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Post by keurslagerkurt on Nov 27, 2023 20:05:09 GMT
Had a fun weekend experimenting. Ran my Five Moons recorder in tandem with a Tascam Porta03 tape recorder. Had a small (±5s) AE recording tapeloop going on the Porta, and a few AE Modular loops recorded on the Five Moons. Loops where made with a small patch running two 555's with two RBSS's through a quantizer. Had some recordings at 'normal speed', some recordings at slow speed for the bass, and some at fast speed for more 'drone-y' vibes. I used the Hypnosis fx processor by Dreadbox (recent DIY version) cross-patched with AE. This actually worked like a charm to extend the modulation on the fx unit (Sloth on everything! ). I bounced it all down to one track on the 5M in a live recording, and for no reason at all I wanted to try and record it AGAIN to a normal tape. To see if it altered the sound. So I then bounced the 5M bounced track to the tapedeck, while running it through a little extra reverb as a whole. Then I thought: ‘why not go all the way and try and record this with no PC at all’, so I then recorded this ‘master tape’ straight to the Five Moons again (Five Moons recorded files are straight accessible as .wav's when connecting to PC). Usually I do some final touch-ups (compression, limiting, EQ) in Ableton. This ‘Ableton-less’ method costed me more time, and the mix isn’t necessarily better for it haha! Its a bit less bright, not sure if thats a good thing, but the tape also added some nice saturation as well. Fun experiment, but I’d say the DAW is easier and sounds better. But I had a good time!
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pol
Wiki Editors
Posts: 1,349
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Post by pol on Nov 29, 2023 10:05:05 GMT
Having a good time is important, and the music is pretty good too!
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Post by rockysmalls on Dec 1, 2023 16:22:46 GMT
or possibly PATÉ ,, but , y’know, the tasty kind
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Post by pt3r on Dec 2, 2023 12:33:58 GMT
Intent > Sound quality. I love this almost musique concrete approach of the track, there is something melancholic, in the flutter brought in by the tape recorder along with the degradation in sound? William Basinsky goes meets the Gamelan crew uptown.
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Post by keurslagerkurt on Dec 3, 2023 19:37:00 GMT
Intent > Sound quality. I love this almost musique concrete approach of the track, there is something melancholic, in the flutter brought in by the tape recorder along with the degradation in sound? William Basinsky goes meets the Gamelan crew uptown. Thanks for the nice words 😊 It's funny, it seems like ppl enjoy this track, it's easily my most streamed in the last years. I would never have guessed that, as it is so free floating in all it's elements, all the rhythms drift around so loosely as the Five Moons has no 'syncing' method between loops/recordings. There is def degradation in the tape sound, i have cut the tape loop myself (a fun first! 😄) And it was not only some old found tape, i also attached the sticky tape to the wrong side to 'close' the loop, which breaks up the sound every cycle haha! While i'm rambling here anyway: the tape player is a Tascam Portastudio 03 mkii. It was pretty hard to find a multitrack tape recorder that actually was in a good functioning state (lots of cheap broken ones online, but these are really gambles as there is so much stuff that can break in these recorders over time), unless you want to shelve out big money. But, after patiently waiting, this one popped up for about €125. It's actually a suprisingly great companion to Five Moons. Although they are both multitrackers, the Tascam can do manual panning and function as a two input mixer, and it can also do reverse (!!!) by popping the tape in the other way around. The five Moons is quicker and more convenient, and it can do the Longer recordings/bouncedown/... This is def an ambient workflow which i see myself coming back to.
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Post by solipsistnation on Dec 4, 2023 5:15:11 GMT
I finally got a chance to listen to this-- it's a nice and fairly chill track-- it's got a little old-school minimalism going on, and a little chiptune-type stuff. It's not as aggressively acidy as you tend to go (which isn't a criticism, just an observation!) and it has that smooth tape saturation sound along with a nice sense of space. It has enough going on that it won't get boring or samey. I like it. It's a neat direction for you to go.
Tascam 4-tracks have a long history of people doing cool stuff with them, as I'm sure you know.
