's not perfect, it can't be fixed, it can't be edited, we have to cut a whole new disc again. So we have to s we have to time out the last three or four or five minutes of the record precisely and put marks in our waveform or our digital editor to notate exactly where on the lathe we are at any given moment and how we're gonna synchronize this this ending. Um okay, here's a good one. It's about like timing the flyover of the Air Force jets when someone's singing the national anthem uh before the Super Bowl. Good analogy. It's like those jets had to start flying at a half an hour before the national anthem started. Right. And they have to know where they need to be at a particular moment in time at a particular synchronization, and then there's probably somebody in a tower somewhere telling them whether they're on time, whether on target to get there early or late, whether they need to slow down or speed up. I can't slow down or speed up the turntable, but I I can sort of aim this audio to land at that particular moment. And it's it's a manual process with a stopwatch and and a couple sheets of paper. It's that's how that's how it's done. So it um it will almost certainly add to the cost of making the the record because it adds a lot of time and it's very easy to make it have it not turn out perfectly, so that means it has to be done again and sometimes again and again until it's done perfectly. It's very, very custom product at that point.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah, I kind of like that aspect of it. I mean, if you're gonna do something crazy, you know, and it it'll you know, it sort of reduces the um the number of people who are willing to to you know to put in the extra bucks and you know think outside the box a little bit. And again, that's sort of what makes it special.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, I think I do a large number of these things because I'm I'm one of those guys that doesn't say no when someone asks me if it can be done. Um I think that's why I like talking about Jack White. It's just like, well, sure, I haven't done this recently or I haven't tried this particular thing before, but let's figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Absolutely. Problem solving.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah, yeah. Uh and that's the challenge that makes it all kind of fun to do and keep doing uh every day.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

So anything else? Parting shots about locked grooves. Uh anything else we need to know?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

No, other than DJs, don't slap me around too much for being dumb. Um I I I get an idea of what you guys do, and I cut you I cut the records that you guys spin, but um maybe one of you will come on and talk with me on the podcast and and tell me how uh how you use my my records. That would be cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Well, I just so happen to know a guy. Yeah, I think you do. All right, well, we'll we'll find uh we'll we'll find a time to hook you uh and uh DJ Johnny Juice up. Uh he's the uh DJ of uh of our band, The Odyssey, and I'm sure you can come in and talk to uh talk about locked grooves and DJing until the cows come home.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

I'm sure. And he's got some madass skills uh to talk about, so that's cool. Yes, he does. All right, so this has been podcast for Master Disc. Um hope you enjoyed it. We'll be sending more out to you shortly. If you've got questions, got ideas, things that you want to know about vinyl, send them along. Find us on social media and Kevin, tell them what they've won.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Well, what they've won is a non-stop flight to uh facebook.com slash masterdisc, uh on uh Instagram, it's masterdisc underscore nyc. On Twitter, it is at MasterDisc. Uh so yeah, write in and uh you know submit your questions for Scott and um if we uh use your question on the podcast uh then Scott will be able to do that.