Groove Oddities

Groove Oddities - Show Notes

 
Making Vinyl @ Masterdisk Podcast
 
Host: Scott Hull, Chief Engineer at Masterdisk


Episode Overview

In this fascinating episode, Scott Hull explores the weird and wonderful world of vinyl oddities and special pressing techniques. From games of chance embedded in records to concentric grooves and multiple performances on a single side, this episode dives into the creative and technical possibilities that make vinyl records truly unique physical artifacts.


Episode Description

Discover the playful and innovative side of vinyl record manufacturing as Scott Hull examines unusual groove configurations and special pressings that turn records into interactive experiences. This episode showcases how vinyl's physical format allows for creative experiments impossible in digital media.


Key Topics Covered

Groove Oddities & Special Techniques
 

• Games of chance on vinyl records
• Concentric grooves that create random playback experiences
• Multiple performances of the same song on a single side
• The technical challenges of creating these special pressings
• Historical examples of creative vinyl innovations

Featured Record
 

• MIRACLE DERBY Horse Race Betting Record - A unique example of interactive vinyl that combines music with gaming elements

 
Music Featured
 
Artist: Los Vega
Song: "El Buscapiés"
Listen on Spotify
 
 

Resources & Links
 

• Make Your Own Record: Learn more about Masterdisk's services
• Support the Show: The Oddysy

 
About the Host
 
Scott Hull is the Chief Engineer at Masterdisk with 30 years of vinyl cutting and mastering experience. His impressive client list includes Sting, Steely Dan, Dave Matthews, and John Mayer. Scott brings expert technical knowledge and industry insights to every episode.
 
 
Episode Release Date
 
December 19, 2024
 
 
Why Listen?
 
This episode is perfect for:
 

• Vinyl enthusiasts curious about the format's creative possibilities
• Musicians and producers considering special pressings
• Audio engineers interested in technical innovations
• Anyone fascinated by the intersection of music and interactive media

 
Contact Masterdisk
 
Masterdisk Studios
1245 Park Street, Suite 2A
Peekskill, NY 10566
Phone: +1 (212) 541-5022 ext. 2


Making Vinyl @ Masterdisk is your go-to podcast for expert opinions on all things vinyl, hosted by one of the industry's most experienced mastering engineers.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hello everyone and welcome to Making Vinyl at Master Disc. I'm Scott Hull, Chief Engineer and Owner of Master Disc in New York. And today, once again, I'm joined with KJ from the Odyssey. Hello, hello. Hey man. Welcome again. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah, so I figured I'd uh bring up something that interests me today. Um we've touched on it before, um, but I'm curious about um the bits and pieces of the crazy grooves and things that um that you put into records. Um one in particular I was reading about the other day is a racetrack groove, and I have absolutely no idea what that is, but I love the name.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Well, cool. So we'll get into the oddities of uh of disc cutting. We'll go out to the uh the outer reaches and the oddities, yes. Sweet. Well, a boring old record is just one groove from the outside of the record to the inside of the record. Um they're packed together pretty tightly, but it's just one it's one continuous groove.

