ITT: we talk about/talk shit on cassette recording

ITT: we talk about/talk shit on cassette recording

Other urls found in this thread:

soundcloud.com/pleasecalmdown/hush
arvidthemusic.bandcamp.com/album/old-factory-living
soundcloud.com/twocapitalqs/letting-go
soundcloud.com/summer_hail/reset-repeat
sickballoons.bandcamp.com/track/midget-extract-2
soundcloud.com/pleasecalmdown/mlefirs
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

No, we talk about the artist of a lifetime. R.I.P.

This x10000000

Fuck cassette tapes and any outdated formats btw.

ya. let's talk about it.

some of my favorite records were recorded to cassette, like Bee Thousand

what about you user, what are your thoughts on cassette recording

Enjoy your ban

So I picked up this tascam 424 mkii over the summer and honestly I'm never going back to a DAW, everything you put into it sounds magical and super vibey:
soundcloud.com/pleasecalmdown/hush

My man disagrees

I read this interview that Robert Pollard only uses those cassette machines because his wife won't let him buy more expensive equipment. I guess he compulsively writes a song or two a day and he has thousands of tapes in his attic

i recorded my whole last album on cassette. it's probably something i'll never do again because current technology is very convenient but it was fun and neat. you guys can check it out here if you want. arvidthemusic.bandcamp.com/album/old-factory-living

how does that saying go? when Robert Pollard takes a shit, he comes out of the bathroom with 5 new songs written.

the dude is a songwriter by nature, it's like it's in his blood. as for the wife thing, idk about that, but i do know that for Alien Lanes they claimed that if you didn't include beer costs, the album cost them $10 to make

very endearing and genuine sound during that span of their career where they were recording to cassette, shit just sounded so good

Maybe if he recorded to cassette he would've lived

My friends have been recording on tascams for a long time, they've done some really cool shoegaze shit on em

This is my friend Steve's lofi project
soundcloud.com/twocapitalqs/letting-go

And this is Steve and and my other friend Rocky on their old band they used to have
soundcloud.com/summer_hail/reset-repeat

What machine did you use? Checking it out now

Dude physical lmao

He strikes me as the kind of guy who would use whatever's around to get the job done and move on. I bet he uses garageband now

Have you ever listened to Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen?

This is what a real ghetto 4-track looks like.
Loved it at the time, it was the only affordable way to get one at the time. And yes, it included a record player and a radio. It was supposed to be a Karaoke machine but Amstrad didn't know how to make one and built a 4-track instead.

>we talk about/talk shit on cassette recording.


I get the feeling you didn't want to participate but then you did

sweet, thanks for checking it out man. i used a Tascam MF-P01. pretty simple machine but i really like it

Woooaaah does each cassette have two tracks on it? I know people used to use two regular boomboxes and just keep bouncing the track back and forth until they built up a track

I've been looking into the tascam 238 which an 8 track cassette recorder, it doesn't have any onboard mixing options but it's supposed to be way high quality

Those little guys are surprisingly effective.

Did you use mics or go direct in for the guitars? I've noticed going direct in on these tascam machines sounds incredible. In fact I'm pretty sure Brad Laner from Medicine incorporated a four track to his live right to get that rad preamp fuzz sound

Plugging a band from my hometown who did a bunch of cassette recordings
sickballoons.bandcamp.com/track/midget-extract-2

Hah, no. The bottom deck is the 4-track one. It ran at normal speed which was a bit unusual, although there was a pitch control (its the green nob top right).
It was great fun all things considered, but cheaply made beyond belief. If you look at the faders at the bottom, those are actually just pieces of cardboard attached to the slider.

itt: a whole buncha shills

I only went direct in on a couple tracks. Track 4 on that album is the most "direct" one that i can remember, i think i might've used an acoustic pickup plugged right into the main input on the tascam for that

feel free to contribute to some kinda discussion. i like talking about this stuff even tho i did post my own music

>I'm never going back to a DAW, everything you put into it sounds magical
Probably because you had garbage preamps and mics

To make it u gotta have a shill to live

Had that exact model. Used it to record a number of albums, but overdub digitally. Now I just do purely digital because the quality is better, but I did record some great stuff with it and the physicality of working with tape is meaningful.

