You guys aren't hardcore enough.
- Thread starter chessrock
- Start date
snow lizard
Dedicated Slacker
What we really need is a good mentor. Kind of like the Ron Jeremy of the home recording world or something.
sl
sl
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Define hardcore....
Some of the awful things I've done:
Running a video camera from on top of a press box that shook when you walked on it... while my father stood on top of a 30 foot A-frame wooden ladder with another camera and tripod mounted to the side... all for a gig where we didn't expect to actually be able to sell any significant number of tapes....
Doing audio editing for a song while sitting with an old PowerBook Wallstreet with an external SCSI hard drive attached... on a hotel room bed... while on a college concert band tour 200 miles from home....
Recording audio tracks through a $20 phono preamp and adapters and EQing the heck out of it....
Upon finding the $20,000 switcher and $10k titler in the TV production lab to be hosed beyond usability, pulling out a 30-year-old U-Matic deck ($20 on auction, I think) from a shelf in my basement, tweaking it close enough to spec to salvage the show using a $20 VCR that they had junked two years earlier....
Sawing a foot off the bottom of the center column of a microphone stand so that it could go down far enough to fit in my piano with the lid on short stick?
Making a microphone boom (for video work) out of a tent post and spare parts?
Building a cave set (for a movie) out of 2x4s, rolls of brown paper, black and fool's gold paint, and very dim lighting....
Using a mic stand as a cymbal stand, then later using it to support two cymbals and a 10" tom....
Putting a set of $100 strings on a $200 cello.
Recording that cello with a $20 piezo mic and EQing the heck out of it....
Solving an audio hum problem using aluminum foil and a wire with two alligator clips to ground it....
How would you rate that on the hardcore scale?
Some of the awful things I've done:
Running a video camera from on top of a press box that shook when you walked on it... while my father stood on top of a 30 foot A-frame wooden ladder with another camera and tripod mounted to the side... all for a gig where we didn't expect to actually be able to sell any significant number of tapes....
Doing audio editing for a song while sitting with an old PowerBook Wallstreet with an external SCSI hard drive attached... on a hotel room bed... while on a college concert band tour 200 miles from home....
Recording audio tracks through a $20 phono preamp and adapters and EQing the heck out of it....
Upon finding the $20,000 switcher and $10k titler in the TV production lab to be hosed beyond usability, pulling out a 30-year-old U-Matic deck ($20 on auction, I think) from a shelf in my basement, tweaking it close enough to spec to salvage the show using a $20 VCR that they had junked two years earlier....
Sawing a foot off the bottom of the center column of a microphone stand so that it could go down far enough to fit in my piano with the lid on short stick?
Making a microphone boom (for video work) out of a tent post and spare parts?
Building a cave set (for a movie) out of 2x4s, rolls of brown paper, black and fool's gold paint, and very dim lighting....
Using a mic stand as a cymbal stand, then later using it to support two cymbals and a 10" tom....
Putting a set of $100 strings on a $200 cello.
Recording that cello with a $20 piezo mic and EQing the heck out of it....
Solving an audio hum problem using aluminum foil and a wire with two alligator clips to ground it....
How would you rate that on the hardcore scale?
Tim Brown
New member
chessrock said:
I can top that.
I had 2 sansui Reel-to Reel 2 tracks of the same model. We bolted the cases together, and wired all of the buttons together so when you hit record - it started record on both machines, hit stop and it stopped them, etc.
Then we threaded the tape through the first machine, and then turned the tape over and threaded it through the second machine.
A Home made 4-track!
It recorded 2 tracks on one side of the tape, and 2 tracks on the other.
And you know what - it actually worked quite well.
So stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Tim
dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Tim Brown said:I can top that.
I had 2 sansui Reel-to Reel 2 tracks of the same model. We bolted the cases together, and wired all of the buttons together so when you hit record - it sytarted record on both machines, hit stop it stopped them, etc.
Then we threaded the tape through the first machine, and then turned the tape over and threaded it through the second machine.
A Home made 4-track!
It recorded 2 tracks on one side of the tape, and 2 tracks on the other.
And you know what - it actually worked quite well.
So stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Tim
Oh yeah? I did the same thing (except with separate tapes) with VCRs. I'd line up the starting point by watching for the conductor's foot to hit the podium on both VCRs, then backed them up, counting the frames, and started them with a single remote control. The sync was so accurate, I actually did poor-man's stereo between two mono camcorders that way (once, for a gag... the automatic levels made it too distracting to actually use the that way...).
At one point, I actually considered designing an unAGC. I also started writing software at one point to do the same. The concept is simple. Each camcorder emits a characteristic whine. Find the frequency. Determine the level with an FFT. Adjust the overall signal level across a relatively short block using some smoothing algorithm in such a way that the camcorder's motor noise remains constant, thus restoring the original, pre-AGC levels....
Heheh.
gullfo
New member
i had a pedal-powered wire recorder (old dictation machine circa WWII) and an old RCA ribbon mic to record my early stuff... had to pedal the wire recorder while trying to play. really makes you sound like you're "pumping" without the compressor... used this rig on a bunch of songs and a preamp taken from an old tube turntable for my guitar. nice smooth distortion for my heavy metal days 
used this right up until someone connected 110V to the ribbon mic and preamp... is that hardcore?
used this right up until someone connected 110V to the ribbon mic and preamp... is that hardcore?Well hardcore to me would be trying to record a song with a nagging girlfriend or wife at your side. Even more if you got the inlaws watching you, too.
