Article about the greatest 4-Track albums ever released

Level Anything

Level Anything

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Hey guys!

I hope this is the correct place to post this.

New to this site. Been getting info from it for years but just recently created my account. Wanted to thank you all first, for helping me with countless questions and just generally schooling me in advanced analog recording techniques. There are some serious experts in here.

So, here's my statement / question. I'm a freelance writer living in NYC and I woke up the other day with an awesome idea for an article. Write about the most amazing albums ever released that were recorded using a cassette 4-track. Since the late 90's I've been recording to the medium and where I'm from (western MA) there is/was a thriving lo-fi scene (Lou Barlow and Eric Gaffney are from the area so I've been in love with the style and sound for years. I've got 2 legit on-line music sites interested in my piece so I've started working on it already.

Long story short, I'm writing about those classic albums from the 90's like Elliott Smith's Roman Candle, Guided By Voice's Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand. Sebadoh's III. Olivia Tremor Control. Ween's early records and of course, Nebraska by Springsteen. I'm also going to be talking about tape culture then, and today plus the history of portastudios.

I figured I'd start a thread where people could spout off about the beauty and the hardships of recording on 4-tracks back in the day and what people love when they hear a record with "that sound." Also, if there's an album that I should include please let me know why it means so much to you.

The final article will list the top FOUR albums recorded with a 4-track so maybe we can start taking a vote. Anybody making the final piece will be directly quoted.


Thanks!
 
Great idea!

However, the 4-track aesthetic goes back further than the 90s. If you stop the clock there, you'll be missing out on the amazing pre-digital, pre-internet cassette culture of the 1980s. (After all, Nebraska -- probably the most famous 4-track album -- was released in 1982.) If I were you, I'd go back and research the magazines OPTION and Sound Choice (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_(music_magazine)). Not everything ended up there, but those two magazines (plus Factsheetfive) covered a whole lotta the scene.

Regarding specific artists, you would be remiss if you missed R. Stevie Moore.

BTW, I was there at the time, running a small 8-track studio (The Zebra Factory) in the DC area, and doing music under both Sly Garbage & the Cryptones and Two Zillion Flying Potatoes (both reviewed in OPTION, as I recall) and would be happy to talk by PM about how it really was.
 
jslabovitz said:
Great idea!

However, the 4-track aesthetic goes back further than the 90s. If you stop the clock there, you'll be missing out on the amazing pre-digital, pre-internet cassette culture of the 1980s. (After all, Nebraska -- probably the most famous 4-track album -- was released in 1982.) If I were you, I'd go back and research the magazines OPTION and Sound Choice (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_(music_magazine)). Not everything ended up there, but those two magazines (plus Factsheetfive) covered a whole lotta the scene.

Regarding specific artists, you would be remiss if you missed R. Stevie Moore.

BTW, I was there at the time, running a small 8-track studio (The Zebra Factory) in the DC area, and doing music under both Sly Garbage & the Cryptones and Two Zillion Flying Potatoes (both reviewed in OPTION, as I recall) and would be happy to talk by PM about how it really was.
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I'd never heard of R. Stevie Moore before. I just checked out his video for "I Like to Stay Home." Wow, that's some bizarre-yet-cool stuff!
 
I heard somewhere that some of the Olivia Tremor Control was cut on 8-track cassette ... according to the almighty Wikipedia, their most well-known classic Dusk at Cubist Castle "was recorded between 1993 and 1996 on 4-track before further engineering and production by Schneider on 8-track." ... might wanna make sure the records on your list are truly 4-track albums! The '90s era was filled with a smattering of different formats, DAT, 4-track cassette, narrow track reel, etc. ... though I would agree the 'spirit' of that stuff is all in the 4-track vibe.
 
Yr right, the 80's are when it all started with cassette multi-trackers. I'll check out those magazines you mention. As I type I'm watching the Tape To Disc documentary about R. Stevie Moore on Youtube. 109 releases! Damn! Thanks for turning me on to this guy.

Let's talk some more about the DC scene and stuff. I'll be in touch!
 
I always hear different stuff about how they recorded that Dusk... record. I know that they released stuff that was recorded on 4-track. A lot of it is featured on the Presents:Singles and Beyond record. My band played a show with Olivia Tremor Control in 2000 I think it was. They came through Easthampton, MA and we got on the bill. This was when they were touring with a 6 foot metronome that actually kept time during their performances! What an incredible band.

