The thread to post the first song you ever made!!

[xtp]

recorded this on a old 4 track bout 15 or so yrs ago. uploaded it to digital sometime in the '90's, sadly i've lost the original tape. I didnt know what a mic-pre was back then so theres heaps of hiss. It was a 1 take job (as is everything i do it seems) on the melody then i improvised the chords over the top on the second track.

I want to re-record it and a coupla of other tunes from that time. (but i'll have to relearn it somewhat)

after listening to everyone elses this probably doesnt fit overly well with the bulk of music on this forum but it was my first so I'll post it anyway... This tune was also what inspired me to put my small home setup together at the beginning of this year.

it was called tune 1 for many years until my gf renamed it. A short folk-style instrumental. No effects on this just raw sound recorded thru a cheap dynamic mic. The guitar is a early Gibson L4. About as raw as u get really.

http://www.filelodge.com/files/room36/1 ... spring.mp3

Hats off to everyone, some cool stuff on this thread.

[thecontrolcentre]

What a great thread ... i dug out my old cassettes and found these gems happy days

this is a recording of my first band, back in 1986 ... it's very poor quality, recorded live onto a ghetto blaster with a built in microphone. The band co-wrote the tune, i'm playing guitar on it ... screaming blue murder

in 1988 my next band recorded a demo at the local arts centre on their 16 track setup ... i co-wrote the song with the bass player, and did vocals and rhythm guitar on the track ... slandergate

this track was recorded in 1990 with my next band, on a Fostex 4 track cassette, in the bass players flat. We recorded the bass ,guitar and drums live onto 2 tracks, then added the vocals later ... i wrote the song and did the vocal and rhythm guitar ... some other time

got my first drum machine in 1993 and made this tune, with a mate of mine who had a load of FX pedals, and a Juno ... i programmed the drums, and played guitar, bass and casio organ ... we recorded it using my Tascam 244 portastudio ... i remember we used the reverb from my guitar amp on this track and recordings of people coming out of the local bars at closing time ...neanderthal tank dub

I discovered Atari computers shortly after that, and started making techno ... but that's another story

[Foxglove]

Here's mine: Dystopian Ekstases


Wrote it when I was about 16 or 17, that's the 2/5ths of the song I've manages to complete.

- runagate

*Edit* spelled my own song wrong, added new link

Rungate, that was simply mindblowing. Reminds me a bit of Faust being interpreted by John Oswald. Great stuff, I'd love to hear more.

[polyslax]

Well, interesting thread. This pulled me away from my current work, but I can't complain as it was a lot of fun. As some others have done I've put together a little retrospective, since my music making spans a long period of time and three very distinct phases.

I started recording sound in the early 70s. Primitive equipment and sources, but I was always fascinated with sound. This was really anything at hand, television, people speaking, whatever.

I took up (acoustic) guitar in 1975 and immediately started "multi-tracking" (i.e. bouncing between 2 cheap tape recorders). In 1976 I got an electric guitar. Here's a short excerpt from 1976 of my Gibson Marauder running through a home made fuzz, MXR Phase 90 and Electro Harmonix Doctor Q Envelope Follower into a Fender Champ and picked by by some ultra cheap cassette recorder:

One (1.36 mb)

I got a reel to reel tape recorder with sound on sound capability in 1978 and so started a long period of recording voice and guitar using tons of that effect and generally captured at half speed, although occasionally at double speed. Plenty of time was also spent making more serious recordings of songs, but here's a short clip of some slowed stuff:

Two (544 kb)

Flash forward to the late 80s, and I'm using a bunch of hardware synths and acoustic and electric guitar to record to a 4 track cassette recorder. This period is highlighted by some terrible drum sound choices (Roland R8) and really zero mixing. Here are some clips concentrating on guitar and combining guitar and keys:

Three (574 kb)
Four (709 kb)
Five (1.91 mb)

More emphasis gets placed on the synths (M1, Wavestation, TG77, VFX) as I move along, with the following clips as examples:

Six (749 kb)
Seven (2.47 mb)
Eight (3.03 mb)
Nine (1.3 mb)
Ten (3 mb)
Eleven (5.6 mb)
Twelve (1.02 mb)

Finally, I'm all software now, and of course you can check my sig for examples of the most recent era.

[AdmiralQuality]

I took up (acoustic) guitar in 1975 and immediately started "multi-tracking" (i.e. bouncing between 2 cheap tape recorders). In 1976 I got an electric guitar. Here's a short excerpt from 1976 of my Gibson Marauder running through a home made fuzz, MXR Phase 90 and Electro Harmonix Doctor Q Envelope Follower into a Fender Champ and picked by by some ultra cheap cassette recorder:

One (1.36 mb)

I hearby pass the ancient old fart award to polyslax. To beat 1976, I'd have to dig out old reel to reel recordings of childhood singing, from tape mail made by my parents that they exchanged with my grandparents. (And criminally, they used to overwrite the incoming tape with the reply, and then mail it back! Destroyers of data!) So I bet they're long gone.

Maybe some early cassette recorder fun too. I seem to recall making several through-the-air mulitracks with a friend when we were 11 or 12 (so, '79? '80?). I did one that was an audio Battlestar Galactica episode (the original of course), where I played the soundtrack tape off one casette, and shouted dialog and made spaceship noises with my friend while recording onto another cassette! Lots of "comedy" and parody versions of songs too. Oh man... I'd love to hear those again.

[polyslax]

I took up (acoustic) guitar in 1975 and immediately started "multi-tracking" (i.e. bouncing between 2 cheap tape recorders). In 1976 I got an electric guitar. Here's a short excerpt from 1976 of my Gibson Marauder running through a home made fuzz, MXR Phase 90 and Electro Harmonix Doctor Q Envelope Follower into a Fender Champ and picked by by some ultra cheap cassette recorder:

One (1.36 mb)

I hearby pass the ancient old fart award to polyslax.

Hehehe, sho 'nuff!

Meffy, where art thou ?

[polyslax]

Did I mention I was extremely precocious... and actually started my music lessons in the womb?

[conradscmost]

well this here is my first song made in mtv music generator in march 2000 finish at 6:30PM its mainly dance something a rarely do as genre of music

http://www.archive.org/download/cscmost ... wer_2k.ogg

[ugo]

a thread this fun deserves a bump.

[jeffn1]

a thread this fun deserves a bump.

"Broken Light" at the bottom of my soundclick.com page:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemus ... andID=9221

That was basically a Roland JV-80 (with a little Yamaha TG-500 added when I ran out of polyphony) using Mastertracks Passport Pro (5) on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Then I ran the audio to a crappy cassete deck.

jeffn1

[ugo]

another bump.

[runagate]

yessiree

[camsr]

Its been awhile. Anyone have any new firsts?

[AdmiralQuality]

I found some of my oldest tape-on-tape stuff, but they're covers so I won't post them in public -- one is of Men Without Hat's "Where Do the Boys Go" and the other is a cover of the Cyndi Lauper cover of Prince's, "When You Were Mine", sung by my highschool girlfriend! (Sigh... I still miss her!)

This is kind of how I learned. By copying other songs verbatim. There were some originals from that period too, but I don't think I have any digitized and I actually don't have a working cassette deck anymore.

[runagate]

Rofl!

I was singing Cyndi Lauper songs last night.