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Episode: 2884
Title: HPR2884: TASCAM Porta 02 MiniStudio 4-Track Cassette Recorder Demonstration
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2884/hpr2884.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:45:34
---
This is HBR episode 2008-184 entitled TACAM Porta Nero 2-Minute UDO 4-track cassette recorder
demonstration.
It is hosted by John Colp and is about 77 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, I demonstrate the use of a late 80's early 90's 4-track cassette recorder
a vintage home studio devig.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
With 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hey everybody, this is John Colp in Lafayette, Louisiana.
And I'm very excited about today's episode.
I've been preparing for it for a little while, ever since last weekend, about a week ago.
I found something at the flea market in Lafayette that got me very excited that I got
for a super bargain.
And I'm going to demonstrate it today.
What I got is a TACAM Porta O2 Mini Studio.
This is a 4-track cassette recorder and I don't know the date of it.
I've been trying to find that out, but it's probably from the early 1990's or mid 1990's.
It's a cassette recorder.
I got it for $5 and it was extremely dirty.
It did not have a power source with it.
It was just in a bin full of junk at the flea market.
And I picked it up because I recognized immediately the awesomeness of it and the guy selling it.
Really, I don't think had any idea, but I brought it home and took it apart and cleaned it all up.
I actually have a video that I made of that whole process that you might find interesting to watch if you like that kind of thing.
It was truly disgusting.
All the knobs had all kind of a crud in every single crevice.
It was dirt all over it.
The cassette door didn't close all the way.
And so in the video, I showed the process, first of all, of trying to supply power to it to see if the thing worked at all.
And there were a couple of failed attempts at adapter.
It has a fairly standard size AC adapter input.
I should, if you're not looking at pictures or anything, I should say it's about, I don't know, 12 inches wide by 9 inches deep and about 2 inches thick at its thickest.
It's got two rows of knobs on the left, a couple of faders on the middle and then the cassette door is on the right.
There's a little tape counter and then all the transport control buttons are on the bottom right.
There are inputs on the back for quarter inch jacks only, not for microphone inputs.
I'll talk more about what it means to have a four track here and a little bit, but first a little bit more about getting the thing going.
So I tried two different AC adapters that fit the plug and had the right voltage.
It's a 12 volt and neither one worked and it took me a moment.
I looked closer at the little indicator on the back and saw that, unlike most items, this one required that the post be negative and the sleeve positive.
And so what I did was took an adapter, an AC adapter that I had recently hacked for another purpose.
It was for, I was building from a kit, a little amplifier, just a circuit board and some capacitors, resistors, transistor, that kind of stuff, and it needed 12 volt AC input and it only had these two little screw posts.
So I had taken an AC adapter that was the right voltage and cut the plug off of it, separated the two wires, stripped them and then screwed those into the input.
And so I had that already, but I kept the plug also for that.
And so I took that adapter, took the plug and separated those wires a bit and all I had to do to make this adapter was flip the polarity around.
So on the plug lead where it has these long dashes, that's the negative side, I turned that around so that it was against the solid side and then the dash line on the plug going to the wall wart went against the solid line on the plug.
And so that effectively switched the polarity and then when I plugged it in to the task and recorder and flipped the little power switch, it came right on.
And so that's the adapter that I've been using.
Once I, once I finished the video and verified that the recorder worked and that I wanted to keep it and keep using it, I went ahead and soldered the connections on the power plug.
Just for testing purposes, I had used screw caps to make the connections, but then I soldered it and put heat shrink around the connections and now it's relatively nice and neat and safe to use.
So then I took all the knobs off, took everything apart, took like the circuit boards out of the case so that the case itself was just bare and didn't have any circuitry in it and took it to my sink in the laundry room.
And scrubbed it and used a toothbrush and all the crevices and looks like I missed a crevice right there, actually.
And basically just scrubbed everything, cleaned it all up and then put it back together and it looks practically brand new.
In the process of putting it back together, there were a couple of issues.
One, of course, was trying to make the cassette door close all the way and I did fix that.
