problems.... a long story long.

[wolfwolf]

Hello there Home Recordos. Bit of a newbie on technical terms - but quite experienced in other ways...

Here's our life story -

We're a band in the UK - and we recorded a few demos in 2002 on an old 4 track Tascam cassette tape thingy with a few £10 mics and a lot of art / energy. Believe it or not they got a whole load of (confusing) record company interest - Island, Zomba, EMI, Sony, many others - I shit you not. We're an 'alternative' type band (think a Mod Punky Pavement..) and we weren't too interested with the big labels but -

Anywoo - last year we went into a studio in London and recorded some real shit at a cheap vintage analogue (apparently cool retro) studio with a guy that really didn't seem to like what we did or what we sounded like, it was very disheartening.

Later in the year we went into an expensive studio (not paid for by us!) and recorded some good tracks with a guy that did put a lot of effort in to getting us to sound like he / record company guy wanted us to sound and they sounded good - but they didn't really sound like us. They were released on a cool UK indie label and have had some radio play etc - we'd probably be able to release more stuff on this label in future.

We've been told that we're a very difficult, non standard band to record - but WE managed it!

We then started putting some more tracks together on our own with a Yamaha digital 8 track that made us sound very cold - not like the cassette stuff, got very frustrated with it.

WE came to the conclusion that expensive studios and pro perfection sucked all the fun out of what we were doing and we've decided that we need to start back at the beginning. We wanna create some lively warm unpressured tracks again... we don't care about hiss..

Other than the normal instruments (guitar, drums) a band has - we've now got a Yamaha MT8X analog cassette 8 track, a cheap mic pre-amp, a posh new electronic drumkit, a bass pod, an SM57 mic (and a load of shit mics) and our well crafted selection of guitars / amps to produce our sound. We've picked up some tricks along the way - and we also have access to some friendly music professionals for mastering services at a very cheap price (free). We'll be recording all parts seperately, not 'as live'.

We found very good results simultaneously recording vocals as one clean track on an SM57 and one dirty track fed through a broken guitar amp picked up by a £5 karaoke mic in another room and blending them together...

Is there anything else we need? Any fun tips / suggestions? What difference does a condenser mic make? Which one?

We'll be recording in someone's big empty house, many different sized rooms to experiment with.. need sound insulation? need headphone amp?

Which very cheap monitors for mixing?? Don't have any money at all!

Looking forward to some inventive non 'equipment snob' suggestions...

Thanks in advance.

TFB

 

[manning1]

well - one of many ideas. if you want lots of tracks. try mixing down the 8 from the 8 trak to a minidisc recorder or pc. then back out to two tracks on a fresh cassette and add 6 more tracks. lots of punk bands would
use this technique for more tracks. you can try vhs hi fi vcr as well.
if you want some decent monitors (but money !!) try a pair of yorkville self
powered sometime.

 

[Atterion]

Get yourself a Reel-to-Reel. Not only are they great (or cheesy) analog recorders, they can be used for all sorts of bizarre effects (Delay, Backwards stuff, etc.). Plus there is a certain element about watching those big old reels go round and round while you play that just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When my former band was approached in the early 90's by an indie label rep, he came to our house, and we played the guy all our old Reel-To-Reel stuff from parties and stuff in the late 80's, and he was blown away. It had the live warm feel (Like you're looking for). He liked the feel better than some of the multitrack stuff we played him. I still own and utilize cheap radioshack microphones occasionally. Just because we have come to a point were everything can be perfect, in our recordings, doesn't mean it's right to do so.

 

[Atterion]

Make sure it is a really old reel-to-reel. And draw spiral pattern on the faceplates to the reels too For that really hypnotizing effect use glow in the dark markers, and blacklights.....Trippy......