SKF NOTE: Boy, finding a stack of Hal Blaine‘s replies for his Modern Drummer “Staying In Tune” column brings back memories. I’m posting one page of Hal’s replies here.

From strictly an editing perspective Hal’s typed replies meant lots of work. If we had computers enabling us to highlight Hal’s paragraphs and choose the “Sentence Caps” function – editing would have been much, much simpler.

As it was, pre-computers, it was easier for us to retype Hal’s answers before editing them and sending the copy to the Modern Drummer printer. Unless we wanted Hal’s answers to appear in all upper case letters – we had to change them. We could have used proofreader marks, but with no space between sentences that was impossible. And even with space between sentences, the number of proofreader marks would have been silly. So we retyped Hal Blaine’s replies.

All of which was well worth it to have Hal Blaine willing and able to share his experience and wisdom with MD and our readers.