I discovered that it had come, there's a little knob that had come out from under this little, I don't know what you would call it, a little springy metal clip kind of thing that kept everything and kept everything in alignment and it had come out from there and so it wasn't lined up right.
So once I got that sorted out, the door has worked perfectly ever since.
The other problem was that I found a tiny, tiny piece of plastic floating around inside the case along with a little bitty spring that you could barely see.
And I determined later that those are what make the pause mechanism work.
Pause doesn't work right now if you press it, it just flops right back up.
I have the parts still, or actually I lost the spring, but I cannibalized a couple of other cassette machines that I had at my disposal for springs and even little cap that's supposed to hold it on, but the cap that I have are incompatible, that's the problem I can't put the spring and the little plastic piece back on because there's supposed to be this little cap that holds it in place and the caps that I got off the other machines have this little, have like a plug that you put down into a hole and it holds it still.
But this machine doesn't have the hole to put it in and so these things don't work.
I'm a little bit afraid to try and drill a hole because I don't have a drill bit small enough and I'm afraid I'll just break it completely.
So I'm holding out for possibly an exact replacement part at some point.
So anyway, I think it's time to demonstrate this thing.
I've brought it to my office because it's fairly quiet over here.
Actually, I can hear one sound going, I think I'm going to put this little machine to sleep.
How do I do a control of age?
I've got a laptop over here whose sole purpose is employee time sheets because the time sheet system at the university here is so antiquated that if you try to run it on any machine that has an updated version of Java, it requires Java.
First of all, that's a big problem.
The updated versions of Java break compatibility with our time sheet systems.
So I have this Dell laptop that's about 12 years old that used to be my sons and I installed an old version of Debian and an old version of iced tea and open JDK or whatever the Java packages are.
And then did apt hold on those to make sure they never get updated and half of the faculty have to come here to my office to do their time sheets because that's one of the only machines in the department that actually works with the time sheet system.
Pretty sad.
Okay, so what are we doing here?
What I'm going to do is demonstrate how this machine works and I'm going to actually record a little tune.
I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. It will be revealed track by track and I think it'll be more fun that way.
I've already tested this a few times.
When I first brought it to the office for testing, I recorded using only the instruments that I had with me, which I think was a scraper.
Metal Guido, kind of a Dominican Republic kind of instrument.
And I had my voice and so I laid down a track of the Guido and then I laid down two tracks of my voice singing in harmony and it worked perfectly.
I was so excited and I thought, man, my daughter is going to love this.
She is all into music, loves to sing and she loves to make harmony.
She's always trying to make harmony almost against herself in real time.
Of course, she has to switch back and forth between the upper and lower parts.
And so when I explained to her what this machine did and how she could use it, her eyes just lit up and said, whoa.
First of all, to understand what a four track is, this is a machine that allows multi track recording.
It's like a recording studio, only it's very small and meant to be used at home by amateurs.
So for younger folks, I would tell them it's like Garage Band before there was Garage Band.
When I was a teenager, a four track was a thing of gold because it allowed you, if you had written a song, you could lay down a demo tape with it.
Even all by yourself, you can just lay down one track at a time, you go back and play from the first track you did and play along with it and record that.
And then go back and record a third and a fourth track. And suddenly you've got a four track recording that can have vocals, guitar, bass, and drums.
I mean, that's a pretty powerful tool.
It records on to cassette tape, but the demo that I made the other day in here sounded incredibly clean.
I mean, it wasn't quite CD quality, but it was not far off. If you're interested in hearing that, I tweeted it out.
It's on my SoundCloud page, and maybe I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
But it's hard to overemphasize how important a four track machine was to a teenage musician in the 80s and 90s.
Everyone that I've talked to about this machine, the other music faculty who are about my age, when I showed them this, they said, oh man, I had one of those.
When I was in high school, I used it all the time. Our band used to record demos. I used to record the songs I'd written.
And they get all excited just talking about it because they remember how wonderful the machine was.
So let's start hooking it up here. First, I guess I will... I'm going to try to do this as bare bones as possible.
I've put a bunch of pictures together for a slideshow on Flickr, but I don't know that I'm going to use all of this equipment.
