What are your recording roots?

[ComposerLDG]

I think this will be a fun and interesting thread.

In the early 70s when I was like 13, my parents had an old Webcor reel-to-reel 4-channel recorder that would do sound on sound. Fun! I used to overdub guitar onto piano, mess with the tape speed, and make actual tape loops with the Radio Shack tape splicer I had. It was fun recording our grand piano after I laid metal butter knives on the strings!

In the early 90s, I picked up a Yamaha MT-120 4-channel cassette multitracker, and I remember thinking I'd died and gone to heaven. Lots of running to the store for high-bias tape and tape head cleaner. I remember having to use one of the tracks for a click track and then taking it out of the mix. Lots of track bouncing, analog tape counter setting, rewinding....

Funny how much things change in a relatively short period of time, isn't it? Now I can't imagine not having a DAW. I use Logic Pro X for composing and recording, and Adobe Audition for post recording.

Your turn!

Best,

-Loren

[Len911]

I don't know if this counts, but my first root was that my folks acquired a stereo system that contained a cassette player and a cassette recorder which allowed you to overdub a single mono source while recording from the player to the cassette recording. I used to sing along and record. When Karaoke came out years later, I remember my sister saying that I did karaoke before it was a thing,lol! That's pretty embarrassing!

My uncle was the musician in the family. He had an 8-track reel-to-reel, but instruments and music equipment was considered sacred, so, especially unclean, defiled children, weren't allowed to touch or be within 5 feet,lol! And yes, he performed church music. To be fair, I'm not sure I would allow anyone or children to touch my sacred stash either,lol!

[ComposerLDG]

Funny, Len! And yes, that counts!

Remember those old Hammond organs that had built in cassette recorders? Hard to believe that at one time, cassette tape was the end all state-of-the-art.

[TheElement]

I got my first vinyl record player when I was like 9. it came with some albums. one i used to play a lot and dance around my room to was Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever. wasn't recording yet though had a small casio keyboard.

When I was like 10 or 12 I used to record sounds on my first tape player/radio (boom box).

When we moved to the U.K. for the 2nd time I think I was like 13 I used to bounce from one tape player to another. Used to beat on pots and pans and my Dad's guitar. lol didnt have a 4 track or anything like that. I dont think I knew they existed. lol

Loren..Yes loved the high-bias tape

Moved back to the Bahamas and partied.

Then moved back to the U.K. Yes again! lol in the early 90's and did some 8 track recording with a friend from work. Did a mash up that was kinda popular around the London airport hotel scene. lol

Moved back to the Bahamas again!

Partied..played in many local bands..recorded and wrote a few songs with local bands.

Bada bing bada boom..here I am now recording with Cubase.

[elser]

My first recorder was a Tascam 4 track cassette recorder, 224 if I remember right. I've always found that limitations force us to be more creative and I think I made some good music on that thing. Now with Logic and Komplete and Spectrasonics and all these magnificent tools, I have to focus on staying simple. We have to always remember that regardless of whatever producing and writing tools we have it always comes down to making someone feel something.

[mojobone]

My first setup was a Craig cassette deck with the outboard microphone that almost nobody bought but me and for reverb, a stairwell at my school. That was fifth grade, or thereabouts. After that, bouncing between boomboxes, but I was never happy with the generation loss. Later, a Tascam 424 Mk II with FSK from a PocketSync; you could defeat the noise reduction on the sync channel, which fed a Brother PDC-100 MIDI sequencer; I still hated generation loss. (and I still have that rig, plus all the floppies that went with it)

[elser]

I wentt from the Tascam to a Fostex M80. I never liked the sound of that for some reason. DAWs are the coolest. With the analog emulation stuff, if we have the ears for it we all can make great sounding music.

[ComposerLDG]

I wentt from the Tascam to a Fostex M80. I never liked the sound of that for some reason. DAWs are the coolest. With the analog emulation stuff, if we have the ears for it we all can make great sounding music.

Ah, the sound of tape saturation

[Russell Landwehr]

As a teenager, my first recording setup was also two cassette decks that I bounced between for overdubs. I found I could only go a couple of bounces before the generation loss was too much. I also found that there was a slight difference in the speed of the decks, so I couldn't switch tapes between the decks after recording, or play-back would be out of tune.
I used a noisy Radio Shack transistor mixer which didn't help.
For my instruments I had my dad's Hammond organ, an upright piano tuned to Bb, and a Wurlitzer Electric Piano. I also had a home-built rotating speaker cabinet that was actually just a speaker firing upward into a rotating angled board, and a big hole in the side of the cabinet for the sound to come out of. It was powered by an old dryer motor... a LOUD dryer motor. I think the cabinet did a better job amplifying the dryer motor than the music.

Russell

[shoodBworkin]

reel-to-reel 4-channel recorder that would do sound on sound

Yup. If I remember correctly it featured "sound-on-sound" and "sound-with-sound" tho I don't recall the difference. We'd also hook up two reel-to-reels and feed the crazy results into a guitar amp which we'd mike into a cassette deck . . . all sorts of stuff. Fun!