What I did this weekend... (mp3 link)

[lo.fi.love]

OK, so I spent a lot of time learning about my equipment, and learning the "right" way to do a number of things that I was doing "wrong". My room mates' band played on Friday night and they left their gear in the living room. So, I picked out a few instruments and went to town.

Instruments: electric bass guitar, baritone dobro guitar, hihat+snare+kick, finger snaps, humming. After bouncing down the drums, I passed the drum track through a tape delay (using my fun Akai reel-to-reel as the second machine). It was all mixed down to cassette from my Tascam 34b. I might add more tracks to it, and I'll definitely tease it out into a full song someday soon.

I'm pretty happy with it. I've played bass in a band but I wasn't that good. I'm mostly a drummer, but you can't hear that in the recording - I had to get the track down before we p*ssed off our upstairs neighbor, so the first halfway-decent take was the one that made it onto the tape!

And yeah, I know the instruments are a little out of tune!

Anyway. It's a catchy little thing... I had the bassline stuck in my head all day and night yesterday. I call it, "Untitled with Humming"

untitled_with_humming.mp3

[lo.fi.love]

I noticed that it sounds really bassy in my room mate's headphones, but it sounds fine on my mixer (with Yamaha HS50M monitors), and on my headphones, on my laptop's speakers, and on our television. A friend of mine said that it sounded really bassy on her computer's speakers.

I posted this song here to demonstrate how I've been using my gear, and not to get a critique on the mix, but does anybody have a comment on this?

[doug deeper]

hey!
sounds great@!
really makes me want to get my 34b working!
it seems a lot more spacious sounding then my 388.
(i have a couple tracks not working well)
are you using the onboard preamps for this?

[famous beagle]

Cool little groove! I didn't hear the humming though .. where was it?

Was that the bass buzzing? What was causing that?

Thanks for posting -- this was a fun listen.

[Tom_B]

Sounds good! I like the delay on the drums. It doesn't sound too bassy on my crappy work headphones...

[lo.fi.love]

Originally Posted by doug deeper

hey!
sounds great@!
really makes me want to get my 34b working!
it seems a lot more spacious sounding then my 388.
(i have a couple tracks not working well)
are you using the onboard preamps for this?

I'm willing to bet that the "Spaciousness" has more to do with microphone placement and mixing than anything else. But that's my guess, since I've never even seen a 388 in person (although I lust for it)...

The bass was plugged in to my ART MPA Gold preamp, to get a nice, warm, rich bass sound. The preamp was plugged into the XLR-in on my Tascam M-30, with a 20db pad. And the buzzing was because of a bad instrument cable. It's from the bass.

I also used a Marshall MXL604 for the bass drum (almost inaudible in the mix, my fault) and on the guitar. For this, I also had to use the ART preamp to provide phantom power.

Snare, hihat, humming, and finger snaps were recorded on a dynamic mic, plugged into the M-30.

The humming is on the left channel. It's very quiet - you have to listen closely to hear it. It's there to add a little texture. It begins after the first iteration of the riff.

I'm really glad you guys like it!

[cjacek]

I loved it, loved the tape echo too!

[lo.fi.love]

Originally Posted by cjacek

I loved it, loved the tape echo too!

Thanks, I really like the tape echo, too. It almost serves as a click track... the delay of the echo keeps you in time The whole demo went slightly in-and-out of time, but the point wasn't to make a polished recording.

I'm very excited. I see a lot of four-tracking in my future. I'm bartering with a friend to get his old Telecaster so I can add more 'voices' to my recordings. Now, if I can only record live drums.... the bedroom four-tracker's biggest problem! Thankfully I have a friend who has a recording studio in a warehouse. There are ways to get around these things if you live in Oakland!