The Portastudio Portastudio......

bachelorb

bachelorb

Cowboy Chord Virtuoso
Traveling around towing everything, you have to make some sacrifices. Mine was my guitar collection.... Since we started living in a RV though, I have slowly gotten into the recording hobby, being a little long in the tooth, I wanted to get into electronic equipment that was close to what I had in my youth.....

Well, we couldn't quite get back that far, so I recently bought a Tascam 424 and am slowly figuring it all outimage.jpeg
It's all on my wife's dresser. She has to make sacrifices along with the cat (notice the litter box and food dish....)

To store everything, I bought a plastic drawer thing. In the top drawer Is the Portastudio and headphones.

image.jpeg


In the bottom drawer, I have two microphones (a dynamic and a condenser), an audio interface, pre-amp, delay pedal, and acoustic pickup, and all the wires needed to hook it all together.
image.jpeg

Up top is my recorder (computer) and my midi plugins (IPad)

I have written and recorded about 15 songs since we've been on the road and am looking forward to doing a bunch more....
 
Right on brother! I can relate. Not to the living in the RV thing, although NYC has been in a collective bad mood these days, but that's another issue for another website. I too rediscovered how much I love using the old Tascam and Fostex machines of my youth (I'm mid 30's) after a long absence from music making. I always had a Tascam DP-02 digital 8-track but was barely making any music (good music anyways) on it. Last summer I bought a broken 244 and since then I've acquired close to 10 different cassette 4-track and 8-track reel to reel and filled my apt with tape. It just sounds right to me and makes me play better when I know I can't just press Delete and start over. Anyways, I really like yr style man. Are you two traveling for a set amount of time or just sort of floating on?
 
.....oh yeah..... Those cassettes.... :)

We're just kinda floating..... Sold our farm last year and we're gonna keep going till we run out of money or are old enough for the retirement to kick in....

I've got a Tascam 244 on the way that needs some work. I've been reading SB's 388 thread for inspiration.....
 
That's a great setup my friend! Traveling around in an RV and recording on a Tascam 424 sounds pretty fun to me! :) Congratulations.
 
Wow this is an amazing setup. I don't have any experience living on the road but you really seem to be making the most of it. I'd be curious to know more about how you use use the Ipad and Tascam together.
 
Z...... GarageBand is just cool!!!! It has drum loops and bass lines and guitar riffs. If I'm feeling like playing around, I'm putting the drums and bass together and recording them to a track on the 424.... I just hook up a 3.5 to 1/4 cord with the 3.5 in the headphone jack of the iPad (or IPhone), and the 1/4 into the track input.

Another cool thing is I can plug my acoustic guitar into GarageBand and choose one of thirty or so amps and send the amp sound back to the Portastudio ...... I don't think my wife would like traveling so much if I was carrying all the equipment GarageBand offers......
 
Some people would say using garage band loops is not real music. You know...I'm amatuer. But amatuer used to mean something different a few hundred years ago. And I say if you are creating something with these tools it's way cool. And if you are having fun creating, that's what makes the medium viable.
 
I've heard some stuff that was done with garageband. Guess what?
Sounded like music to me. :D

Enjoy your journey. Both musically and road warrior.

I have a friend. He's a web designer and guitarist. 8 years ago he and his wife sold the Florida house, dumped the mortage, and hit the road in a motorhome. It's like 30 some feet long with 300 sq feet of interior space.
They've been traveling the country since.

He designs websites for work and hooks up with blues bands. When they get bored with one location, they just hit the road and go somewhere else.

8 years now and they couldn't be happier.
 
SB ..... For me this is a hobby..... I play guitar and I sing..... When I'm recording stuff, I'm trying to sound a little different, so I'll add a bass and drums..... Shoot..... If GarageBand would sing, I'd have it do it.... I sound awful!!!! :thumbs up:

On a side note.... I think those fellas (and ladies) who create that electronic dance music are awesome..... I wish I could create music with enough emotion to get people to dance.....
 
Nice setup. I've heard some interesting electric sounding acoustic using some amps like that, and as far as using loops go I kinda look at them as shortcuts. A lot of the time drums I would program myself are already available in the form of a few different loops.
 
Wow what a cool setup :D Could you maybe draw a schematic of your setup just to see how everything is hooked in (delay pedal and so on)?
 
We are traveling the next few days..... We're visiting the Mother-In-Law in Kansas City..... When we get there, I'll probably try to draw a schematic of the whole Portastudio!!! (...she says I was never good enough for her daughter...... Heck..... I know that!!!.....)
 
bachelorb said:
We are traveling the next few days..... We're visiting the Mother-In-Law in Kansas City..... When we get there, I'll probably try to draw a schematic of the whole Portastudio!!! (...she says I was never good enough for her daughter...... Heck..... I know that!!!.....)
Click to expand...

Great! Can't wait :) Good luck with the Mother-In-Law ;)
 
Hey V.... Sorry to take so long getting back.... I hook up from the effects send to the pedal inputimage.jpeg. From here, I can do a couple of different things. I go from the pedal output into the line 5-6 mono plug. image.jpeg. This allows me to use the effect pedal for any of the four channels during the mix down...

Another way to do it is bring the effect into a channel to overdub image.jpeg..... The pedal would only work for that channel. The other way is hook the mic or guitar to the pedal and put it directly into the track
 
As far as recording a mix down, I just use my <...gasp...> computer sound card mostly.... and an RCA TO 3.5 from the line outs on the Portastudio to the mic plug on the computer.....image.jpeg

If I really want to look cool, I pull out the audio interface :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top