Current "vintages songs recorded before 2000" listing

[RPaul]

Usually, I don't even consider submitting to the vintage recordings opportunities for 2 key reasons. One is that, my recordings back in the days of the listing years simply weren't up to snuff in general, and the other is that they are usually looking for a specific type of material, with references, that was popular during the years of those references, and my older recordings were rarely fitting what was popular at the time I was making them. (I was focusing on the songwriting side of things, and making my own demos of the songs, with the idea of having other artists cover those songs.) However, the latest version of a vintage recordings listing (pasted below) has me at least considering it since it appears to be genre-agnostic. (Still not sure I'll find anything up to snuff on the recording quality side, but I don't mind spending a little time going through some old demos to get a feel for what I have "just in case...", or maybe it's more for some sentimental value.)

That said, I'm interested in thoughts on this sort of listing from anyone who might have more insight into this area:

1) First, any recordings I have from prior to about 1998 will have their masters on cassettes, which means needing to digitize them and probably do some restoration work. Were I to be doing this "for myself", I'd almost certainly do some remastering, but is this okay in terms of the recording dates requirement? Is doing basic restoration-type work (e.g. trying to clean up tape hiss) even okay?

2) I do not expect my recordings to be up to snuff on the recording quality front with respect to any major label (or similar) recordings of whatever year the recordings were made, and they might not even be in styles of those years -- for example, something I made in the mid-80s (which is about where my earliest recordings start) might have been a song style that was more like something out of the 70s. Also, instrumentation on the front end would have been limited to electronic keyboards and drum machines, going into an 8-track reel-to-reel, then later (mid-90s or so) a rack of MIDI modules going into an ADAT. The listing mentions, "you can submit old masters OR old demos as long as the recordings are reasonably good." While "reasonably good" is obviously somewhat subjective, the demo reference at least makes me consider whether giving this a shot might actually be worthwhile. Or am I just trying to read hope into the hopeless given my notes on my recording quality back in those days?
 
Here is the listing text:

Lots of ORIGINAL, VINTAGE SONGS in ALL GENRES Recorded BEFORE the year 2000 are needed by a Music Library with a ton of credits in Feature Films, TV Shows, and TV Commercials.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE: Please include the Year your Songs were recorded in the LYRIC section of the TAXI submission form! The Listing company has asked TAXI to automatically return any submissions that don’t show the year in which they were recorded. Sorry folks, we can’t make any exceptions, per the company’s request.

We purposely avoided putting references in this request because we felt they could be more misleading or limiting, than helpful. If you’ve got well-written Songs that were recorded BEFORE the year 2000, this company wants to hear what you’ve got! Seriously, these folks LOVE older recordings and get tons of placements with them!

And it's notable that they're looking for a wide range of styles and genres right now! Jump on this if you've got what they need.

This Publisher is open to just about any popular genre you can think of – Folk, Country, Singer/Songwriter, Classic Rock, Soft Rock, Americana, Pop, Reggae, Disco, all types of Jazz, R&B, Big Band, Orchestral, Adult Contemporary, Punk, Soul, Hip-Hop, etc., etc., etc.! All (popular) genres are fair game for this opportunity, as long as the material you submit was written and recorded prior to the year 2000! This publisher is even open to submissions that are old, 4-track recordings. They love finding really good demos that sound like they should have been a hit back in the day, but never got signed or released!

The recording quality is NOT expected to be on par with today’s Broadcast Quality, and you can submit old masters OR old demos as long as the recordings are reasonably good.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This company does NOT want material that was recently recorded and made to sound old. They can ONLY use AUTHENTIC, ORIGINAL, VINTAGE RECORDINGS, and only if the sound quality is reasonably good. It doesn't have to be super hi-fi, but reasonably good, well-balanced recordings and mixes are needed.

