GRATITUDE - Don't bitch

[? ? ?]

I was slummin it with a 4-track Tascam PortaStudio….

Yep, same here. Made more songs on that thing than with the TSR 8. Then again big difference in tape cost; reels were expensive.

My best friend and I did that with 2 DBX decks and a cheap Radio Shack mixer. The sound quality holds up today. Just had to make sure the levels were right each bounce.

And I bet you didn't take a mixing course to do it. All these current DAW users thinking they must take a mixing course to sound what, more "pro" I guess.

Who in that era owned all that gear in his video?

Who cares. It's besides the point.

was still using it for a while, for bouncing my vst bass tracks and drum tracks as well as samples out to the tape, and then back into the daw, to get a bit of analog warble to make the tracks not so precise before adding vocals and guitar

https://chowdsp.com/products.html
Scroll down ro the Tape Model plug. It's not "great" but it's actually not so bad either. I use it here and there.

I am always thankful for what we have nowadays it even gets me down sometimes thinking what if some of my musical heroes had all this technology? They had so little and still made classics and I can't even finish a decent song even with all that we have available now

I had met some cat in L.A. who was in the music industry and he was quite an interesting person. Among other juicy tidbits he had told me that computers as we know it today (I met him around 2000, 2001 ish when DAWs were still fresh) and DAW technology was out since the 60s. I recall 2 bands he mentioned using it: The Bee Gees for the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and The Beatles. Apparently the latter used DAW technology for Sgt Peppers and the whole 4-track rumor was bullshit.
There were other bands he mentioned but i wasn't familiar with them.
It wouldn't surprise me the least if he were telling facts.

[vurt]

yup, the beatles used pro tools.
its in the book.

[Aloysius]

The title of this thread is offensive.

[? ? ?]

Okey doke. Glad you guys feel important without contributing anything

[PatchAdamz]

I WISH I had owned an 8-track in 1985. I was slummin it with a 4-track Tascam PortaStudio….


…and I LIKED it!

I got to use 2 Synclaviers in 1980 that has 16 track recording build in.

It was sweeeeeeeeeeet........

[harryupbabble]

Okey doke. Glad you guys feel important without contributing anything

[? ? ?]

I got to use 2 Synclaviers in 1980 that has 16 track recording build in.

It was sweeeeeeeeeeet........

Big deal. Now had you used THREE Synclaviers, that would have been impressive.
I bet it would have sttill been cheaper to get a 24 track reel to reel with a mixer, an EMU Emulator and a couple of synths than to buy 1 Synclavier.

[PatchAdamz]

I met George Hormel (Hormel was the son of Jay Catherwood Hormel and grandson of George A. Hormel, the founder of Hormel Foods. He claimed to have invented the corndog when he was a teenager growing up in Minnesota).

He owned a Fairlight CMI....
I always wanted to check one out and now, here in person is the great Fairlight CMI.
He asked me if I wanted to hear it in action.
This was exciting, getting to hear some of those great samples I had been hearing on Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel Lps.

He began to play, "How much is that doggy in the window...."

And every time his part came (the doggie barking), he would play his one note...

Arf....arf......

$100,000 and all he could do is bark like a dog.....

I got to use 2 Synclaviers in 1980 that has 16 track recording build in.

It was sweeeeeeeeeeet........

Big deal. Now had you used THREE Synclaviers, that would have been impressive.
I bet it would have sttill been cheaper to get a 24 track reel to reel with a mixer, an EMU Emulator and a couple of synths than to buy 1 Synclavier.

That Synclavier project mentioned ended up being the first fully sampled music project ever done, and is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

[BONES]

In 1985 I was still completely focused on live performance so, even though I had a Fostex X15, I only ever recorded stereo to tape. In my mind, multi-track recording is what you did in a studio, not what I did at home. Realistically, that continued right through my hardware days and only changed when we went ITB in the early 2000's.

[VitaminD]

Who in that era owned all that gear in his video? Music studios or very wealthy? I doubt he and the rest of us would have had all that gear to be annoyed by it. Maybe he could have borrowed bits and pieces here and there though.

I started later in the 90s but it was with MOD trackers. Producing music in effectively a DOS spreadsheet is it's own form of punishment. Cubase today is worlds apart and such a breeze to use in comparison.