unknown 1:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

There's two parts of that that you need to know about. On the outside of the record, at the largest diameter, there's a thing called a safety groove, and it's a essentially a concentric groove. In other words, it the the turntable goes all the way around and it cuts a complete groove, and then the recording um uh the actual groove that you want to hear then comes off of that and and that's what moves into the inside, the spiral, into the to the part where the music is. Okay. The safety groove on the outside is called that because it's it's a landing pad. Uh it's usually a deeper groove, and it's a spot where the stylus is supposed to end up if you're if you're using a changer or if you're a little jittery, you know, uncertain with where you're going to put down the needle, um, it'll kind of pop into that safety groove and then it'll play fine. It's been that way since the LP. There's uh uh an outside concentric groove. And then at the very inside of the record, right next to the label, is a is the inside concentric groove, usually called the locked groove at the at the inside. What someone long ago figured out was that if you um if you spaced the grooves out appropriately, you could actually fit more than one groove onto a record. It's hard enough to sort of visualize this when you're actually looking at it, but to describe it um without pictures is is uh is a bit of a challenge. But imagine this. Um you've got a a s a circle, all right, that's your outer groove, that's your safety groove. And at um at three o'clock, uh, you know, let's think, imagine that as a clock face. All right, and at three o'clock on that is when this groove spirals out of that and towards the center of the record, and that's your first groove that you that you cut. And if you leave a sufficient amount of space between the grooves, none of this stuff happens automatically. It all has to be done manually. And it sounds incredibly difficult already. Uh so now imagine this circle with groove number one coming off at the three o'clock portion on the on the clock, and now I want to have a second groove that peels off at the nine o'clock portion of that clock face. So now it depends which groove you're going to actually play when you s when you put the record on, depends on whether you drop the needle somewhere around the the 12 o'clock hour at the top of the record or somewhere around the six o'clock hour at the bottom of the record. The record is turning, and it's almost impossible to deliberately put it into one groove or into another groove. It's more or less going to be by chance. So the um, you know, the fun things that you can do with this is you can actually um make the consumer think that there's only one program on there, except some days they pick up the record and they hear a completely different program. And uh or you can put um which what I did for um an artist's one of the sides is normal. The other side has a a two-groove side, and one of the songs on that side had two versions of it, one sung by the male lead and one sung by the female lead. Oh, amazing. So you start this side listening to three songs, um, and not knowing which one you're gonna hear when you get to the fourth cut. So it's kind of fun. The you know, it you really don't know, you you really have no idea which one's gonna play when you get there. But it's a completely a sort of a game of chance. You could hit the one groove, you know, the three times in a row and then hit the other one five times in a row, or they could alternate. It it really um without you stopping the turntable and deliberately placing the tonearm in a specific place on the turntable, um, you you can't predict which groove is gonna play. The process of doing that is uh, you know, it's it's one of those things that for many people think is, you know, just too hard to try. It's it's almost impossible. But with some I I figured out some ways of making it work on my lathe, and I created a process so that I could repeat it. And by using that process, I was able to reliably get two and potentially even three grooves to run on a side. I supp and I at the time was thinking, you know what, if somebody really wanted to do it badly enough, I could probably do four. There's a really cool old, old, old record that was made, um must have been made in the 78 um uh time frame. But it was um four groove record that was a horse race. It was basically what they refer to as the stretch call on a horse race. So that's the last, you know, the last uh f three or four minutes of a horse race as the horses are coming around the final turn, and the play-by-play call from the announcer uh gets more excited as um horse number one is coming up on the inside, and the second horse is, you know, is uh you know is blocking, but then uh the third horse is coming from the fourth horse is coming from the back. So that's what the stretch call is. Well, they made a record uh with the same four horses in four different recordings of four different stretch calls that were the same up until like the last twenty seconds, and uh each one of the different grooves had a different horse win the race.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

That's absolutely insane. And uh what an incredible um what an incredible idea of sort of like early, I don't know, artificial intelligence in gaming.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Servicemen apparently needed something to keep them uh uh keep them occupied, um, you know, but between um moments of uh of you know trying to stay alive and you know. Um so this was used in the uh in the PX, the the recreation area for the servicemen, and they would literally bet on and you know they'd throw their money down, and the operator would you know drop the needle and one of the four horses would win the race, and it was a game of chance.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

That's crazy. When did you personally become aware of this craziness in vinyl?

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Well, there was I uh unbeknownst to me, um, I fell prey to this many years ago when I was a kid. I actually uh really enjoyed Monty Python, and most of the people that I hung around with um quoted Monty Python, everything from um, you know, the argument and the Polly Parrot, the Parrot sketch, and um um, you know, it goes on and on and on. If you're a fan of Monty Python, you're a fan of all Monty Python. So a friend of mine had bought a record, and um he he lent it to me, and I made a cassette copy of it, because that's what we did back then, um, and I listened to it and enjoyed the record and gave it back to him. And um um it was a normal record. A side and a B side. I was kind of surprised it fit, you know, really easily on my you know, 45-minute cassette. So I but I hadn't really noticed why, realized why. So we're all around sitting around talking about the record, and they start quoting from a bit. And I said, Where did you hear that? I said, that's that's totally new. I hadn't hadn't heard it at all. Well it turns out that the B side of that record, or one side of that record, had um uh two different grooves, just like I was describing. And um it was really the Money Python three-sided record, but it was on just two sides of vinyl. So the uh depend him it was chance which program you were going to hear on the B side. And as it turned out, I never had heard the bits on the B side. I had really felt like I missed out, but if I had owned the record and I would have uh eventually discovered the um you know the the sort of the hidden track. There's no magic here though. It actually takes up more space on the disc to run two grooves than it does to just run run one. So you don't get like twice as much playing time. You actually get half as much playing time for each groove if you're gonna put two on. And if you're gonna put four on a side, you're gonna get you know less than one-fourth the th the playing time available. Because it's still using up the same amount of space, it's just that the grooves are going down, you know, one after another in between the space is left from the other groove.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

