Is a 4-track cassette the center of your home studio?

[brokenchairs]

I'd really like to learn how to splice tape. The first thing I started recording on was my tascam 4 track. I have a fostex D-90 digital recorder now, but i'd really like to learn more about tape. What do you need to splice?

[NewYorkDave]

A nonmagnetized razor blade, a splicing block, splicing tape, leader tape (if needed), a steady hand, and practice.

Don't even bother trying to do it on a cassette unless you absolutely must (to repair a damaged/broken tape, for example).

I never spliced different takes together... I just couldn't be bothered. I'd just do more takes till we could get it right. I used to splice a master together in its final running order, but I don't need to do that anymore.

[brakeshop]

Actually I think a cassette tape is the perfect place to mess around with tape splicing, especially if you like musique concrete. It would take some huevos to try to splice parts on a reel to reel into a proper song as an engineer because every decision is final, no undo button, but for a home four track kind of thing it would be kind of amusing to do that beatles "benefit for mr kite" trick or whatever.

[NewYorkDave]

In the old days, the "undo button" took the form of a reel of tape and it was known as the "safety."

[brakeshop]

Sorry to hijack the 4 track thread (although I'm sure every 4tracker has done this!), but this is from an article with Larry Levine, Phil Spector's engineer during his heyday.

LL: I remember one time, I don?t know which song it was in the album, but Phil would never let me edit tape because he?d had bad experiences back in New York with tape editing. And this one song, it was like three o clock in the morning and... I remember it was Darlene and the other girls from the Blossoms were singing and they had done eight bars and we were playing this back endlessly it seemed like, because like I said, it was three o clock in the morning, and I must have played it back two dozen, maybe thirty times, and they?re sitting there, and then all of a sudden at the end of these eight bars Phil say?s now ?this is where they come in!? And it?s like, you know, hey, this is were they?re supposed to come in now, this is urgent! And so I hit the record button, and in those days there wasn?t a safe mode on the three track, so I hit that record button because I was going on his cue, and I?m hearing da da da da da da. And I stopped it right away (laughs) of course as soon as I realized that I was erasing a track.
SE: Oooh!
LL: Phil knew exactly what happened too And so Phil... I remember this, he put on his dark glasses, and we had a little card table in the front of the control room sitting in the corner, and he went and sat underneath it, up against the wall with his legs brought up to his chest and he just sat there knowing that we?d lost this record. And I played it back and... are you a musician?
SE: I?m a drummer, yeah.
LL: Okay well, the song was an A-A-B-A type song, and this was just at the first ending, which is the one that never gets repeated you know, the change from the first eight to the second eight, that never gets repeated, everything else basically does. And I had stopped this thing like two beats before that change came. I don?t know how I happened to do that, but it was two beats... if I had gone two beats longer, that was it! But I had made a duplicate of that ending, or that portion of it from the second eight and put it in and it worked perfectly! So from that time on, there never was any qualms about Phil letting me edit something. But it was things like that you know, that these late hours, and you get weary,...
SE: And I bet your ears would just burn out after awhile.
LL: And yet it was thrilling too to hear this stuff because it was just... I mean it was compelling then you know, records were made... and I thank my lucky stars that we were doing it then. But you hear the whole sound instead of piece-meal, the way it is now. It was thrilling for me just to hear it.

Spector's reaction cracks me up. This was from the days before the "safety" reel or undo buttons

[schnozzle]

I guess it's funny, for those of us who grew up when tape was the only game in town, to see the reactions of kids who are encountering tape for the first time. This seemingly widespread desire on the part of young recordists to swim backwards in the technological stream is unprecedented as far as I'm aware. I think it's partly nostalgic hype, partly due to real audible shortcomings of digital, and partly due to a greater "retro" trend in society that seems rooted in a yearning for simpler times.

I guess I'm one of those folks you're talking about, and I did indeed start off on all-digital equipment and now I've moved to almost all-analog. Personally I found that it's not so much that my recordings sound better (they probably don't) but it's just all-around easier. I don't know why, but things that were just an endless, frustrating struggle to capture digitally are easy (or at least much, much easier) to get down on tape. Mixing, which was previously an absolute mystery to me, suddenly started making sense once I got rid of my laptop and plugged an old stereo cassette deck into my mixer. Now instead of pulling out my hair I'm starting to enjoy myself and actually learn something, even if my recordings aren't 'pro' sounding.

So, for me, using analog equipment isn't an act of nostalgia or whatever, it's just being practical and saving myself a lot of time and frustration.

I should point out that I'm using a 1/2" 8-track, rather than a cassette multitrack. But if I had to do it all over again I would absolutely have started on a 4-track, rather than jumping straight to the 8.

[thebeard]

Yup, I'm another yamaha mt100II user. I really love it too.

I had wanted to just get some recording software thinking it would be easier, but my piece of crap computer couldn't handle it. I got cakewalk from a friend and anything over two simultanious tracks crashes the computer. Plus I couldn't listen while recording so no overdubs. It just made me angry and with no money for a good digital setup, I sprung for this.

The yamaha is exactly what I needed to start off with, seperate headphone mixes for overdubs, track bouncing, speed control, pitch control, direct outs, punch in/out, ect... I could go on and on here. All kinds of goodies for the same price as the cheapo tascams that have none of these features (by cheapo I mean $100 to $200). Seems to sound better too IMO.

I'm still hoping to eventually move up in the world and get a reel to reel but this machine will always have a place in my humble setup.

Jesse

[Zeppelin4Life]

I my second deck was a 414MkII. I liked it a lot, but I eventually sold it. Tascam has discontinued them I hear, but I could get replacement parts, as I had to order them

Dave

[Spiderhead69]

My Fostex X-15 (?) is on my recording desk, but I haven't used it in 3 years. I used to record my band practices on it, then listen to the rehearsals for song writting idea's. 3 years ago I used it to transfer some old tapes for digital editing but since then it's a dust collect.

[cassettefetish]

ummmmm

4 Track Cassette Recorders are very cool.

It's better than a ZOOM POCKET STUDIO or whatever that is.

That's for lazy people with no apspirations.


--Nick

[Mark67]

No, but it was up until a few years ago and it still gets used once in a while to do backwards stuff or to lay down some basic tracks. A TASCAM 464. Really, really solid piece of equipment. I think about selling it occasionally because it doesn't get used much, but I know the day after I sold it, I'd need it again!

[jca83]

aside from live sound, i started on a tascam 424mkiii. i rarely used it, because i didn't really know what i was doing.

now, i use an m-box and still don't know what i'm doing. i just record more. i wish i hadn't sold it though. it's a tape recorder and can function as a mixer if you know what you're doin... i miss it.

[elberto]

last week i got sick of mixing dozens of digital tracks, plugins, etc. so when it came time to make some demos, I decided to pull out the old 4-track (a yamaha machine). I did 5 songs, I played everything and had it finished (and "mixed") in 4 hours; clips below. the experience was very therapeutic and satisfying!

one
two

what i love about 4-track cassette is that it's cheap and fun--i guess i happen to like the sound too, having grown up on indie and punk in the 80s and 90s.

[cassettefetish]

I have a Yamaha MT4X that I will use til I die.


--Nick

[kayagum]

My trusty Tascam 238s is still racked and patched. It's still cassette, and even more valuable than the extra 4 tracks is the Dolby S- major improvement on dbx

I started on a Porta One, and I gave that to an animator friend of mine

I will distribute and build theater sound cues on digital, but I'll never sell my other deck