In 1990 I bought my first master keyboard, and that was just like a revelation to have a 6 part multi-timbral synth, that had vaguely realistic sounding instruments on it, and to run it with the DOS sequencer.

I could now program the music, but there was no way of synchronizing to the soundtrack, and it was Keith Barnfather who suggested a method of doing it. It was very fiddly and involved endlessly copying bits of the video soundtrack onto cassette tape, but this method allowed me to do the music for some of his earlier Myth-Maker tapes... 

The first one was Victor Pemberton. I did some awful music for that , and I didn't have a clue what to do, thrown in at the deep end. I slightly redeemed myself with the update, but the original stuff still makes me cringe.

Audio Synchronization

I had a chance to redo the music, as Keith went through updating them, and adding new material, I was able to do some new music for them, which I still think was a bit poor, it was a chance to improve on what had gone before.

To synchronize to a picture, Keith said what I should do is record the soundtrack onto cassette, and describe what is happening as a commentary, so I could hear the soundtrack rumbling on, with my commentary telling me specifically what is happening over the top, and then copy that onto another cassette, while doing the counting. 

I would have to decide before I started "What kind of tempo is it likely to be?" - "_1_.2.3.4._2_.2.3.4..." And I'd have my sequencer running, so it would be ticking and I'd be counting the bars, and then I'd say "OK, now we're going up to tempo 130" 

So I'd be stuck with that, if I then wanted to change it later, I'd have to go back and make a new recording with a new tempo, so then I'd record all the music as a guide, when I recorded it I'd run the video, and jab the button on the sequencer at the right moment, and record it on to cassette, or later on, onto Hi-Fi VHS, because I didn't have a DAT, which was the best I could do. 

And as I was watching it I would be tweaking the tempo up and down, so that if I felt it was just running ahead, I'd just knock the tempo back a tick or two, or whatever just to get it roughly in sync. I couldn't be frame accurate, and when we got it to Keith's, we'd dump it to Beta, and then he'd be able to sync it up properly then. 

Audio Restoration

Keith's early Myth Makers were recorded on U-matic, a semi-professional video format.  When he did the Michael Wisher tribute tape he gave me the soundtrack so that I could try and clean up all of the sound on the original interview, which was a little bit distorted and very hissy. I'd just spent £400 on a program called Dart, which is supposed to get rid of hiss and nonsense like that, and it worked.

But because my system wasn't quite as poweful as it could've been, when I laid his stuff back it kept wandering out of sync. When Keith got it he said "This is crap, it is all out of sync, you'll have to do it again" At the time syncing
to tape was a bit hit and miss, now I can do it tighter than a very tight thing.