So creating these things in your lathe room, I mean, is this is this like learning an instrument? Is this something you practice and you you know you blow aside and you try again and a little trial and error and a little creativity and a little skill?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Well, yeah, it started with uh figuring out how the heck I was going to be able to do it. Um well it started with somebody asking me the question, can it be done? And um I knew it could be done on older style equipment that had could it was it were easy to uh start set up and and cut fixed pitch. Fixed pitch means there's a um the spacing between every groove is exactly the same throughout the course of the record. It's fixed. Okay. Um that's how 78s were cut, that's why they look the way they do. They you can't actually see the modulation of the the audio in the grooves, but on an LP and 45s you usually can. But if I went back to an old school techno technique called fixed pitch cutting, um then I could set a really wide space between the grooves. And then when I drop, we call it dropping the head, when I lower the head into the record to cut the second groove, looking through the microscope, I can see that it's either too close or that's either you know right in the center of the two grooves that have already been cut. The one I'm I I literally driving the groove down the center of the land between the two grooves. It's very hard to explain. But hopefully I've given you enough of a picture that you can.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

No, I actually do have a picture of it in my head. Um I'm so this this lathe that you have, it's a Norman, right? Is is there is there a button that you push to make it fixed pitch?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Uh well, yeah, there's ways of disabling the pitch um generation system, but um uh it it it required some modifications, but there was a different way of of accomplishing it by by tricking the preview computer, making it space, uh uh uh defining its its um um the the way of tricking the computer. Gotcha. I barely understand it, but it works.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

No, uh it's it's it's another one of those dark arts. I mean it's it's the craziest thing. So how how often does it come up between you and a MasterDisc client?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

It's only been a couple times. Um I've I've done three of them uh successfully. Um only one that I'm certain went to production because I actually have got um you know pressed copies of of that one. Um another one was considered as a as a 10-inch single with uh three songs on it and two songs on one side. Um been trying to get trying to interest more people in doing it. It's pretty darn time consuming and it's pretty gets pretty expensive. So it it's it's not for the um Faint of heart. Yeah, faint of wallet, unfortunately. It's uh you know, I don't I don't bragging about charging people a lot of money. It just takes so much extra time. It's like cutting the record four times.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you want it you want something special, you have to pay special prices. I mean, it it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

It really isn't it really isn't for too many people doing it. Um doing it in a way so that it actually turns out and sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

So uh what about when it gets to the uh pressing plant? Are there implications of the of the you know multi-groove racetrack groove thing? Is there do you have to warn them ahead of time?

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Actually, the good news is plating and pressing is just a uh a copying step, a replication step. So um whatever condition the groove is in, when we send it to them, that's what they're gonna replicate. Um to that point, uh sometimes on a four-sided record, or but let me say it differently, on a three-sided record where we're actually going to use two discs. So it's gonna be an A-side, a B side, and a C side, where the D side's going to be a blank record. Um sometimes they just put a blank groove on there, but other times you actually can carve an etching into the vinyl. In this case, you you uh you have a graphic artist to actually make physical art into the lacquer, and then when they um plate it and press it, that pattern gets embossed into the back of the second disc on the D side. Um it doesn't have sound, it's not playable, it's it's you know, it's a etching. It's a it's a graphic element, it's something unique. Yeah, they they actually can plate them and press them normally. Um it comes up we have to let them know in quality control because um if they listen to one groove top to bottom, they'll figure they have uh listened to the whole record. They have to be aware that there's a second groove that they have to listen to.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

And does it look any different to the uh you know when you when you pull it out of the jacket the first time, do you see anything or does it just seem like a regular record?