I brought a separate mixer that has phantom power, which you need for the condenser mic. I've got three different microphones here.
I have a Sennheiser 825S, which is not a great, it's a dynamic microphone that's not super high quality.
I have a Sure SM58, which is a classic microphone that's been used by everybody around the world, mainly for vocals in live, sound reinforcement, not so much in studio.
And then I have an Audio Technica Condenser mic. What is the model number on here? I don't see a model number. It's got to have one.
Where is it? It just says Audio Technica Cardioid Condenser. Oh, there it is. ATM 710.
I'll include those references in the show notes, I guess.
But the condenser mic requires a thing called phantom power, and the mixer. This is a Berenger Zenix 1202 mixer. It's a four-channel, a four-input mixer.
And if I wanted to use the condenser mic, I would have to run it through this mixer first and then go from there into the recorder.
I did find this morning a microphone cable that has regular microphone XLR on one end and quarter inch on the other.
And so that's what I could try to use at first, just to show how with very, very basic equipment you could make a four-channel recording.
So the first thing to do is I'm also going to be recording the output of this recorder onto my Moran's professional solid state recorder.
I did an episode about this machine a year or two ago, maybe three years ago. I inherited it from my mother-in-law when she passed away.
She used to do interviews and stuff on this, and I use it now for transferring LP to MP3 and stuff like that.
So I'm going to be recording the output of the recorder onto that. Now where's my cable? Oh, here it is.
So I'm going to go, there's a line out on the back of the recorder that is two RCA plugs left and right.
So I'm just going to plug the left and right of the RCA here and then on the other end of this cable is a mini plug.
Okay, left and right.
And plug this into the input on the back of the Moran's.
I'm going to push record pause right there so it can start taking levels. Of course, it's not getting any signal yet because the recorder is not turned on.
Now where is the mic cable with quarter inch at the other end? That's a regular mic cable.
I had all these cables laid out for a picture. I've been taking a lot of pictures.
Normally this wouldn't take me nearly so long, but I've been trying to document everything for y'all's benefit.
And now where did it go? That's another regular mic cable. Regular mic cable.
Oh, down here. Here it is on the floor, of course.
I don't know if I've ever used this mic cable before, but it is XLR on the end that plugs into the microphone.
And then it is quarter inch on the end that plugs into the recording device.
Let's see how it sounds. This will go into line one.
Oops, I've also got pictures of my lead sheet that I'm going to use to play the song.
And then I've got a picture of my plan for recording that shows which tracks I'm going to put which things on.
So right now I've got the microphone plugged in there. I'm not going to use the microphone just yet.
The thing I'm going to do is lay down a track from a metronome. And I do that so that my tempo remains steady.
Now that I metronome I'm using is a matrix MR800 quartz metronome.
It's a pretty cool little metronome. This was found in the, the lost and found bin in the school of music office.
I'm a student who had left it somewhere and never came to claim it. So I'm using it now.
And it has a dial that you can spin around to select the tempo.
And incidentally the knob on here is one that I pulled off of a dead.
What was it? A limiter compressor, a lysis rack mounted limiter compressor, and the knob fit in there.
So I'm using that now. It's a lot easier to turn the knob with a knob on it.
It's got a place here where you can choose what meter to beat it out.
You can either have, this is probably going to be really loud here. I'll hold it away from my microphone.
You can turn it on where it's got every beat emphasized the same like this.
Or you can choose to have it in, let's say I'm going to use four four meters.
The first beat of the bar will be at a higher pitch than the other three beats in the bar like this.
So that's the one I'm going to use because it helps me keep on track.
So what I'm going to do is lay down the metronome on track four.
Then record the bongo drums on track three.
And then I'll go back and record over the metronome with the clave on track four.
And then on track two, I'm going to put the guitar and track one will be some instrument playing the melody of the tune.
Either I think it might be a harmonica or lead guitar, maybe the harmonica.
The harmonica is limited because it does not have all the notes I need for this melody.
But it might be close enough for jazz, as they say.
Okay, so I've plugged the metronome, this metronome also very conveniently has a headphone out jack.
