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I'm looking to start using some unconventional equipment for my tunes, and I was thinking of copping one of these badboys.

Anybody have experience working with tape, and would there be any trouble getting the audio from tape back into wav?
And on the subject of weird music stuff, anybody ever messed with Csound?

shouldn't be difficult if you have the right cables and a decent in/out box for your computer



tape is awesome.

jolly wailer wrote:shouldn't be difficult if you have the right cables and a decent in/out box for your computer



tape is awesome.

So, I'd have to cop some kind of audio interface as well...
Would a serato/traktor scratch box be a decent one?

Check out Coleco he uses tape for his drums - http://www.myspace.com/colecouk

That kind of deck will make things sound very lo fi.

I sometimes use tape recorders like that to make synths and samples sound old. Also for really dirtying up drums. But it's not something that you'd want to use on everything imo. It's cool for the occasional track or effect.

Analogue guitar pedals such as chorus, delay and distortion are fun to use.

The problem with these is you have to get the impedance and gain staging right.

Also with any outboard equipment you're going to need a half decent A/D converter or it's not worth the effort imo.

future one wrote: Also with any outboard equipment you're going to need a half decent A/D converter or it's not worth the effort imo.

i dunno about that

it certainly will add to it, but you are still going to get that awesome tape grit no matter what. i recorded drums onto VHS and then back into my interface, and its pure gold ...i use them on almost every track.

my dream is a tape deck that has a harddrive on a delay so that the tape records into storage right after going on to tape...

hurlingdervish wrote:

future one wrote: Also with any outboard equipment you're going to need a half decent A/D converter or it's not worth the effort imo.

i dunno about that

it certainly will add to it, but you are still going to get that awesome tape grit no matter what. i recorded drums onto VHS and then back into my interface, and its pure gold ...i use them on almost every track.

my dream is a tape deck that has a harddrive on a delay so that the tape records into storage right after going on to tape...

Converters are a whole other topic...

But...

If you want to send audio to tape then straight back into your daw and have the signal match up perfectly check out this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bswx5zrFRl0

djelements wrote:

jolly wailer wrote:shouldn't be difficult if you have the right cables and a decent in/out box for your computer



tape is awesome.

So, I'd have to cop some kind of audio interface as well...
Would a serato/traktor scratch box be a decent one?

yes I'd say a I/O interface is a must... u can record straight into the mic jack that comes w/ yr computer but that is typically a shit way to do things.. you can't really stand by that kind of thing on yr beats...


I can't really comment on if the traktor box would be good enough.. sure someone can.


a nice interface is a crucial investment tho if you're doing this sort of thing.

i had that porta studio!

I use this one with metal tapes. Sounds really cool. You get heaps of tape hiss though.

I love tape hiss!

@future one

nice vid! not quite useful in my setup, but it certainly did help loads in giving me ideas

djelements wrote:I love tape hiss!

think of tape hiss like the noise oscilator when you are recording synths!:D

djelements wrote:I'm looking to start using some unconventional equipment for my tunes, and I was thinking of copping one of these badboys.

Anybody have experience working with tape, and would there be any trouble getting the audio from tape back into wav?
And on the subject of weird music stuff, anybody ever messed with Csound?

Whats the model name of this beast? I quite simply must have one.

Tape decks are cool, but the dolbly noise reduction thats built in to most of them can make things sound gash instead of saturated and warm. If you're going to go tape, why not just go for a reel to reel, you can pick them up quite cheap on ebay.

djelements wrote:I love tape hiss!

Did you say you love taking the piss?

drokkr wrote:Check out Coleco he uses tape for his drums

as do countless other ppl.

tbh there's absolutely nothing "weird" about this equipment at all. not saying dont use it, just that if u really want soemthign thats different to what everyone else is doing then running to tape and using a couple of guitar pedals really aint it.

mico viejo wrote:

drokkr wrote:Check out Coleco he uses tape for his drums

as do countless other ppl.

tbh there's absolutely nothing "weird" about this equipment at all. not saying dont use it, just that if u really want soemthign thats different to what everyone else is doing then running to tape and using a couple of guitar pedals really aint it.

Hmmm good point...... Perhaps different combinations of these items might cause you to stumble across something new? Isnt experimentation with existing techniques what brings about new ones?

I dont reckon you can improve or change the norm untill you understand it fully in the first place......

JFK wrote:

mico viejo wrote:

drokkr wrote:Check out Coleco he uses tape for his drums

as do countless other ppl.

tbh there's absolutely nothing "weird" about this equipment at all. not saying dont use it, just that if u really want soemthign thats different to what everyone else is doing then running to tape and using a couple of guitar pedals really aint it.

Hmmm good point...... Perhaps different combinations of these items might cause you to stumble across something new? Isnt experimentation with existing techniques what brings about new ones?

I dont reckon you can improve or change the norm untill you understand it fully in the first place......

misunderstanding the norm is a bit more effective

stumbling around in the dark wins over scientific analysis in music

That will be a very expensive high pass filter !

(and low pass filter too)

You may end up making very thin Dubstep tunes with anything that has a cassette in it.

You will get 50Hz-13kHz back.

And it might be a bugger getting thinks back in time again when you re record
back into your DAW ( i.e. snares and other sounds) due to the tape speed playback accuracy (or lack thereof)

cheers