A lesson I heard about buying gear
- Thread starter adclark
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mawtangent
New member
TravisinFlorida said:
Man all of this hits so close to home........I did the bouncing thing with the cheap shoebox cassette recorder and cassette boombox also (using the "onboard" microphones)...now 20 years later I've got 10 times more recording power than I ever dreamed I would ever have and it's "someday I'm going to really start a grand musical project"...
I don't know what it is...maybe I have come to realized over time how little "perfomance" talent I have (writing the song, playing the instrument, singing the vocals)...that is, maybe the recording side far outpaced the thing that is to be recorded and showed it up for what it is, or the focus on recording quality created a lack of focus on the performance (the thing to be recorded)...
maybe it just the process of time...when you are a kid you sometimes (ignorantly) think you are making some kind of great discovery that no one else knows about, but over time you find that there are a lot of people doing the same thing, maybe that takes the exitement out of things...
I have concluded, above all, you have to have (for lack of a better word) "heart" to keep creating...something inside that makes you keep creating when no one else around you (spouse, friends) has any interest in what you are doing ("ohhh, another song?"), something that makes you try to create a new song, even after spending 10 hours on a song that you don't even like anymore. Something whose main goal is not to achieve "marketablity" .
I have lost a lot of heart myself, but I can't seem to totally toss the music thing away...I tell myself that, at this point in my life I have no interest in really exploring some other "hobby" like snow-skiing or something...and there is still that feeling of nobility or sacredness that I associate with creating a song, something far above watching TV or all the other "spectator" activities that use up so much of people's time. We all need to find that kid again who couldn't wait to get at making a new song.
dwillis45
Número sesenta nueve
The last four track I used literally ran on rubber bands! One day the cassette failed to playback so I opened the machine only to find a broken belt. The unit was beyond it's warranty date and I was too lazy to send it to an authorized service center. So I searched for a rubber band that looked like it would fit and soon I was back making bad music! I hope my DAW never breaks down!
travelin travis
New member
mawtangent said:
very well said. i think what you said about losing focus in performance for recording quality hit the nail on the head. i also think that if you have that creative side in you, it's always there. you just have to work on bringing it back out. putting your heart into music is'nt the easiest thing to do sometimes. if you're spending 90% of your free time into researching and learning gear, there just is'nt enough time and energy left for writing and playing music. i know my playing skills and creativity have gone to hell since i started setting up my little home studio, which was just late last year. every once in awhile though, i'll just sit and play for 5 or 6 hours and it reminds me why i started messing with the whole recording thing in the first place. i'm nearly finished getting all my neccessities together and hope to get back to writing and playing very soon. i hope you will be doing the same.
tweedledee
New member
awsome. i am just beginning now and the more i try to get information on recording the more technichal termonology i find and more names of fancy shmancy thousand dollar gear and i was just starting to get disheartened when i foudn this thread. i still have soem more basic gear to get but i see now that i can get the cheaper stuff and focus on the art rather thant he technology and i might be able to pull this off after all. thanx alot.
cusebassman
Freakin' sweet
Dammit, Einstein took the car out again...
Ironklad Audio
New member
while it's great to be able to get usable results with cheap shit, when it comes to purchasing, i still find that my main goal is to find something that will give me the results that i want for as long as i choose to own it
giraffe said:i can't wait for this conversation to happen again ten years from now
"i can remember when the best a home studio owner could do was 32 tracks in a protools rig, man have we come a long way"
Ten years from now, I'll probably still be in the same room, using the same monitors and amp I've used for 26 years, the same 3M 1/4" and 1/2" machines, the same Studio Traps, the same mikes (plus a couple more on my long term list), the same preamps and the same instruments, but I know I'll have to be on at least the 2nd new computer and a new digital interface which will probably be portable and also work with the 2nd succeeding laptop from this one. The portable 1/4" machine will probably also be a portable 1/2" 4 track.
I started with an Otari 1/4" 4 track, which was way fun. I wish I'd never sold it, but I thought I needed 8 tracks. I had all I needed, which was time to create and record and a reasonable medium. Since then I've learned to avoid stupidity in the recording process. Now I have a 1/2" 4 track and a 4 channel digital interface into a DAW and hiss isn't a problem, but I don't have the time I had before I got married and had four kids. Now it's hard to find time to make loud noise. The other problem I have is that it's getting hard to be as musically naive as I was back then. But using the 4 track helps!
Cheers,
Otto
I remember back in '89, when the first phonograph parlor opened in San Francisco, California of the good ol’ US of A. We used to pay a nickel so that we could record our voices. It sure sounded great. I don’t know why you whippersnappers spend so much on ‘new’ equipment. The old stuff worked fine enough for me. On my recording, I cussed and discussed my experience in the War Between the States.
DavidK
New member
Nah, them newfangled phonographs are just gimmicks. In my day, we just used the telegraph machine and we LIKED IT.1ply said:I remember back in '89, when the first phonograph parlor opened in San Francisco, California of the good ol’ US of A. We used to pay a nickel so that we could record our voices. It sure sounded great. I don’t know why you whippersnappers spend so much on ‘new’ equipment. The old stuff worked fine enough for me. On my recording, I cussed and discussed my experience in the War Between the States.
Buried in here among the sarcastic remarks is an interesting phenomenon. For me, musical creativity seems more present when I'm not near or using a computer and also when I'm forced to live within limitations. Of course, for production purposes, it can be nice to have more capacity to fine tune or expand an idea. That's a part of why I still use both tape and digital recording gear.
Cheers,
Otto
Cheers,
Otto
That was a sad post. I hope mawtangent got his muse back in the end.
talontsiawd
New member
I disagree with the quality of gear, i think it's the quantity that can break your creativity. It might be that you have too much gear, it might be that your simple gear does too much. I haven't done this as long as most people who have posted but i have had similar experences. I started with the absolute bare minimum i could get away with. Then i basically had very budget setup. Now i have a modest setup of "decent" gear. The quality of my work has improved and I attribute atleast some of it to better gear. However, i have had times where i just had too much going on. So i shrunk my set up down and replaced any weak links, etc. Even now though, i try to limit myself in the digital relm. i'll use Acid 3.0 for example over protools when tracking vocals. Protools has too much going on i don't need. But, protools has been invalable tracking out various samplers i have owned, etc. I think porposely limited yourself when you have so many options, especially in the computer area, really can help overcome that sence of complication which can suck your creativity dry.