SPEAKER_02 15:07

It looks pretty much like a regular record, um, especially if you're able to pack the grooves together pretty closely. You kind of have to to get a decent playing time. But um it's uh no, it should look it well, it's gonna look a little different because it's uh a fixed pitch. Um uh variable pitch records, you can kind of see if you if you take the record and look at a reflection of the light in the surface of the record, any light, the sun or an indoor light, and just look look at the record, but as a at a glancing angle, you'll see that there's a varying patterns of the grooves on the record. And if you know the the audio that's on the record, you'll soon learn that that pattern is analogous to the levels and the audio and the phase relationships with the audio that's on that disc. So you can actually see where the loud spots are, you can actually see where the floor tom is played in the, you know, um uh uh you know, in the beat or where the bass drum comes in in an orchestral piece. And then you can see where the soft sections are because the the grooves don't move very much and they're really closely packed together. Naked eye you can actually see a lot of that stuff. Um it's um so on a fixed pitch record or like on a multi-groove record, um you'll you might notice that there's very you you almost don't see any of that patterning. It actually looks something like a a little bit more like a 78 um does, but the grooves are um closer together.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

So this is different from a a locked groove record, right? This is a different technique. Yes. Yeah, completely different. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

So tell me tell me a little bit about locked groove. Well, the the locked groove, um, you know, we we talked about uh how there's a safety groove on the outside of the record and how there's a locked groove at the end of the record. You can program the disc so that there's locked grooves during the course of the record. So uh this is often used by um uh often created so that um performance DJ performance artists have uh beats that they can play and loop to live off of turntables. So you could have track one on the vinyl play a a beat or groove, you know, for 15 seconds or 30 seconds or so, and then cause the lathe to cut a locked groove, and then after it's done cutting its concentric groove, it cuts back over itself, the head lifts up, and now we have if you play that segment, it'll play the beat, and then we'll it'll stop at the locked groove and keep repeating the locked groove infinitely until you take the needle off the record. Uh this is a deliberate skip. It's it's like a like a defective record that where it skips and just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. But this is done deliberately, and it's usually done in tempo, so when when the music hits the locked groove, there's a small disturbance, but it doesn't cause the people dancing to lose step. It's supposed to stay in time, stay in tempo.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Right, you don't drop the groove. Yeah, and this is something that probably, you know, classic, you know, sort of um uh experienced DJs know about that maybe the new generation of DJ just n doesn't encounter anymore.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Well, yeah, this there's there's certainly software that um uh lets you do this by sampling and and triggering and looping. Um so that to some extents is to some extents that's not as um necessary. But it is kind of cool to have a two-table turntable setup, and you can literally get two locked grooves playing the beads together, um, change one of them, change another, and you know, create your mix, you know, off of off of these locks, as well as uh scratch, you know, um to uh to add excitement to the whole thing. Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

So uh racetrack groove, we talked about locked groove. Are there are there other species of grooves?

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Well there's there's some um there are some details about the groove width and depth that are a little bit of a misnomer, a little bit misunderstood. Technically, there are uh the there's a way to cut a fat groove or a deeper groove and on a 12-inch single, you have the opportunity to cut a deeper groove if you want to, because you have more disc space and you're not so worried about um ex how much space that the groove's gonna use up, so you can make it a little bit deeper. A really deep groove doesn't improve the the sound, but a really shallow groove does have the tendency to skip more often. So we have a minimum size that we're supposed to not go bel beneath below, so you know, so that the record plays properly on a lot of different equipment. But if um if you have extra space along the side of your record, you can create a an extra deep groove. And so what's kind of happened as a result of this is um people have decided that uh having a fat groove is kind of like having an amp that goes to eleven. Um it's gotta be better than one that only goes to ten. Um if you understand if you catch my drift. Spinal tab, yes. Caught it. But um in fact, it's it's not really better as long as the groove is not too shallow. And so uh, you know, we will make the grooves a little bit dip deeper and a little bit wider and a little bit further apart when we have that opportunity when when the record isn't um really, really long. But it's not our experience that that actually makes the record better. That said, there's a there's uh an area it gets a little bit more gray when we start talking about hundred 180 gram records. These are thicker records to begin with, and it's often been reported that um um using a uh uh uh cutting the record deeper um for a 180 gram record produces a better result. And I have to land right on the fence on that one. Um it really depends on the plant, it really depends on the program, depends on the stylus that you're cutting with and the lacquers that you're using. I'm afraid it's not quite that straightforward. 180 gram can sound great for a variety of and important reasons, but not usually because the groove is deeper. But there's at least two different opinions on that. Um insisting that a 180 gram record um really should be cut with a with a deep groove.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Aaron Ross Powell And if I if I spoke to somebody who really believed that um uh who who isn't on the fence about it, what reason would they give, do you suppose?