>tfw everyone i know make fun of me for listening to cassettes

I don't get that like cassettes are fun and it really is a different experience than like Spotify or whatever. People gotta talk shit about something I guess

it's kind of hilarious because I had the exact opposite response, I thought it was tedious as fuck, too easy to fuck up your sound and there aren't enough tracks to do anything useful. The only reason the stuff came out any good at all is because I went back to software and overdubbed a ton more shit

tape sounds okay for certain things but it's not worth fetishizing

Sounds like you
1) didn't know what you were doing and
2) rely on gimmicks to make your music.

If you can't plausibly do it on 4track, maybe you should rethink your craft

You are a lazy, tasteless fuck.
I bet your music sounds like a hospital smells.

Lucky
I wish I could know music elitists in real life but all I’ve ever known have been fanboys

Making tapes is one of my hobbies
I have a good collection of things I like, I still have some virgin tapes to make more

Wait did you not know you can bounce tracks? You can technically get infinite on most tape machines

>You can technically get infinite
No

Woah kinda harsh dudes like, certain music doesn't really work on tapes. Like specifically dance and types of electronic music can almost require a digital environment so it can capture the deep lows and harsh percussive nature of certain sounds. Furthermore like with those kinds of music it WOULD be too much of a hassle to record to tape generally speaking.

Lofi is beautiful and great but it can't work for everyone or everything

Yeah actually you can, as long as you keep bouncing tracks you technically have unlimited tracks. It's not going sound good if you bounce things like more than once but you CAN do it

>you technically have unlimited tracks
You can't because eventually the oxide on the tape ribbon will wear away. Tapes deteriorate over time, they are a flawed medium. So by your scenario of just eternally bouncing tracks, the oxide will eventually flake off and the ribbon break.

Yeah you can get more than four tracks but you have to plan it out. Almost everything I've recorded on my tascam has least five tracks. As long as you keep bouncing and stack you can go as many tracks as you want

This was done entirely on four track and if you listen to can hear a drum machine, bass, guitar, synth, and vocals
soundcloud.com/pleasecalmdown/mlefirs

>Like specifically dance and types of electronic music
Why would you try to make this on a 4-track in the first place?

Also, those genres are weak compositionally. Again, if you attempted to strip it down to four sound, you are forced to make those four elements really good.

I was just busting your balls.
Some shit does sound better on digital, some shit sounds better on tape.
Like you said.
Keep on keepin' on.

You could say the same thing about digital recording. The framework is there for unlimited tracks but eventually you'll get caught up in memory.

But yeah unless you're planning on recording 10+ tracks on cassette you're not going to run into any issues, and the other thing is doubling up tracks on cassette is usually not needed because it sounds great to begin with. I usually only double my vocals if I feel like it

>Weak compositionally

Yeah if you're judging it from a singer songwriter perspective. It's a different paradigm of composition. It's like saying "hip hop is weak compositionally" when it's just because it's focused on different things than you are

>You could say the same thing about digital recording.
Why would you? We aren't discussing that
>It's a different paradigm of composition.
That's nice, it's still weak.
>it's just because it's focused on different things than you are
It could be focused on both. It chooses not to, and is thus weaker.

>Why would you

I'm making a point that the FRAMEWORK is there for unlimited tracks, true the tape oxide would eventually start peeling off maybe after thousands of bounces, but with better of quality of tape you had the longer it would last. It can't reach unlimited tracks for the same reason we can't live forever or listen to everything ever recorded, there are endpoint physical limitations to everything, but it's EFFECTIVELY unlimited. I wasn't trying to convince you that with tape machines you could unlock more overdubs than any human could ever use, I was saying you have more than tracks to work with, and yes, you can bounce tracks until your tape literally comes apart.

BY THE WAY yes it IS unlimited, because can bounce all the tracks to another tape if you chose to do so

>It's still weak

Yes, according to an anonymous internet poster's immaculate taste in everything

>BY THE WAY yes it IS unlimited, because can bounce all the tracks to another tape if you chose to do so
Then you would need unlimited tapes.

Nice goalpost shifting
What do you mean? I never mentioned my taste, what I like/dislike.

Your taste in composition

And yeah fine alright ya got me unlimited tapes don't exist. But you'd have trouble reaching the upper limit with normal use

>Your taste in composition
Which is what?
>And yeah fine alright ya got me unlimited tapes don't exist
Are you the same guy I was replying to about infinite tapes?

