A great amount of research involving musical keys and tuning forks has
been done to determine just how close to 78 rpm the recordings of the
first quarter of the last century really turned.  Even though Victor
said their discs ran at 78, and Columbia said 80 (Edison too??), the
vast majority of early Victors seem to run at somewhere around 75, and
Columbias can be off too.  Generally the speed will be uniform for all
discs made at a particular recording session, but it could be different
on another day.  This may be why musicians with keen ears, such as Emma
Eames, insisted that the keys she sang in be printed on her record
labels.  Supposedly you "tuned" the record by striking chords on your
parlor piano.

Of course, this begs the question of how your piano was tuned and what
was prevailing concert pitch at the time.  Another great soprano,
Lillian Nordica, towards the end of her career, insisted that her
concert accompanist see that the piano to be used was tuned to A-435,
not the prevailing A-440, because that was what she was used to, and it
lessened the strain on her voice.

The baritone Emilio deGogorza, who functioned as a sort of entrepreneur
for Victor in their negotiations with singers, once recalled the first
Victor session of the soprano Marcella Sembrich.  When her first "take"
was played back to her she exploded hysterically, maintaining the
reproduction was playing in the wrong key and distorting her voice.
Emilio calmed her by demonstrating that the speed adjustment on the
motor could make everything right.

In the days before the invention of the stroboscope, it seems likely
that speed adjustment of a mechanical governor during the recording
process could quite possibly be off a bit and go undetected.  Certainly
the speed adjustment on a home phonograph could be wildly off,
regardless of any little dials and pointers.  I expect this is why
Victor recommended sticking a bit of paper under the record edge and
counting the revs. with a stopwatch.

Since so many Victor discs were recorded consistently below speed in
those days, one theory is that it was done on purpose, to make voices
sound more brilliant (since the pitch would be raised in home
playback). Some very early discs are so far off -- with rpm around
69-70 -- that it is conjectured that it was done in order to lengthen
the recording time. Guess we'll never know.

Houston Maples