Martyn J.Hunt as sound designer for the Colchester Operatic Society suggested, (as part of the sound design) providing a backing track for a production of ‘Guys and Dolls’. This was being staged by the societies youth section CO2 at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester.

Early on in the production period it had become obvious that there were not enough male chorus members to give vocal impact in the large chorus numbers – specifically ‘The Oldest Established’, Luck Be A Lady’ and ‘Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat’. This is, of course, not an unfamiliar situation for amateur societies.

The MD, Peter Snell, was happy and confident about using a click track once the mechanics had been explained. He provided the tempos required (all actually very straightforward – he kept most of the numbers in pretty strict time, adding the occasional extra beat in pause bars rather than slowing down) and the tempo map for each number was programmed into the Sequencer program ‘Vision’ on a Mac power-book and saved as a separate ‘song’. These were then used to drive a Sound Module which produced a rim-shot sound which was recorded onto track 4 of an Akai DR4. Each of the numbers was kept separate by starting at 1 hour, 2 hours and 3 hours on the DR4.