In many parts of the country a lot of that gear was super cheap in the 90s.

The context was having that gear in the 1980s though.

Where was a Prophet-5 and an OB-X super cheap then? That MPC60 wasn't cheap then either ($5000 USD in 1988 dollars or 13,000 USD in 2023 dollars) and he would have to wait until 1988 for it to be released anyways. I doubt it would have been considered cheap in the 1990s though.

Thus it is very unlikely this guy would be jamming out with such gear in the 80s from his bedroom studio. More likely he'd be using the low end portastudio with some radioshack synth or some casio board, again unless hes financially loaded or knows someone(s) who will loan him the gear.

Which drives the point we have it so easy today. Computer hardware is relatively reliable and cheap. Music software is easy to use, abundant, and cheap. Hard drives and sample recording/editing/playback is a cinch. Even some freeware synths today would have been a really big deal in hardware form back then.

Our issues today aren't accessibility or availability of the tools, but of artist's ideas and ability to product those ideals coherently and consistently.

[donkey tugger]

Who in that era owned all that gear in his video? Music studios or very wealthy? I doubt he and the rest of us would have had all that gear to be annoyed by it. Maybe he could have borrowed bits and pieces here and there though.

I started later in the 90s but it was with MOD trackers. Producing music in effectively a DOS spreadsheet is it's own form of punishment. Cubase today is worlds apart and such a breeze to use in comparison.

In many parts of the country a lot of that gear was super cheap in the 90s.

The context was having that gear in the 1980s though.

Where was a Prophet-5 and an OB-X super cheap then? That MPC60 wasn't cheap then either ($5000 USD in 1988 dollars or 13,000 USD in 2023 dollars) and he would have to wait until 1988 for it to be released anyways. I doubt it would have been considered cheap in the 1990s though.

Thus it is very unlikely this guy would be jamming out with such gear in the 80s from his bedroom studio. More likely he'd be using the low end portastudio with some radioshack synth or some casio board, again unless hes financially loaded or knows someone(s) who will loan him the gear.

Very true. Had a quick look at some of the prices in the Sound On Sound archive from 1985;

https://www.muzines.co.uk/mags/sos

..then using the Bank Of England's inflation calculator (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetar ... calculator) converted them to today's prices.

e.g.;

Casio CZ1 £299 to £877
Akai S612 £749 to £2148

...and that's 'entry level' type of stuff back then

[GaryG]

Very true. Had a quick look at some of the prices in the Sound On Sound archive from 1985;

https://www.muzines.co.uk/mags/sos

Love that site but wish they had the classifieds scanned too, remember when I was first reading mags like this in the mid/late 80s it would be common to see old monosynths for peanuts, sh101s, pro-ones or rogues for fifty quid. I think even minimoogs and ms20 were 100 or less. And Turnkey clearing out new 303s for £39. Maybe it's best they don;t have them scanned...

[donkey tugger]

The fickle face of fashion!

[? ? ?]

He owned a Fairlight CMI....

Ah ok, it was the Fairlight as opposed to the Synclavier that I was thinking about that cost as much as the space shuttle.

That Synclavier project mentioned ended up being the first fully sampled music project ever done, and is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

Any link to have a listen?

Fostex X15

Love the look of that thing. If it were similar to a Zoom H series recorder/interface I'd buy it.

Our issues today aren't accessibility or availability of the tools, but of artist's ideas and ability to product those ideals coherently and consistently

DAWs are an advantage as far as convenience (all in the box) versus the major studio setups of yesterday but they do sap the creative flow making the consistent production of ideas - meaning enthusiastic material - difficult. Moving knobs and faders, inserting cassettes on a Portastudio, heck a 4 year old can do it. Managing a DAW on the other hand is a different story.
I'm not complaining btw that would make me a hypocrite. I much prefer the DAW obviously but to get to that "zone" where one can fly the plane with ease takes much longer than ie recording with ancient porta studios.

https://www.muzines.co.uk/mags/sos

Wow. Had no idea this existed. Thanks for the link!

[donkey tugger]

https://www.muzines.co.uk/mags/sos

Wow. Had no idea this existed. Thanks for the link!

Just randomly having a look through and stumbled across a review of v1 of Cubase for the ST, from 1989;

https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/stei ... ubase/5618

£500 then, a snip at £1254 in todays' money.