STORY LINKS:
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 1: Liszt (Simon, Nojima) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 2: Godowsky (Grante, Hamelin) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 3: Rachmaninov (Bronfman) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 4: Chopin (Indjic) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 5: Brahms (Ashkenazy) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 6: Latest claims of matches |
|
Hatto Hoax questions - Part 7: A case for Hatto? |
|
Part 8: How it's done: A fake we prepared for this site |
HERE |
Joyce Hatto - The Ultimate Recording Hoax - Part 8 |
Fakery in recordings: how it could be done - and the results
This section is designed to be illustrative and just for fun. The original recording is 100% genuine, used with the express permission of the artist. Examples of fakery shown were prepared for this web page only, and are not commercially available in any form, from any source.
Introduction
This page aims to examine the techniques I've discovered in the analysis of the "Hatto" recordings I've examined, and by applying them to a genuine recording, demonstrate what remains the same and what is changed.
EXAMPLE 1. The Genuine Article
The example we've used is a short piece by Schumann, taken from Marta Felcman's excellent CD, "Marta Felcman plays Piano Works by Robert Schumann", which is available to purchase and download here.
3rd movement: Scherzino
|
EXAMPLE 2. Digitally altered in the style of the "Hatto" recordings:
- Left and right channels swapped
- Speeded up by 4%
- Re-equalised to alter piano tone
- Stereo soundstage widened considerably
- Additional reverberation applied
3rd movement: Scherzino
|
EXAMPLE 3. Digitally altered to sound a bit like a 78rpm recording from the 1930s:
- Mono sound
- Speeded up by 4%
- 78rpm pitch variation (wow) applied
- Hum, buzz, turntable rumble simulated
- Genuine 78rpm disc noise mixed in
- Equalised to cut high frequencies and mimic recorded sound from early microphones
- Distortion added to peaks
3rd movement: Scherzino
|
So how does it all look on screen?
Despite all these distortions and alterations to the sound, and the speeding up of both 'fakes' the visuals are remarkably similar and identifiable to a degree which would immediately raise my suspicions.
For comparison, we've added a fourth version - a recording made by another pianist of the same piece, to show the contrast between different players and recordings, as opposed to faked copies of the same recording.
Although the two faked recordings here run for different durations - the 'vintage' includes a fade out of surface noise - the overall patterns are very similar - ratios between section durations remain the same, as do overall volume dynamics. The final example, from another pianist, is quite different in this respect.
Waveforms lined up in Adobe Audition
1 - The original recording by Marta Felcman
2 - Pristine Audio's "modern" faked using Hatto-like techniques
3 - Pristine Audio's speculative "vintage" fake
4 - Jörg Demus' Nuova Era Internazionale recording, from emusic.com
Back to Hatto
Now look again at the waveform matches in the Joyce Hatto examples posted on this site, taken from the fourth Transcendental Etude by Liszt. Here there has been very little alteration in duration with the Hatto fake, and the similarities are even more evident.
Meanwhile the differences between the first two recordings, both originally by Laszlo Simon (with one passed off as Joyce Hatto) and the latter two, by Christopher Taylor and Michael Ponti, are quite clear. Only a very general pattern remains to suggest they might be of the same piece.
Waveforms lined up in Adobe Audition
1 - Joyce Hatto
2 - Laszlo Simon
3 - Christopher Taylor
4 - Michael Ponti
STORY LINKS:
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 1: Liszt (Simon, Nojima) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 2: Godowsky (Grante, Hamelin) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 3: Rachmaninov (Bronfman) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 4: Chopin (Indjic) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 5: Brahms (Ashkenazy) |
|
Hatto Hoax evidence - Part 6: Latest claims of matches |
|
Hatto Hoax questions - Part 7: A case for Hatto? |
|
Part 8: How it's done: A fake we prepared for this site |
HERE |
We have yet to investigate a Hatto recording that has not proved to be a hoax.
|
*Sleevenotes included wherever present in original CD booklet. We provide sleevenotes either direct from record companies' digital source material or from our own scans. In the latter case we normally scan English language content and libretti only. Scanned notes pass through OCR software and can be treated as text files - all are offered as Adobe Acrobat PDFs.
Pristine Classical - bringing you DRM-free classical MP3 downloads
