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The aim of my project is to preserve for posterity the wonderful worship music produced by the Harvestime organisation, and to distribute it freely to those who would like it. This is achieved by the digital recording and remastering of the original cassette tapes, and the conversion of the finished music into the highly-flexible mp3 format, which can then be played on an mp3 player or computer or even burned to disc to create an audio CD.
These worship tapes were published some years before the advent of digital music, such as provided by computers, CDs and mp3 and CD players. In those days, the vast majority of worship music was produced on cassette tape, a fairly robust but sometimes delicate analog storage medium which was (and is) prone to both physical and electromagnetic damage. In short, cassette tapes were fine for the purpose, but nobody had any idea how long they would last. The quality of the tape material itself, and its storage since the tapes were first made, and other factors, are what dictate the quality of the tapes. The ages of some of the tapes in my collection are getting on for half a lifetime, but most of them are good enough to be digitised and remastered. Therefore, I have digitally recorded most of my collection and have digitally remastered many of them. Digital recording of the tapes means that the quality of the tape is 'locked' to its state when it was digitised; a 'snapshot' of the tape at the time of recording, as it were. Once that digital copy is made, the quality of the recording will no longer deteriorate with time. This means that the music is preserved in that condition for good. It is my purpose, via this website, to perform this service for the Church. Making the mp3 tracks into CDs from the mp3 files can be accomplished so as to produce exactly the same effect as playing the original tape albums, with continuous playing with no gaps except where these existed on the original tapes. However, each track is still a separate entity which can be skipped back or forwards on the CD as normal. Of course, some of the tapes were made up of separate tracks, so this too is duplicated where applicable. The final effect is that you effectively have a copy of the original tape, but preserved in a format which will not deteriorate. This can be accomplished using the excellent 'CD Burner XP Pro' and using the 'Burn Audio CD' function. When setting up the recording, make sure you ask the device to leave 'no gap' between tracks; this will then reproduce the effect of playing the original tapes. It's important to do this as some of the tracks follow on into another seamlessly on the tape, and leaving a gap would spoil the effect. A word of warning. These tracks feature real worship being offered to a real God who really does do mighty and powerful things, despite today's cynical view of religion and God. But this is not religion; this is raw, real, exciting, spiritual worship offering everyone a glimpse into the power of live charismatic worship - the power to bring ordinary people into the Presence of the Creator of the Universe. If you have never had your life changed by God in worship, be warned: if you listen to these tracks He might just come along and visit you like He's already visited the people on these recordings. Bless you!
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