"AUDIO AESTHETICS IDEAS" Topic

(1of3) On the subject of aesthetics, and before hi-tech, I once made several "audio" cassette tape recordings of musket-era battlefield sounds -- to add to my realism effort. Initially, these sounds came from my poor quality VHS tv-recording of the movie Waterloo (1970), but later included some sounds from others, such as the amazing bombardment from the Gettysburg movie. The first stage of my process, and most challenging, was negotiating the "record" & "pause" buttons on my old taperecorder, just at the right moments. This was to avoid recording two unwanted sounds: 1) any inevitable background music/score that always annoyingly started in any scene; and 2) any actor dialog or weird-noises that didn't need to be included -- for example, Wellington suddenly yelling, "Stop that useless noise!" or that French drummer making that weird screaching noise as he & d'Erlon's corps crested the ridge. To complete this stage, I just repeated the painstaking process until I had a full tape's worth of pure, unadulterated, and VERY "generalized" battle sounds -- nothing too dramatic or too catchy! (that was all for stage2)