Anyways, it's a tough thing to decide. What is the best record recorded to 4-track? At this moment I'm leaning towards Pure Guava by Ween. Masterpiece.
 
I feel very old, as I have not heard any of these 'classic' tracks in my life, and the only name I recognise is Springsteen! I saw 4 track albums in the title and lost the plot, expecting the Beatles, Beach Boys and maybe the Stones!
 
Kelley Stoltz 'The Past was Faster' is an interesting album done on 4 track cassette. He is more well know for using a Tascam 388, but the 4 track stuff sounds cool.
 
rob aylestone said:
I feel very old, as I have not heard any of these 'classic' tracks in my life, and the only name I recognise is Springsteen! I saw 4 track albums in the title and lost the plot, expecting the Beatles, Beach Boys and maybe the Stones!
Click to expand...

Oh yeah ... he was talking about 4-track cassette machines ... not 4-track Studers or MCIs. :)

---------- Update ----------

j.harv said:
Kelley Stoltz 'The Past was Faster' is an interesting album done on 4 track cassette. He is more well know for using a Tascam 388, but the 4 track stuff sounds cool.
Click to expand...

I'm very familiar with Kelley, but I've only heard his 388 stuff. I didn't know he had an album done on cassette. I'll have to check it out. Thanks!
 
I wanna hear about how you guys were introduced to cassette 4-tracks. Yr trials and errors. Best/worst recoding sessions. What you love(d) about recording to cassette. Anything personal would be great!
 
Level Anything said:
I wanna hear about how you guys were introduced to cassette 4-tracks. Yr trials and errors. Best/worst recoding sessions. What you love(d) about recording to cassette. Anything personal would be great!
Click to expand...

My first tape recorder was a monophonic Radio Shack answering machine. Yes, seriously. It had a memo mode and a microphone, and a really cool dial with which you could switch quickly between play and rewind, leading to some cool sampler-type effects. I'd play my guitar into it, and had a great time.

Then I learned, probably from a friend in high school, there were recorders with multiple tracks and overdub capability. I guess the Tascam 234 had just come out (~1983). I must have had a separate mixer (since the 234 doesn't have one), but I can't remember what.

I loved recording to cassette mostly because I could. Tapes were pretty cheap, the sound was good (for what I was doing). I could pop in a tape and noodle around for hours pretty easily. Mixing down — to another cassette, of course — was easy, which led to a pretty straightforward system of duplicating & distributing.

At that time, in the early/mid-80s, there were higher-end options (Tascam had produced 4-track 1/4" reel-to-reels since the mid-70s), but as I recall, they were way more of a professional level, with a much higher cost. Digital multi-tracking really wasn't possible, and even if it was, it was very low bit rate (like 8 bits @ 8k) — clearly much worse than cassette! That may be hard to believe, but 'tis true.
 
Ha! That's awesome. An answering machine. I'm picturing what that would sound like.

A large part of the story is how big a part cassettes played in the underground with their ability to be recorded and mastered, dubbed and sold / traded. It allowed musicians to be independent and in my eyes wasn't seen again until the Napster days which to me, truly freed the artists from having to deal with the bs that went along with labels and publishing etc. Now we have Bandcamp millionaires...
 
I got my first taste of rap through cassette. I'm not a fan of rap, but in LA there was this buzz all around town about this group from Compton.
They were called N,W.A. except the name was in its original form later to be homoginized to NWA.

These guys went viral, even though that term didnt exist yet, through the medium of cassette.

Interesting. The power of a chunk of plastic with some tape inside.

If you think about it, it was a truly portable, transferable medium. Everyone had a deck of some kind. In the house, the car, or portable such as a ghetto blaster or walkman.

You could put the cassette tape into a pocket. You couldnt do that with a cd.

Even drug dealers on the corners selling crack were swapping cassette tapes.

That stuff went totally viral, a true underground, grass roots, street movement. And look how big the genre is today.........And it all started with the cassette.
 