Although it does not have a volume control and it's extremely loud in the headphones.
So I do not use it in headphones.
But it's perfect for this purpose because I can go out of the headphone jack into the recorder.
And it will be a nice clean recording.
I also have to put a tape in, of course.
I have here a 10-minute-long TDK professional master series tape.
And so this will actually only give us five minutes of recording time because one thing about a four track recorder.
It only records one direction on the tape.
Now every cassette tape actually has four tracks.
But they're done left and right going on the A side and then left and right going on the B side.
If you put a regular cassette tape in this machine and play it back.
And you have the volume of tracks three and four turned up.
What you're going to hear is the B side music playing backwards.
So it's a very strange phenomenon.
So what you have to do, since this only plays in one direction,
once you get everything the way you want it, you have to record the contents of the four track tape onto an external source.
And in this case, I'm going to be using the Morance Professional Recorder as my master copy.
So let me turn on the metronome and I've got to plug in the power on the task end.
That would help.
And I've got to plug in the power supply for the task end.
Is it plugged in?
Oh, you got to turn on the switch.
Okay, so I've got going into track four.
There are only two inputs on this recorder.
So you can only record two things at a time.
What you have to do, there's a little slider switch on each input that has three positions.
Position one is for track one.
Then in the middle is a safe position so that you can't record on that track.
And then position three will record on the track three.
And then the other input has tracks two and four with a safe position in the middle.
So right now what I'm going to do is put input one on safe and input two,
slid down to track four.
I already have the metronome going, but you won't be able to hear it.
What should I do on this recorder over here?
I'll just start recording, I guess.
Oopsie.
You might be able to hear that the Morance machine is playing through its little speaker.
So I'm going to turn that speaker all the way down.
Oops, those are on there.
All right, I can see the lights lighting up on the taskamp indicating that it is recording.
And they say that you should have the indicator should mostly be around level zero.
There are four LEDs, two red and two yellow.
It starts at minus ten dB, then minus five dB, then zero is where they say you should aim for for your base level.
And then plus six, if that one lights up, that's like the max it should ever get.
And you can start clipping if that's pegged at that for very long.
Okay, so I'm going to stop that bit.
And now what I'm going to do is turn down all of these headphones.
I don't really know what's on this tape.
I think I remember what's on it, but I don't remember for sure.
I'm not sequencing that I did in college, and I just happen to still have the tape.
I'm going to pull all of that down.
Let's see, except maybe track four.
Let's turn this back on and see.
Oh, we have a line out.
Well, let's see what happens.
I'm going to press record.
You have to push down record and play at the same time with some force.
The tape is rolling.
And once I'm sure it's gotten past the leader tape, I'll start the metronome.
Actually, you know what, I'm not sure this is the tempo I want.
I need to find my tempo.
Okay, I think that's good.
I think that tempo will work.
Now, I rewound the tape.
And I'm going to press record again, recording on track four.
Other channel is safe.
Levels are set.
Let's roll.
The red light on the record indicator is on.
And we're past the leader tape, so here we go.
I'm just going to let it go long enough where I think it's gotten through the whole song that I want to do.
And while it's doing that, I can talk about what's going to come next.
So what I'm going to do next is record the bongo drums.
And for that, I will set up a microphone.
And at first, I guess I'm going to try using a dynamic microphone.
I think it would be better to use a condenser mic.
But I'm going to try the dynamic mic just because that's the one that's got the quarter inch plug.
And it would be the simplest thing for a teenager on a limited budget to have at home.
It's still recording away on the metronome.
I hope that won't be too loud on the recording that I'm making while I'm speaking.
Now, it's fine.
I have a mic stand on my desk.
I've got a tabletop mic stand that I'm going to put on the floor in front of the bongos and get the dynamic mic is meant not to pick up as much sound externally as a condenser mic does.
A condenser mic will pick up everything in the room.
The microphone on your phone, for example, will be a condenser mic.
The microphones on a zoom recorder, those little two stereo mics, those are both condenser microphones.
And they pick up all the ambient sound.
A dynamic microphone is different.