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Well, it's there's the theory that um you're you Using but you're using more material with a thicker groove so that you um a deeper groove um um translates the music um better back to the stylus. But the but the the reality is the stylus is such a tiny, tiny, tiny little contact patch um that um you know even on a very small groove it's it's going to move the the voice coil back and forth. It's it's really a function of in my opinion, it's it's it's it's just a function of uh preventing skipping and preventing warping. Um I don't want to I don't want to dissuade people from from enjoying their 180 gram records because quite often they are uh a lot better quality. I just don't think the reason is because the groove's deep.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Okay. Fair enough. So uh in the end, there it's it's kind of um it's sort of a security issue to keep your stylus where you want it to be, not necessarily an issue of sound quality, but there is a sweet spot, right? There's um not too shallow and not too deep.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Yeah, there there really is. I mean, uh uh some lacquers that we get today um actually get noisier as they go deep. So as as we cut deeper into them. And um, so that's w one one of the balancing acts here that um um i like I said, it varies with stylizing, it varies with with the lacquer, but um by and large the groove's gonna get a little noisier as it gets as it goes really deep.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Is is there an implication of wear and tear if you if you're doing um you know deeper uh deeper cuts in the lacquer and and um wider grooves, perhaps? Is there uh do you have to change styli more often?

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. The um the uh the cutting surface does wear out. Um it gets um just the the sharpness. It's it's such a small tool that it's very, very, very dis difficult to re-sharpen. Um but i th if the just like a knife blade or cutting tool, uh you use it you know over and over and over again, the the very razor thin edge of it rounds off slightly. And um you would think it would make it uh c go through the record better as it's worn. Um well, in fact, a brand new stylus is a little bit noisy. A stylus that's been worn in for about 30 or 40 minutes um starts to sound uh perfect and then is good for quite a long period of time. And then once it once that edge of the gr of the cutting tool rounds off a little bit more, it starts to get noisy again.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

So there again, there's a sweet spot to you know to that aspect as well, and it's incredibly difficult to quantify, um, but it's but it exists, and you sort of, you know, somebody with uh your experience, you just you know it when you hit it.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Well, we monitor everything. We we we can't play back the master lacquer, but we do test cuts on every cut, every time we cut a record. Um so the test cut is cutting the outer portion of the disc beyond where the record is going to be, in that um, you know, we've said before we cut the masters on 14 inch blanks. So outside of the 12-inch diameter, there's some free space where we can cut test cuts and we cut and listen to the playback um every single time because you you just never know when that's not when it's going to have cut its last side. Um uh and we measure this we listen carefully and uh you know try to understand what the noise uh parameters sound like, but we also measure it, and there's a pass fail point, uh which I I won't allow the the the part to go out the door if it's too noisy. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

So um who the hell knew? You know, the the uh my mind is blown by the the horse race thing, actually. Um we're gonna put up a a link on um MasterDisc's uh social media feeds, uh Facebook and Twitter and Instagram uh to some of the things that that Scott talked about today. The um the race uh that that racetrack that horse race thing, if if that's even available, but um certainly I'm sure you could find the Monty Python and and a couple contemporary artists, I would think.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Um Yeah, I've I've seen a YouTube um Um video of that horse track, horse horse race, uh four-track uh record. Um I haven't actually physically held it in my hands, but it um I've I've seen it I've seen it and heard it, and considered uh making my own version of it someday. So if anybody's got any bright ideas and wants to uh uh and wants to have a really unique um record project, then uh hit me up with it. We'll we'll if if if it can be done, we'll figure out figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Hells yeah, give the man a challenge, seriously. So yeah, if you have questions, if you have thoughts, um if you uh want to hear about another type of groove um that the aliens handed down to us uh for vinyl enjoyment or something like that, hit up Scott and the MasterDisc team on uh you know Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, or just go to the website masterdisc.com and uh you know send an old-fashioned email. Um that's it then. All right, cool. Thank you, Scott.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

You're very welcome. And uh this is once again a podcast of Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. And uh thanks to KJ Fnatic for for uh bringing me all the questions. Alright, alright.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

See you guys later.