In fact, I think the inlaws factor is like an automatic 50 million hardcore point increase.
Enough said....50 thousand dollar reward to the person who can top that.
In fact, I think the inlaws factor is like an automatic 50 million hardcore point increase.
Enough said....50 thousand dollar reward to the person who can top that.
Tim Brown
New member
dgatwood said:Oh yeah? I did the same thing (except with separate tapes) with VCRs. I'd line up the starting point by watching for the conductor's foot to hit the podium on both VCRs, then backed them up, counting the frames, and started them with a single remote control. The sync was so accurate, I actually did poor-man's stereo between two mono camcorders that way (once, for a gag... the automatic levels made it too distracting to actually use the that way...).
At one point, I actually considered designing an unAGC. I also started writing software at one point to do the same. The concept is simple. Each camcorder emits a characteristic whine. Find the frequency. Determine the level with an FFT. Adjust the overall signal level across a relatively short block using some smoothing algorithm in such a way that the camcorder's motor noise remains constant, thus restoring the original, pre-AGC levels....
Heheh.
That doesn't count because you could count frames, and the tape was inside a cassette, not an open reel.
Now if you had opened the videocassettes, and wound it onto a pair of videomachines - then we'd be talking winner!
Tim
Take a half dozen or so guys, two of which know more than three chords and two who know absolutely nothing about tuning; add a drummer with no sence of timming; complement this with an off key singer or two; hook up a crappy stereo cassette deck and a couple of $10 Wal Mart mics; turn all the amps to 11; get really drunk; invite all your friends over, make sure they are real drunk too; make sure the floor is covered with three miles of wire, just as a good excuse for all the falling over; assemble all this in a 2 car garage with a ratteling tin roof and concrete floor and no grounded outlets; make sure the bass player is playing Sweet Home Alabama while everyone else is playing Jumping Jack Flash; if you are lucky someone was still sober enough to turn the recorder on; Damn I miss them good old days, was that hard core enough?
LRosario said:Well hardcore to me would be trying to record a song with a nagging girlfriend or wife at your side. Even more if you got the inlaws watching you, too.
In fact, I think the inlaws factor is like an automatic 50 million hardcore point increase.
Enough said....50 thousand dollar reward to the person who can top that.
That's not even remotely hardcore.
Hardcore would be any of the following:
* Getting your wife / GF to fetch coffee and clean up the home studio for you. Bonus points for getting her to assistant engineer on the project, or training her to be your guitar tech and change strings for you and tune up the guitar between takes.
* Getting your inlaws to sing backup vocals, even if they can't sing. Bonus points if you can get them all to sing in unison in a Mutt-Lange style heavy metal chorus.
* Divorcing / breaking up with the wife/GF, and kicking the inlaws to the curb ... because they are "getting in the way" of your "recording career."
Any and/or all of those would be hardcore. Putting up with them staring at you is not hardcore. When you record people, you have to learn to get comfortable with people staring at you. It's part of the job. Everyone just naturally gravitates to the couch behind the engineer ... and eventually defaults to watching him mix or track or whatever it is he does; like they're watching TV or something.
FALKEN
*************************
chessrock said:
my gf runs the board all the time when I am recording my band live. runs the r2r too. never touched anything musical in her life but I've got her on the talkback and walk her through it.
when I record drums I get her to hit them while I set levels in the control room. Of course she hits them at about 1/3 the volume that I do so the levels always clip but whatever its tape.
This isn't hardcore, but pretty funny.
I saw a guy trying to record cannon fire. The guys were using .22 caliber blanks to fire the cannons instead of traditional fuses. This guy said he wanted to catch the sound of the .22 going off first. I didn't know at the time, but he obviously cranked up the gain on his mics pretty high. He was monitoring with phones. When those babies lit off, the headphones popped right off his ears, and he rolled around on the ground moaning and grabbing his head for about five minutes.
It's less funny now, with the whole hearing damage issue, but my dad, who was one of the cannoneers, didn't stop laughing for a long time.
I saw a guy trying to record cannon fire. The guys were using .22 caliber blanks to fire the cannons instead of traditional fuses. This guy said he wanted to catch the sound of the .22 going off first. I didn't know at the time, but he obviously cranked up the gain on his mics pretty high. He was monitoring with phones. When those babies lit off, the headphones popped right off his ears, and he rolled around on the ground moaning and grabbing his head for about five minutes.
It's less funny now, with the whole hearing damage issue, but my dad, who was one of the cannoneers, didn't stop laughing for a long time.
noisedude
New member
I recorded an entire song in 1 hour by standing in the live room and getting on the talkback to my 14 year-old brother and walking him through the 32-channel Soundcraft desk, HD24 and Nuendo-interface (RME?) PC system we were recording on. I played all the instruments, all down in one take, plus all the vocals, without leaving the room ... and then mixed it for an hour and handed it in as a university coursework piece ... and got a 1st! 
Is that hardcore?
Is that hardcore?