What are your recording roots?

mojobone · Post by **mojobone** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:58 pm

The thing about totally accurate reproduction is that it doesn't necessarily sound good; Garbage In, Garbage Out, as the engineers used to say. (I dunno, maybe they still do)

joyfrost · Post by **joyfrost** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:52 pm

elser wrote:Regarding the analog sound, I think the Slate VCC and UAD Studer sound great. I've never had the chance to sit down and compare the sound of a real Studer and UAD's but there some very credible guys who have and they seem convinced. That's good enough for me. I also find on some material I don't want that sound. Who knows what the next wave will be but I'm pretty certain then they will be saying "I miss that good old sound of digital".

Who knows, maybe the next wave is taking Binaural Recording to the next level with holograms that appear of the musicians giving their performance every time you listen to the song, giving you a virtual private concert

SharonHawn · Post by **SharonHawn** » Tue Sep 15, 2015 12:21 am

ComposerLDG wrote: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

Oh you bring back memories of those days! It was in the early 80's I learned audio editing via reel to reel and we actually had to do splicing with a razor blade...after the mixing board would mark the tape...lol... At 17 I began working in my first studio in Michigan, then later in Oklahoma and Norway. Those were the days...I too thoght that I had died and went to heaven. Today I 'm incorporating my Yamaha SY 85 with Logic Pro X, and found a converter to digitize the stacks of reel-to-audio recordings I have.

That will be an interesting project! My earlier roots started at age 11 in the early 70" when I became a child performer with the Carpenters.

TimWalter · Post by **TimWalter** » Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:25 am

Thanks for your posts. I found Russells especially interesting... using a Bb tuned piano to play with others who are playing in concert key certainly would strengthen someones chops to play in all the odd keys.. wow.. what a great training ground..

My firsts was a Tascam Portastudio, with 4 tracks on a cassette tape. Bought it in I think around 1985.. it was #$%&@ expensive, over $1000 as I remember. I never really got the hang of it, really just played around with it, I guess. the transport starting acting up, so I gave it away in the late 90s to a Japanese friend who i would get together to brush up my Japanese language skills by having conversations. Man, I wish I still had it. oh well. I have some tapes that i made with 4 tracks on them, woudl like to get them into my daw and see what is there. Is there any plugins (I wonder) that would take a 2-5 min track recorded backwards and reverse it to be frontwards? If so, I could use a conventional tape player to get all 4 tracks into my daw and reverst the two tracks on the b side... Or, buy an old portastudio on ebay for about $100 to $200 bucks. But I'd prefer a free plugin if it exists (smile).

All the best to all of you.
Tim

mojobone · Post by **mojobone** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 2:31 am

Most DAWs will let you reverse a clip, so you could just use a cassette deck. Due to the unique nature of tape/bias, you may have some issues with phase/alignment, but you'd have that even you used a different four track than the one it was recorded on. (and many of them had varispeed) In fact, you'd probably hear some anomalies even using the same machine, if you didn't record test/alignment tones on all your cassettes, which I'm pretty sure almost nobody did, back then.

Kolstad · Post by **Kolstad** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 2:46 am

My recording roots was when I was in my mothers womb, I learned how to identify and differentiate between sounds, and in particular I recorded my mothers voice with my first generation ear mic and low storage memory. Most played record in my world, instant hit record. Didn't need any interface back then, though, so things have gotten much more complicated for sure

JAMRecording · Post by **JAMRecording** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 8:58 am

I got into Kiss when I was in 3rd grade. 1970 something. I distinctly remember reading all the liner notes and wanting to know more about this Bob Ezrin guy. He "produced" Destroyer. I thought that sounded like a great job, whatever it was. I was also pretty sure I wasn't going to grow up and be Ace Frehley, but I sure wanted to. As I got older and moved on from Kiss I started playing guitar. Started playing in bands around 15/16. My friends and I would record on an old fostek, and of course it never sounded good. Eventually I got into better bands and we made a few records in different studios. That's when I realized that I was never quite happy with the the results. They sounded good, some better than others, but if I knew how to do it, I would have made them differently. Finally after getting tired or touring in van around then US and coming home broke, I decided to go back to school and get to recording. I went to the local community college and checked out their Audio program. I lucked out and signed up for a great program with amazing teachers who really pushed you to be a well rounded engineer. Tracking, music theory, piano and music biz. Thats where I friended my business partner and the co-owner of my studio. We imidiately clicked and started recording bands. We were pretty terrible at it when we started, but after years of making mistakes.....and learning from those mistakes we actually got better. 16+ years later I have a studio, it's my full time job and I couldn't be happier. I'm still making mistakes, we all do, but I'm a lot better at correcting them and learning from them. Only regret is that I wish I would have started sooner.

TimWalter · Post by **TimWalter** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 10:10 am

mojobone wrote:Most DAWs will let you reverse a clip, so you could just use a cassette deck. Due to the unique nature of tape/bias, you may have some issues with phase/alignment, but you'd have that even you used a different four track than the one it was recorded on. (and many of them had varispeed) In fact, you'd probably hear some anomalies even using the same machine, if you didn't record test/alignment tones on all your cassettes, which I'm pretty sure almost nobody did, back then.

Mojo
After I posted this, I found such a selection in my DAW...one of those projects I hope to get to.. not that anything on those tapes is worth anything.. but it is a connection to ayounger me. lol Curious to see what stuff I did 30 years ago sounded like .lol
Tim

mojobone · Post by **mojobone** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 2:12 pm

TimWalter wrote:
mojobone wrote:Most DAWs will let you reverse a clip, so you could just use a cassette deck. Due to the unique nature of tape/bias, you may have some issues with phase/alignment, but you'd have that even you used a different four track than the one it was recorded on. (and many of them had varispeed) In fact, you'd probably hear some anomalies even using the same machine, if you didn't record test/alignment tones on all your cassettes, which I'm pretty sure almost nobody did, back then.

Mojo
After I posted this, I found such a selection in my DAW...one of those projects I hope to get to.. not that anything on those tapes is worth anything.. but it is a connection to ayounger me. lol Curious to see what stuff I did 30 years ago sounded like .lol
Tim

If you have or can borrow a four track, you can minimize phase issues by transferring all four tracks at once, but not all machines have direct outs for all four. The Tascam 424 is probably the machine for the job.

TimWalter · Post by **TimWalter** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 7:53 am

Thanks Mojo for the suggestion. yeah, doing at one time with one 4 track woudl be more accurate than doing it twice and than reversing two of the tracks. Hmmm
I will see if i can find such an animal.
Tim

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