Kinda funny, true story. (I don't think I've ever told this to anyone before.)
In the late 60s, some guy (a friend of a friend of a friend) calls me and needs a favor. He needs about an hours worth of music recorded for a freebie documentary he's involved in. He comes over to my little apartment and I drag out my Superscope stereo recorder (this was before they were known as Sony) and I hook up a couple of Capps 2001 condenser mics (the very first low cost condenser mics for the consumer market).
Turns out he doesn't play, so I grab my guitar and I lay down about an hour of music on this little reel to reel at 7.5 ips, mostly bossa nova and samba stuff. He also has some stuff on tape he recorded, of a nice sounding guitarist, recorded very badly, which I fix up a bit, and he leaves, after thanking me for saving his ass.
It's about one year later, and my best friend is into scuba diving, and he drags me to this underwater film festival at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. After about 2 hours worth of watching 10,000 multi-colored fish swim around in slow motion, I'm getting bored as hell. I go out to the concession stand in the lobby, cuz all this water stuff is making me thirsty.
I'm standing around in the lobby trying to figure out a way to not go back inside, when my friend comes out and says the main feature is about to start, and he dashes back inside. I'm looking around for the exits, but I remember we came in his car. So I lite up one last cigarette before having to go inside.
The music coming from inside is kinda pleasant, and I'm thinking, "Gee, that sounds familiar". I suddenly realize "Holy shit, that's me!!" and I race inside in time to see the last of the opening credits.
Sure enough, there's the guy's name, and a credit for music by Larindo Almeda, a very popular Brazilian guitarist in the 60's. That's who that track I fixed sounded like, but this guy only used a few minutes of Almeda - most of the movie was me playing.
This now gives me a reason to sit and watch the movie ("Water Wonderland", by Stanton Waterman), and to tell you the truth, the track sounded damn good, and it was just me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing my guitar directly to tape, in the center of a tiny apartment living room.
The music worked, the tracks fit the movie nicely, and I never saw the guy ever again, so I'll remain forever uncredited for that soundtrack, but it sure was interesting hearing myself back on the big screen.
Oh, and the main reason for telling you guys this story is that it just shows that you don't always need a lot of gear to get a good recording.
A few years later, I had moved up to a Concertone recorder (15ips, 10-1/2" reels, same two Capps mics) and I was recording jazz sessions with people like Ornette Coleman, Freddie Gruber, Charlie Hayden, Paul Horn, and Bob Durrow. Those tapes were lost over numerous moves, but they were as good as anything the majors were putting out at the time.
That same setup also worked great for recording pipe organs. Turns out a guy on the East Coast had the same setup I did (Concertone/Capps) and he was recording a lot of the same kinds of music I was. His name was George Massenburg, and he went on to become one of the most famous engineer/producers in the world.
I've been in enough situations where I've seen the really great engineers do amazing recordings with just barely enough equipment to even get a sound to tape.
I found some tapes I did over 40 years ago that I'm talking with a major label about releasing. They were done with a pair of EV 664 mics into a Roberts 2 track at 7-1/2 ips, and the sound is still amazing. No reverbs, no compressors, no eqs, no mixers, just two mics and a portable tape recorder.
