How's my cassette sound?

You know another way to get some fun drums sounds;

first of all, i'm not a big fan of collapsing or submixing or making stems
on a teeny track format recorder.

BUT,

Take a keyboard like everyone has these days that they sell at the toy store
or big box electronics stores. These are romplers with 16bit samples in them. I have a Yamaha, for instance.
Not bad sounding really.
They go new for like $150 used less of course.

Find the patches with the drum kits. There should be at least a dozen different kits.
Play all the parts at the same time with several fingers or as many as you can and still have a groove.
Layer up the tracks if you need, then collapse them down to one or two.
That gives you 7 or 8 tracks free.
Do bass and snare for one track. A second pass do the cymbals.
Etc. as needed.
The slight variation in timing that comes from playing the parts in real time can make it sound pretty live.
Think like a drummer. Remember; less is more.
 
Yeah.

The Talking Heads cover as some obvious hiss and loss of fidelity from the bounce, as I generally don't like bouncing these days for that reason,... but the recording holds together well & it's musically a very amitbitious piece. Well done!:eek:;)
 
Thanks Dave...I'm glad you had a chance to listen and offer your thoughts :)!

I like the sync idea you guys are throwing around. My 688 is a "midistudio" after all, so it should be tailor made for this sort of thing. According to the manual, it sounds kinda complicated, but maybe I could figure it out...I thought I needed a tascam midi-izer which is costly amd sorta rare, but maybe not...

I have tried zorf's idea of playing drum machines in real time, but the machine I have that allows this (a yamaha DD22) with pads and drum sticks has such a cheesy sound, it can be hard to stomach. The actual playing with sticks does lend a welcome human element though.

Mr. Beagle brings up a good point too...sometimes, if you know a real kit is not in your near future, you just gotta say "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and just go with the whole electronic sound. Try songs that lend themselves to electronic beats and just go crazy with weird effects and stuff. The results can be uniquely cool, although it is really hit or miss (mostly miss in my case :o)
 
and another thing...

Oh yeah - quite a few people have mentioned noise/hiss at the beginnings of my recordings. I have gotten better about that, but I probably need to pay more attention to details like that in the future...thanks!
 
The 688 has midi-tape-sync built in with spp.

You wouldn't need a midi-izer to control a drum machine from the 688 directly, though it does seem complicated at first glance.:eek:;)
 
I know I'm WAAYYYY late to the party on these . .. but they sound great! Good work. I now have a lot of work to make my cassettes sound this great!!!!
 
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