I heart tape echo

[lo.fi.love]

To see what I could do with the latest version/iteration/incarnation of my home studio (Tascam 48-OB, Tascam 34b, Akai Something-something), I decided to try a complex tape echo chain in one take. This is something that I would do in three passes on the 34b: first signal recorded with echo, and then two more passes adding echo each time.

This was done in one take - just one guitar line. I hit "Record" on the 48-OB, and then pressed "stop". One track, one take, what you hear is exactly what I heard as it was being recorded, with the only exception being that I skewed the panning a little. This a "scratch pad" idea for a larger piece that I'm working on. This is the kind of music I'm working on at home.

"Apologies":
* I'm still figuring out how to use my A/D interface.
* It's not EQed or compressed very much at all, so this will sound good only in headphones, through monitors, or on a decent stereo system.
* This isn't rock or pop music. This is what I call "Sit and Listen" music. Think Can or Tangerine Dream, maybe.

New Import

I've got a couple of similar recordings - just demos - if anyone's interested. Feel free to ask any questions about technique, too - I love explaining it to other people

 

[cjacek]

Jeff, that's cool man! At around the minute mark I was waiting for some drums to rip through though.

 

[lo.fi.love]

Jeff, that's cool man! At around the minute mark I was waiting for some drums to rip through though.

Thanks! I'm still working on the structure and instrumentation for this piece.

I'd like to incorporate percussion into my music, but it sometimes feels a little too "aggressive" when I add it in. We'll see what I can do once I finish building my mobile recording setup, which is when I'll be able to track live drums.

I really want to try something with sharply-gated and heavily-compressed drums. This youtube video has terrible audio, but this song, Outdoor Miner by Wire, is a good example: YouTube link.

That's a great song, too, so give it a listen if you haven't heard it before

-- Edit --

Look at this youtube video, and scroll forward to 8:20 for a better version of the song.

 

[sweetbeats]

My baby (the 48) is all grown up!!

lo.fi, you ought to link up the old tape echo version you sent to me so we can all hear the difference. Its cool.

BTW, checked out those youtube videos...the music is cool, but I sincerely doubt they're going to get an People's Choice awards on the screenplay. It was a little dry.

 

[Richard King]

I had a customer who made very effective use of tape echo when he first started out recording. It's hard to find much of his early material on the net, but I did trip across this one Youtube post that uses a song from his second album for the music track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm65baxZqdw The song is by Steve Tibbetts from his album Yr. He eventually got into using a Lexicon Digital delay for many of his effects, but this album was all analog, including effects, and I think was his best album.

 

[lo.fi.love]

BTW, checked out those youtube videos...the music is cool, but I sincerely doubt they're going to get an People's Choice awards on the screenplay. It was a little dry.

Well, the record is 30 years old, a few years before people got the silly notion that music must have video accompaniment It's kind of funny to see peoples' "fan videos" when they post old songs on YouTube.

 

[lo.fi.love]

Here's the first song that I did with tape echo.

Explanation:
* Recorded on my 34b four-track
* No noise reduction on the effects deck
* Bad A/D conversion
* Muddy mix, too many instruments competing for the low end of the spectrum.
* The song is named for a period in 2003 in which I was recovering from three broken bones and a surgery. The effects will help you to guess why I named this song "Percocet Summer"

I made a few poor choices during the bounces. This song has three bass guitar parts and a baritone guitar part. I could do it now in five takes/passes, but it ended up being something like 14 or 16 passes because of the combination of gear I had at the time. I'm pointing this out to emphasize the difference between the new recording and this old one: no generation loss due to bouncing, since I can create some of these effect in one take with my updated setup.

Anyway, here goes: Percocet Summer