Ormandy came to the project with experience in the studio - as a violinist playing light classical pieces, as a conductor of his own salon orchestra, and as a soloist with the Dorsey Brothers Concert Orchestra. Ormandy later said, "We gave them every single day, including Sundays, six hours of recording and anything they chose. This we did for two years, and we made hundreds of records through those four weeks of recordings, because I record very fast. I always did."