My first recording machine was a Fostex X-26 4-track cassette recorder. I think I was about 16 when I got it and had probably only been playing guitar for a little over a year. I wasn't a terribly fast study at first, and so the recordings I made with that thing were pretty god awful I can only imagine. I had no idea what I was doing with that thing, and, though I scour manuals from cover to cover nowadays (usually before I even get an item if I can find it online), back then for some reason I didn't really do that. I do remember looking inside in a few times and hearing it talking about adding reverb via the effects send. I remember my friend and I thinking, "Why are they going on and on about reverb so much? What's so great about reverb?" :)

I don't remember what mic I was using back then, but I know it was a cheap dynamic with an attached cord that had a 1/4" plug. I used it for everything: miking my Yamaha acoustic, my Fender Eighty-Five amp, and eventually (with horrific results at the time) some vocals. I had that thing for probably three or fours years (took it with me to UNT) and never really did learn how to properly use it (i.e., using the monitor section properly, etc.) I think I eventually did start using my ART SGE rack processor (which I had for guitar at the time) to add some reverb.

I was the prototypical example of why those machines get such a bad rap as incapable of producing good sound: I was a shitty musician with shitty gear, and I didn't have a clue what I was doing! :) Take that scenario into any pro studio in the world, and you're going to get shit!
 
Level Anything said:
I wanna hear about how you guys were introduced to cassette 4-tracks. Yr trials and errors. Best/worst recoding sessions. What you love(d) about recording to cassette. Anything personal would be great!
Click to expand...

Ok, here goes my story.
A looong time ago, I had a guitar but no amp. I got a little mono cassette recorder given to me. I taped some wires together and plugged a guitar into the mic input. I strung raw speakers all over my bedroom (no cabs)

Some how i got it all to work and could monitor what I was recording. It sounded nasty, but hey, I was 12. I was in heaven.


My tape ran out and I had no more. To my joy, as long as I had the record/ play buttons jammed down I still heard my guitar. I was more interested in using it as an amp than i was recording. The motor burned out, but I was hooked. In my mind I was a rockstar!

Ended up in some garage bands. We were shit but had fun.

Didnt have an interest in recording till later on when i was a decent player and the first portastudio came out.

Allong the way, I started putting together decent stereo stuff. Nice stereo decks were very robust units and I'd record guitar parts on em.

Being used to these machines, the portastudio was a bit lost on me. It looked like a plastic POS. Yeah it had 4 tracks but it seemed like junk. Besides, I didnt need 4 tracks for recording just guitar. I got rid of the portastudio and stayed with my stereo decks.

Later as I evolved and started actually writing songs, the Tascam 246 came out.

Wow! Now this was a machine! It was solid, robust, and had VU meters and a 6 channel mixer!!!
I built a whole studio around this centerpiece. Loved it and did quite a bit of work on it. Wrote and recorded few songs.
More importantly, I laid down the rough ideas for songs, that I have since properly recorded, as well as songs not yet recorded.

The beauty of the 4 track is as a musical notepad. You can document ideas and rough songs that would be otherwise forever lost if you just tried to commit them to memory.


I ended up in this band, and had a friend who was a second engineer at a studio in Hollywood who wanted to produce and record us.

The big deal was this studio had a new SSL board, the G series. So here we were recording on 2 inch tape thru an SSL board in a room where Mowtown artists did stuff. (Mowtown actually owned it).

We'd record in the off hours and always leave with rough cassette mixes.

I dont know why, but the stuff in the "real" studio never really sounded good to any of us. Maybe it was the being rushed factor, or maybe my buddy didnt know what he was doing.

At any rate, we ditched working with him and the real studio.

I went back to the 4 track. It wasn't 2 inch tape, but it gave full artistic control over doing music.

I guess that's the charm and allure of the portastudio. Full control and ease of use.

:-)
 
RFR said:
I got my first taste of rap through cassette. I'm not a fan of rap, but in LA there was this buzz all around town about this group from Compton.
They were called N,W.A. except the name was in its original form later to be homoginized to NWA.

These guys went viral, even though that term didnt exist yet, through the medium of cassette.

Interesting. The power of a chunk of plastic with some tape inside.

If you think about it, it was a truly portable, transferable medium. Everyone had a deck of some kind. In the house, the car, or portable such as a ghetto blaster or walkman.

You could put the cassette tape into a pocket. You couldnt do that with a cd.

Even drug dealers on the corners selling crack were swapping cassette tapes.

That stuff went totally viral, a true underground, grass roots, street movement. And look how big the genre is today.........And it all started with the cassette.
Click to expand...

I think portability really helped it survive as a format. Have you read this article?
Cassette Revolution: Why 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World | Collectors Weekly
Really interesting stuff :)
 
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