You said dance music and certain types of electronic music that don't work well on tape are compositionally weak

And yes

>You said dance music and certain types of electronic music that don't work well on tape are compositionally weak
Quote me where I said I disliked those genres

>And yes
So you were talking to yourself earlier? I originally replied to your post here Then an user brought up infinite tracks as a reply to you here which I refuted. Why are you replying to yourself?

Was this not you?

Also I didn't post , I asked him if he knew how to bounce tapes and also defended him from people talking shit on his supposedly shitty music

See? Not me

>defended him from people talking shit
What? When did I do that?

I assumed that was you my bad

Well I am this guy Answer the question or fuck off

I did here , you already saw my response you ding dong

>TFW want a cassette recorder
>don't have the money to spare
I used to record on a cheap radio but it seems it finally gave out yesterday. On the bright side, the recording is super lofi which makes it sound interesting.

Again, when did I "talk shit" or mention my own taste?

Assuming we aren't too deep into shitslinging and autism yet, I have something to ask.
I'm trying to finish a demo that I want to put on a tape soon. Is there anything special or important I need to know with mastering? How do you handle excess tape space on each side, just let it be silent?

I'm not sure you were the guy who was talking shit

These are who I was talking about

It's usually 100% better to have someone else master your recordings, and when you order tapes you can have it cut to a specific length. Its more up to you to make sure each side is similar in length to prevent excess silences, but if it's a short EP or something you can just print each side with same tracks

And it's audio engineering plus Sup Forums, the shit slinging and autism will always be at maximum

>Assuming we aren't too deep into shitslinging and autism yet
Never too deep
>Is there anything special or important I need to know with mastering?
I've sen some masters for tape with a high end boost because of the lower frequency response in cassettes. I'd research it before you make that call though. I personally did not do that when preparing a cassette master recently. It is what it is
>How do you handle excess tape space on each side, just let it be silent?
You clearly want the sides to be close to the same length. You could put bonus noise at the end of a side to even out the length. Otherwise the listener just FF to the end of a side anyways.
I was the second guy. None of that is "talk shit", it's just the truth.

You can usually pick up a 4 track for like $200

It's just a demo I'm making for fun, I'm definitely not gonna pay for mastering. Maybe if I do more stuff.

I'll look at it, thanks.
It's funny, I grew up with LPs and cassettes (shit we didn't do CDs til 2000 I think), but for the life of me I just can't remember how they handled silence.

That's a pretty massive investment for just a novelty though. Plus I'm not american and the used market is kind of really weak here.

>Opinions

>but for the life of me I just can't remember how they handled silence.
It was just silence. You FF through it.
What? I never stated my opinion.

$200 is like not hitting the bar for a few weeks.

And try ebay

You said your opinion is that if you can't do it on a 4 track your music sucks and relies on gimmicks

While I love four tracks and agree it can streamline ideas i completely disagree that just because you can't do something on a 4track it means it's gimmicky bullshit.

>is that if you can't do it on a 4 track your music sucks and relies on gimmicks
Quote me where I said his music sucks

Nice strawman though.

Oh my bad

what did you mean when you told him he doesn't know what he's doing, his music relies on gimmicks, and that maybe he should rethink his craft? It's honestly not a unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that you think his music probably sucks

But I guess that's me making assumptions. I do think you were talking shit though

>what did you mean when you told him he doesn't know what he's doing
In reference to it being "tedious as fuck, too easy to fuck up your sound and there aren't enough tracks to do anything useful". These points can all be explained by the fact that he wasn't using the tool properly.
>his music relies on gimmicks, and that maybe he should rethink his craft
That I already explained. Take the song itself, and strip it down; will it stand? Sounds to me like user was blaming the machine instead of the operator. If he can't make he song stand in a minimal setting, then he is probably relying on superfluous adornments rather than the communicating an emotional core. If he can't do it with a minimal setup, then he should rethink how he creates.
>It's honestly not a unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that you think his music probably sucks
It is because 1) that's not what I said and 2) you didn't even seem to understand what I did say.
>I do think you were talking shit though
Nah, just giving advice. Why are you so defensive?

Do cassette players have a standard tape speed at which they operate? If I record something onto my portastudio at a high tape speed, how will I know that it will be played back at the right speed on another system?

I think within brands it's consistent, but even then it can be iffy. I think most machines have a tape speed adjustment knob that you could use for syncing speed up to normal