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Introduction to the Field Recordings Database

In the summer, of 2002, Brown graduate student and Ghanaian music specialist Mark Braun carried out a track by track analysis of the one hundred and forty two reels of tape in the James T. Koetting Collection. Braun created a File Maker™ data base to capture his work. That database then became the foundation for the descriptive metadata used in the presentation of this online collection Braun also wrote an introduction to the field recordings database, which we reproduce here in its entirety because it provides a very useful guide to the collection. Keep in mind that Braun’s description of the original File Maker data base capabilities do not apply here.

Braun’s basic organization, which follows the numbering of the original field tapes, was maintained as were his assignment of tracks and their numbering, although some adjustments were made when compared with the digitized recordings. The field notebooks,the source of much of his data have been digitized and are included here. Koetting’s dissertation has not been included.

Braun’s work has been edited and augmented by the work of Brown graduate student and Ghanaian music specialist, Julie Hunter. Hunter carried out the very difficult task of normalizing spelling, names of performers and performing groups and also adding information from further study of the Koetting field notebooks. The digitizing of the tapes themselves was carried out in the summer of 2004 by Brown undergraduate student, Samuel Baltimore whose careful and detailed work along with that of Braun and Hunter make this largely a student produced project.

The tapes were played using a Nagra IV-L tape deck very similar to the one Koetting used to make the originals and were digitized at a 44.1 Hz sampling rate and 16-bit depth. The recordings heard here are MP3s derived from those digital masters. The following tapes numbers were missing from the original collection: 1, 3, 8, 34, 65, 106 and 147 and are therefore not reproduced here.

--Ned Quist, Project Coordinator