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Post by pt3r on Dec 4, 2023 8:23:02 GMT
Intent > Sound quality. I love this almost musique concrete approach of the track, there is something melancholic, in the flutter brought in by the tape recorder along with the degradation in sound? William Basinsky goes meets the Gamelan crew uptown. Thanks for the nice words 😊 It's funny, it seems like ppl enjoy this track, it's easily my most streamed in the last years. I would never have guessed that, as it is so free floating in all it's elements, all the rhythms drift around so loosely as the Five Moons has no 'syncing' method between loops/recordings. There is def degradation in the tape sound, i have cut the tape loop myself (a fun first! 😄) And it was not only some old found tape, i also attached the sticky tape to the wrong side to 'close' the loop, which breaks up the sound every cycle haha! While i'm rambling here anyway: the tape player is a Tascam Portastudio 03 mkii. It was pretty hard to find a multitrack tape recorder that actually was in a good functioning state (lots of cheap broken ones online, but these are really gambles as there is so much stuff that can break in these recorders over time), unless you want to shelve out big money. But, after patiently waiting, this one popped up for about €125. It's actually a suprisingly great companion to Five Moons. Although they are both multitrackers, the Tascam can do manual panning and function as a two input mixer, and it can also do reverse (!!!) by popping the tape in the other way around. The five Moons is quicker and more convenient, and it can do the Longer recordings/bouncedown/... This is def an ambient workflow which i see myself coming back to. 5 Moons keeps intriguing me, but the only thing that really bugs me is the fact that there is no way to figure out which session of tracks is currently selected. If you want to add a track to a certain recording then your will have to go through each recording and listen whether you selected the correct one before recording, which is ok if you only have a few recordings but once you have a plethora of recordings going on that becomes a bit cumbersome, no?
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Post by keurslagerkurt on Dec 4, 2023 9:05:55 GMT
pt3r Indeed, that's true. I don't mind really, my workflow is mostly: make a patch -> record -> make a new patch -> overdub -> repeat -> record live fade-in/out of tracks on a single track -> load this single track on my computer for some compression/eq/.. -> upload to soundcloud -> forget about it for a long time So basically I mostly do one "song" per session. I do keep the stems on my external hard drive afterwards, together with the track mix. On PC i try to keep the Five Moons a bit organised by deleting failed/wrong recordings etc. Right now I have about 10 'songs' on my 5M, and from time to time I go back to the old recordings just to have some new live mixing/fading fun. But I basically never go back to record something new over an 'old' recording. It would be nice to have some 'file management' on the 5M itself without a PC (copying tracks, deleting songs,..), but i haven't been missing it too much. Feature I miss the most is basically some way to manually pan mono recordings. You have to record something already panned to get it panned in the 5M.
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Post by keurslagerkurt on Dec 4, 2023 11:07:02 GMT
I finally got a chance to listen to this-- it's a nice and fairly chill track-- it's got a little old-school minimalism going on, and a little chiptune-type stuff. It's not as aggressively acidy as you tend to go (which isn't a criticism, just an observation!) and it has that smooth tape saturation sound along with a nice sense of space. It has enough going on that it won't get boring or samey. I like it. It's a neat direction for you to go. Tascam 4-tracks have a long history of people doing cool stuff with them, as I'm sure you know. Thanks for the nice words! Yes, fair point on the less acid-y side. Its funny how I often listen to 'soft' music or softer ambient, but when I'm behind the knobs myself, I'm often tempted to try and push the sounds to it's limits guess it gives me more thrills when playing haha! Often in hindsight, I feel like I've overdone it when listening without playing. So I am trying to hold back a little bit more from time to time. For example this track which I did a few days later with the same recording setup, but AE swapped out with Microfreak: And I know that track which you shared! Think I listened to that album some time ago after you recommended it (on discord maybe?)
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Post by solipsistnation on Dec 4, 2023 16:25:47 GMT
That's really nice too. It reminds me of the Low Light Mixes of music recorded from shortwave radio. It has a lost tape feel to it.
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Post by pt3r on Dec 7, 2023 8:51:37 GMT
That was beyond beautiful. Stunning super delicate atmosphere. Thank you for sharing.
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Post by keurslagerkurt on Dec 7, 2023 16:47:00 GMT
That was beyond beautiful. Stunning super delicate atmosphere. Thank you for sharing. Thank you!!!
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