This Company offers a NON-Exclusive, 50/50 deal. You’ll get 50% of any applicable sync fees and 100% of the Writer’s share. The Publisher will get 50% of any sync fees and 100% of the Publisher’s share. There is also a possibility that this Library could offer a buyout of the Masters and Publishing rights. You must own or control your Masters and Copyright to submit to this opportunity. Please send as many Songs as you’d like, online or per CD. All submissions will be screened and critiqued by TAXI. Submissions must be received no later than 11:59 PM (PST) on Saturday, March 9th, 2024. TAXI # S240309CA

[cosmicdolphin]

I would think taking them into something like Izotopes RX to clean them up would be perfectly fine. I'd certainly be trying to submit the best / cleanest recording I could as the music of the era still had great recordings.

I also had a black face ADAT in the 90s and the recordings from it sound great, they were bounced down to DCC ( poor man's DAT )....I laugh sometimes because I hear far worse sounding stuff on the forum made with all the latest DAWs and plugins.

Post it up so we can listen

Mark

[RPaul]

I would think taking them into something like Izotopes RX to clean them up would be perfectly fine. I'd certainly be trying to submit the best / cleanest recording I could as the music of the era still had great recordings.

I also had a black face ADAT in the 90s and the recordings from it sound great, they were bounced down to DCC ( poor man's DAT )....I laugh sometimes because I hear far worse sounding stuff on the forum made with all the latest DAWs and plugins.

Post it up so we can listen

Thanks for the thoughts, Mark.

I spent some time yesterday just starting to digitize some of those old cassettes, both to get a feel for what I've got, and just to start the process of putting some of those archives into a format I could use in the future for whatever reasons might arise, including just documenting some of the songs that I've never gotten around to re-recording since shifting to DAWs around 2000. (I'd been using MIDI in conjunction with 8-track reel-to-reel from the mid-to-late 80s until sometime in the first half of the 90s, when I switched to a blackface ADAT, typically with a stereo mix for the instrumental tracks then the rest for vocals and *maybe* 2 left for a master in some cases.) Until sometime in 1998, when I started using CDs for masters, the masters were pretty much always on cassette. (There were two exceptions when I had a Tascam DAT, but I had problems with that from the start, and I ultimately punted to even trying to get it fixed.)

I don't have any examples to post at the moment, as I need to sift through the material to get a feel for what, if anything, might even be in the ballpark. But the limitations I'm thinking of are actually less about sound quality in the technical sense (i.e. representing what I recorded), as they are about the combination of the limitations of my early production techniques (and sometimes performances in that context) and what I was using to record it versus the styles of music I was making. A good/bad example would be a song I was trying to do with a Springsteen-/"Born to Run"-ish feel in 1985, but where the only instruments I had available for recording at that point were a Juno 60 and TR-909. Independent of what anyone might feel about the song and recording quality, I can't imagine the combination of my attempt at a Springsteen vibe with the instruments I had would be a good representation of any musical era, including 1985.

From the listening I was doing yesterday while digitizing the audio, I'd be very surprised if any of those mid-80s recordings could work, though there might be one or two cases where the subject matter actually could fit the synths-only treatment. I also did a few from the early-to-mid-90s, and I could definitely tell there was an improvement in my production quality, partly owing to the gear (MIDI keys and rack modules, mixer, and effects) I had by that time, probably partly to my production starting to get better, and probably partly due to lack of generation loss for bouncing once I was on ADAT.

My general temptation from what I got through yesterday was that, if I were just trying to make the recordings "presentable as is" -- e.g. sort of like documenting that part of my song and production history -- independent of any value to anyone else, I'd probably want not only to deal with RX-type considerations, but also to at least do some mastering, perhaps including some of the sort of thing that music rebalance can do with a stereo recording. But would the remastering side of things, especially if tweaking balances within the recording, then mean it wasn't a legit 1980s/1990s recording for this sort of listing?

For the moment, I want to spend at least one more day digitizing more of the recordings to help come to grips with which songs/recordings might be worth isolating for further efforts. This stage has also been an interesting trip down memory lane. I've already come across some songs that had mostly slipped my mind, some of which, while probably not candidates here, might be worth redoing, probably with at least a bit of lyrical rewriting, at some point.