I wish I knew the exact technical ways in which it's different, but I don't know this.
But I know the effect that it has, and it's a different effect.
Still recording.
I'd probably record about enough metronome at this point.
It won't hurt to have it go a little longer.
Oh, that's perfect.
I need a picture of this.
Where's my tablet?
Yeah, maybe I don't need a picture.
That's all right.
Let's see.
Is that enough?
The wheel's a turning.
Still going.
A metronome will go indefinitely.
It's a workhorse, man.
Oops.
I can see that.
It's going to be clipping over here on the Morance recorder.
Turn that record level down a little bit on that.
One thing I really like about the Morance recorder is it's got physical knobs and buttons and stuff to turn the levels down.
Incidentally, that's one of the things my daughter likes best about using this test scan mini studio also.
I mean, I told her how, I mean, most kids her age nowadays will use an iPad or a laptop or something.
But she really likes the physical sliders.
She likes the knobs.
She likes playing with the left and right pan feature with the knobs.
That's something I didn't mention.
But so on the mixer part of the board, it's very, very basic.
I've only got level and pan.
A more advanced mixer would have some basic equalization, high mid and low.
And that is available on this Xenix 1202 mixer that I've got as an external source.
But it's not available on the recorder itself.
So we're just going to do raw sounds here today.
But my daughter really enjoyed putting her two voice tracks down and then using the pan feature to control how far left and how far right.
Each one went.
So it sounded like you had two different people singing at you at the same time.
This is more than enough metronome.
So I'm going to stop the metronome and let it record a little bit more silence and then rewind.
Okay, let's rewind.
And what I'm going to have to do is put on headphones to listen to this.
Get out my Bose Quiet Comfort headphones.
And I need a headphone adapter.
All these inputs are quarter inch.
So my mini plug headphone jack doesn't work with it.
I can use this one now.
Headphones in there.
So the, I'm pretty sure the, the morance is still recording right now.
Oh, is it recording?
Was it recording the whole time or was it not?
Oh, maybe it wasn't.
Okay, now it's recording.
Well, that's probably just as well that it didn't pick up that whole thing with the metronome.
That would have been extremely tedious.
So now I'm going to hook up my headphones.
And I've got power there.
So there's a little bit of noise coming through the headphones.
I wonder if I should use different ones.
Let's listen back.
I'm going to listen now to the tape just to make sure it recorded the way I think.
Oh, yeah, it helps if I turn up the...
Okay, I've got...
I've got metronome.
Great.
Okay, metronome is going.
I'm going to rewind the tape.
And now I've got to check the level on this microphone.
So this is in line.
I'm going to put this on track three.
Input two on the safe.
Bring up...
Let's see.
Track three.
Are you plugged in?
Test one, two, two, two.
Test, test.
This might not be working this microphone.
Oh, there it is.
Okay, there it is.
I see the indicators going now.
I'm going to turn it up a little bit more.
Okay, now I'm going to put it down and play the bongo.
And see what the level is like.
Put the mic down a little lower.
Okay, that's probably a good enough level.
Now I need my lead sheet to know how long to play the bongo.
I'll have to keep this in mind as I go.
I think I will let two measures worth of...
Two measures worth of metronome go before I start playing the bongo.
And that way I will also know when to start the clave when I record that track.
Okay, so input one is on three.
Input two is on safe.
I got my level set.
Got my headphones on with the metronome in it.
Let's roll.
There we go.
Recording now.
Actually, I'm going to do a clap to sync this up.
That should have gone on to the Morance.
Yes, Morance is still recording.
This is complicated.
Trying to record my podcast commentary at the same time recording the output of the recorder
and doing all these levels.
Here we go.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
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Recorder is rolling.
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Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
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Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling!
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
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Recorder is rolling.
Recorder is rolling.
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Recorder is rolling.
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Record is rolling.
Record is rolling.
Record is rolling.
So I'll turn up track 3.
Turn down the metronome.
Okay, I don't like the sound of that microphone.
I'm going to use a condenser mic.
I'm going to record this again.
Okay, it's going to take me just a moment to set up the condenser mic.
