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Walter Murch - My 'wonderful playground' of sound (11/320)

1,611 views · Published 14 September 2017 · 2:02 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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Walter Scott Murch (b. 1943) is widely recognised as one of the leading authorities in the field of film editing, as well as one of the few film editors equally active in both picture and sound. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2016]
 
TRANSCRIPT: Not long after that, I got wind that there was such a thing as a tape recorder, so I was seven. And a friend in the neighbourhood, whose father worked in some business and could afford these things, he bought a tape recorder, I guess - I don't know, to take business notes or something - and soon as I learned about this, I would knock on Alex's door at the slightest opportunity and say, 'Let's play and let's play with the tape recorder'. And his father was indulgent of us and I don't know where I understood these things, but I immediately understood how to work a tape recorder and how to record sound, and then the fact that once it was on tape, you could cut the tape and you could paste the tape in different positions. You could turn the tape upside down. You could flip it over and play the sound through the back. It was like a wonderful playground for me and to the extent that I began to lobby my parents that we should get a tape recorder. And I kept at this for a number of years and one of my justifications which… in today's terms I would say, 'and we can sample music off the air', meaning, we won't have to buy records anymore. We can… I can hook the tape recorder up to the radio and we can tape records that are being played on the radio and record them and think how much money we will save. And so one Christmas, shortly after, we got a tape recorder and of course, it no longer belonged to the family. It belonged to me and so I squirreled it into my room and just started playing with it.

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