[BradleyHagen]

I would think taking them into something like Izotopes RX to clean them up would be perfectly fine. I'd certainly be trying to submit the best / cleanest recording I could as the music of the era still had great recordings.

I also had a black face ADAT in the 90s and the recordings from it sound great, they were bounced down to DCC ( poor man's DAT )....I laugh sometimes because I hear far worse sounding stuff on the forum made with all the latest DAWs and plugins.

Post it up so we can listen

Mark

Ehhhhh Those old ADATs were Revolutionary back in the day, but they NEVER sounded very good.... For example....I have yet to see anyone come out with a "Blackface ADAT" plugin! lol
That said, I used and cherished them, along with my BRC and big Mackie mixer!

[cosmicdolphin]

Ehhhhh Those old ADATs were Revolutionary back in the day, but they NEVER sounded very good.... For example....I have yet to see anyone come out with a "Blackface ADAT" plugin! lol
That said, I used and cherished them, along with my BRC and big Mackie mixer!

They sounded way better than cassette multitrackers, I had an Allen & Heath GS1 desk with mine

Jagged Little PIll was recorded on ADAT, one of the biggest selling albums of all time

[RPaul]

Ehhhhh Those old ADATs were Revolutionary back in the day, but they NEVER sounded very good.... For example....I have yet to see anyone come out with a "Blackface ADAT" plugin! lol
That said, I used and cherished them, along with my BRC and big Mackie mixer!

I have to say, they helped my sound quality compared to the Tascam Model-38 reel-to-reel I was using before that, especially when needing to submix tracks to get more than the eight I had available. But it's also a bit hard to distinguish due to moving targets on production skills development, "toys" to actually make the sounds, mixer, etc. By the end of my ADAT era (somewhere around 2000), I had a Mackie 32*8 mixer pretty much fully populated with MIDI modules, and those were only going to two tracks of ADAT so I'd have the rest for vocals and maybe even 2 left for mixdown. I honestly don't miss that stuff at all with modern virtual instruments, plugins, and DAWs.

FWIW, I've now uploaded the first track I'm attempting from these sessions for possible use in this listing:

https://www.taxi.com/members/2RucHBvoSL ... out-on-me-

It's from a 1996 cassette master, though it's conceivable I may have mixed down to two tracks of ADAT before making the cassette I used for making demo copies. In general, as I was reviewing the material I digitized in the last few days, I wasn't hearing huge noise problems, but I did do a minor bit of RX10 Spectral Denoise, then decided to do some very light master processing -- some rolling off of high/low end with low/high cut filters, a bit of EQ to tame bass levels a bit, the default preset in Lurssen Mastering Console, and WLM Plus to get True Peak in check. For some of the alternate demo mixes of this song I'd probably have added an exciter, but this one didn't need it (IMHO).

The sifting through all the recordings to try and figure out which ones I might want to consider has been somewhat tedious, and I'm really not sure if I'll end up using any pre-ADAT recordings.

[BradleyHagen]

Ehhhhh Those old ADATs were Revolutionary back in the day, but they NEVER sounded very good.... For example....I have yet to see anyone come out with a "Blackface ADAT" plugin! lol
That said, I used and cherished them, along with my BRC and big Mackie mixer!

They sounded way better than cassette multitrackers, I had an Allen & Heath GS1 desk with mine

Jagged Little PIll was recorded on ADAT, one of the biggest selling albums of all time

Yeah, and it sounds like crap too!!! Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" was recorded on 4 track cassette, great record as well, but it doesn't sound very good!
You can also insert the obligatory "The Beatles recorded Sgt Pepper on two 4 track machines" as well.....But that is a little different....they were state of the art 1 inch 4 track machines, with the best Producer and Engineer on the planet, in a KILLER studio, with the best outboard gear, and most importantly the best band ever....

Sure, ADATS were a big improvement over Portastudios, and 1/4" reel machines, (My first setup was a Tascam 688 Eight TRACK cassette machine lol) but lets be honest, they sounded like crap!!