Yeah, the dynamic mic does not work well for that.
So we will change it out to use the audio-technica.
And put this cable to the side for the moment.
Okay, audio-technica, which are you?
This one.
I need a traditional mic cable.
Put down my headphones for a sec.
Regular mic cable.
And put this into input 1 of the XINX 1202 mixer.
Make sure the phantom power is activated.
Yes.
Okay, pull again this into the microphone.
Then I've got to take a quarter inch cable and run out of...
Use my yellow quarter inch cable run out of the mains output of the mixer into the correct channel of their quarter.
I'm going to go out of the left channel there.
One of the other things that my daughter really likes about using this old analog stuff is plugging in the cables.
That's always super fun.
It makes a very satisfying clunk when you plug it in.
Okay, so let's bring this over.
Oh, yeah, that has much hotter.
That's going to overdo the...
The meringue's over here, too.
Turn that down a little bit.
Yeah, that's coming through real strong.
Let's turn this mic.
Setting my levels here.
Let's get the drums out.
Oh, that's hot.
Okay.
Yeah, the two drums of the bongo are the macho and the amra.
The macho is too loud right there.
Let's bring this down.
Just a little bit more.
Okay, I think I'm ready to record over the track I just did.
Here we go.
Man, I messed up.
Start over again.
The joys of recording in the studio.
Get a whole nervous, man.
I'm going to mess up and make mistakes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, I think that's good enough.
Put the bongos down.
This is going to be a long episode.
If you're not interested, hopefully you would have turned off by now anyway.
It's time to listen back to what I just recorded.
Make sure the level sound right, that the bongo sound okay.
I've got the EQ pretty much even over there.
I'm not doing a whole lot with it.
Turn down the metronome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
That would probably do.
It's not quite as loud as I'd hoped, but hopefully I can just mix that in there.
Something just occurred to me.
I might actually want to have the metronome still going on my ear when I record the clave.
I'm going to put the clave on track 2 and then put the guitar on track 4 after clave is down.
I even mark out my...
clave and guitar on track 4.
All right, time for clave.
Clave is a Cuban instrument.
Two sticks is a very simple way to describe it.
However, it's much more than that.
It has to be made out of a special kind of wood.
And the clave that I have here is a rumba clave, which is a...
The larger of the...it's like...it has a beater stick that's smaller than the clave itself.
Clave has a half circle, like a semi-circle cut out of it.
And you have to hold that so that it makes a sound chamber with your hand of demonstrate.
So if I just hit this with the stick without holding it the right way, it doesn't sound right.
But listen to the difference when I hold it, right?
Check this out.
Now that is a sound.
Okay, track 2.
Let's put this one on safe.
That one on 2.
Looks like if I sit right about here.
I'm getting the levels...
About the right level on here on the microphone.
Okay.
Maybe a little bit hotter.
I'm adjusting two things.
One is the slider on input 2, and the other is the trim, which is a little knob at the top.
According to the user manual, you change the trim according to whether you're using a mic or a line input.
Okay, that'll work.
Now let's get the headphones back on.
I'm going to record track 2.
And while I'm recording track 2, I will listen to the bongos and the metronome.
Okay, that's track 2.
That's safe.
Here we go.
Did I rewind?
Yeah.
That was funny.
So I heard myself speaking.
I've forgotten that if I talk during the...
While I'm recording from the condenser mic, it's going to pick it up.
Okay.
That's all right.
Here we go.
Okay, that's the other thing you got to avoid is having your phone go off while you're recording.
No.
Silence the phone.
Rewind.
Do this again.
Throw my phone over there where even if it vibrates it can't hear it.
Okay, let's try this again.
Recording track 2 now, the clave.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Okay.
That'll do.
Go back and listen.
So now I've actually just recorded 2 of the 4 tracks because the metronome track is not meant to be part of anything.
It was turned down the metronome on this playback, turned up the clave and the bongo.
And let's see how it sounds.
Okay, let's do this.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Recording track 2.
Okay, I don't know if you can hear the same problem I hear, but what I'm hearing right now is that the sound of the metronome is coming through my headphones into the condenser mic.
