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A Voice from the Past Revitalizing the Words and Knowledge of Dr Carey Reams |
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Tuesday, 05 December 2006 |
Article printed in the December Issue of Acres Magazine regarding our new line of Dr Carey Reams digitized, edited and indexed seminars.
A Voice from the Past
Revitalizing the Words and Knowledge of Dr Carey Reams
Dr. Carey Reams was a pioneer in the field of soil, plant, and human health. He understood and promoted the concept that plant, animal and human health starts in the soil and developed the Reams’ Biological Theory of Ionization. He taught methods to monitor and control the body’s health both in his book, Choose Life or Death, and through his lectures spanning from the late seventies to his death in 1985. He developed a wide number of followers who were both educated and inspired by his theories. Luckily, Dr Reams’ lectures were preserved in audio form by Dr. Dan Skow, director of International Ag Labs, and recorded onto audio cassette tapes.
Unfortunately, an audio cassette tape has a limited lifespan. According to Linda Tadiac, Manager of HBO’s Digital library, audio cassettes have an average lifespan of 35-50 years, so for lecture tapes recorded nearly 30 years ago, the time for preservation is imminent.
The quality of Dr Reams’ lectures seemed doomed to perpetually degrade on cassette until recently, when Dr. Dan Skow’s audio tapes were taken up by Pike Agri-Lab Supplies with the idea of editing and digitally restoring them. The goal is to preserve the teachings of Dr Reams, in his own voice, for many generations to come. The tapes have been stored for decades, facing the degradation of time. Many had reached the point in which careful cleaning was necessary to play them, as the magnetic tape was sticking inside of the cassettes due to a phenomenon called “sticky shed syndrome”. Because of this and other forms of slow degradation, the quality of the sound (already less-than-ideal because of the early equipment used to record them) was diminished. Some of the tapes had reached such a level of decay that they were unplayable.
Threatened with losing some Dr Reams’ lectures forever, Bob Pike, owner of Pike Agri-Lab Supplies, decided to adopt the project and to elicit the help of Martin Capewell, founder of Digitizingmedia.com to revitalize the tapes in digital format. Working with the cooperation of Dan Skow, they were able to obtain playable copies of the tapes that had deteriorated to the point that they could not be used. Early in 2006, Martin Capewell began the long process of recording the tapes one by one onto a state of the art computer advanced enough to handle the immense file sizes of the uncompressed raw files. After a tape is recorded to the computer, it is then edited, minute-by-minute to remove unnecessary silent gaps in the lectures. “Hisses” are then removed from the foreground and needless noise is eliminated from the background. The sound quality is enhanced overall by raising higher frequencies to make voices sound more “crisp,” and lowering background frequencies to reduce hum. Inaudible questions posed by audience members are amplified so that they can clearly be heard, and tapes that once ended mid-sentence have had their proper endings restored.
The final step in the project, however, is unique for a lecture series of this size. The entire series has been indexed by breaking each seminar into hundreds of tracks. Every time a specific subject is discussed and a change of subject takes place, that subject is given a track number and description. The track listings have then been put onto laminated sheets so that the material in the lectures can be readily accessed and navigated by the listener. It also helps the listener to learn the material by naming each topic and allows for easily finding points in the lecture without trawling through hours and hours of recordings trying to find a certain topic. Also taking advantage of modern technology, the MP3 version of each seminar has been put on one or two discs. When these MP3 discs are put onto a computer, they can be searched using the computers folder search function. Additionally, the computer can be used to select and burn onto an audio disc only those individual tracks that are of interest to the listener. A special devotions compilation has also been made by taking the morning devotions from many of Dr Reams’ seminars and compiling them onto an MP3 disc which equals the size of twelve audio CDs.
With only 4 seminars completed, the project is far from finished and Pike Agri-Lab Supplies continues to look for more historic recordings to restore. After completing tapes such as those from the 1978 Foliar Spraying Seminar, the 1980 Animal Husbandry seminar, and the 1976 Plant Feeding Seminar, the process is now refined and speeds along faster to its conclusion. “It’s been hard work,” says Capewell “But Now that it’s complete, its going to be a very powerful agriculture tool with over 64 hours of edited and indexed material”.
Dr Reams’ lecture files are now being burned onto CD-R MP3 discs, allowing the information to be easily accessed, and preventing any further sound degeneration. According to the Kodak website, the lifespan of a properly stored CD can be anywhere from 100 to over 200 years, never losing their quality, whereas regular audio tapes begin to lose their sound quality after just ten years.
While lectures such as the Reams Advanced Soil Seminar are still taking place today, and people who are interested in improving their health along with the health of their plants and soils still follow Reams’ advice today, his lectures are now being made easily available to a much wider audience. The lectures, enhanced, remastered and indexed, are now available on either an MP3 CD-R or the complete set on one Mp3 DVD from Pike Agri-Lab Supplies and International AG Labs.
Article written by Amanda Capewell. Bob Pike is founder of Pike Agri-Lab Supplies, and well- known agriculture consultant and expert on the teaching of Dr Reams’. Bob Pike can be contacted at through www.pikeagri.com at (407) 488-8666 or
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Dan Skow, D.V.M., a veterinarian by formal education and founder of International AG Labs, he studied under the late Carey Reams and recorded the original seminars and helped to teach them. Dan still teaches the Reams seminars to this day. Dan Skow can be contacted through www.aglabs.com at (507) 235-6909.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 December 2006 )
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