I'm not real happy with that.
I think what I will do.
Recording both over again without a metronome.
Just hope for the best.
So let's get rid of the metronome.
Go back to track 4.
And I'm going to start with bongo.
And I'll do an old school count off.
One, two, two default like that.
So did I rewind? Yes.
Turn track 3 down in the mix.
Turn track 2 down in the mix.
Track 4.
All right.
What you guys are getting a sense of here is something I pointed out to my daughter.
However long you think it's going to take you to record something, go ahead and double that time and you might be getting close.
Okay.
Are we ready?
I think we're ready.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Okay.
I think I would have faded out by then anyway.
Now it's rewind.
I'm not going to listen back to this.
I'm just going to record straight onto clave here.
Turn that down.
Push that on safe.
Put this track 4.
Let's put clave on track 3.
Oopsie.
Let's put these down.
Okay.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
Track 4.
All right.
Two tracks down.
Let's put a guitar in here, guys.
I'll put the clave back in my bag, done with you.
Okay.
I've got a guitar now.
And I think I need to move with a microphone.
We're going to hear the guitar a little better.
I'll move it up here on my table.
Okay.
Now let's point it down a little bit.
Lower this part.
Okay.
Now let's get a level on the guitar.
I wish I had my classical guitar here today, but it's in my daughter's bedroom.
And she was asleep when I left the house.
What am I doing now?
Clave is on four.
I'm back to my original.
Bongo on three.
So guitar will go on two.
Okay.
Guitar on track two.
I think I need to adjust my microphone here, so as not to bang it with the guitar.
There.
Hopefully that wasn't too loud in your ear.
Bring it up a little bit over here.
I need to check tuning.
Always check tuning.
I'm going to check it with the harmonica.
Just in case I want to use the harmonica for me.
Okay, that looks good.
Okay.
Okay.
Whoo!
Okay.
How am I going to do this?
Is the melody going to come in at the same time as the rhythm guitar,
or is it going to have a bar or two lead to it?
I think I will have four bars of guitar strumming and then have the main theme coming.
Track two.
Okay, I've got track three and four in my headphones.
That side's on safe.
Let's turn that down.
Make sure it's on safe.
You know, I double check these things.
Okay.
Recording on track two, rhythm guitar.
We're getting there, guys.
Here we go.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
I think I messed that up.
I messed that up.
Let's start over.
It sounds awfully tinny in my headphones.
Oh, I forgot how the main tune, I'm trying it.
So the difficulty, I'm trying to hear the main tune in my head as I'm strumming,
and I forgot how the first bit went.
Let's try this again.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
I messed it up again.
You guys are going to get a sense of what song I'm playing here.
I keep this up.
Okay, I think I got it now.
Take three.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Okay, that should be enough.
Check that out.
Make sure it sounds okay.
Playing back with Track 2 now.
Let's make this one safe.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
I wonder, did I do that right?
This is irritating me.
This is one of the things I told my daughter also is very, very difficult about multi-track recording by herself.
If you're doing something, it's hard to keep track of where you are in the song when you're not hearing the other parts.
Okay, let's do it.
Okay, yes.
I think I did that wrong.
Yeah, I did that wrong.
I got to re-record.
One more time, I think I got it this time.
You can tell I didn't really rehearse this very much.
This is a kind of on-the-fly thing.
I can probably make it work because I'm a fairly experienced musician, but in any case, let's try this again.
Track 2 recording.
Let's go.
One, two, three, four.
Track 3 recording.
Track 3 recording.
Okay, that might have to do.
I messed up one chord there, but we might just have to live with it.
This is taken longer than I want it to.
Let's see one more time.
One, two, three, four.
Okay, that'll work.
You could hear me practicing along for the harmonica track.
I'm not sure how well the harmonica is going to...
It's really missing to do this properly.
I would need a chromatic harmonica.
Oopsie.
Put the mic back up like that.
And so harmonica is going to go on track 1.
Track 2 and 4 are safe now.
Okay, this is going to probably be extremely loud in the talking part.
I will have to do some work in audacity to fix that.
Okay, now that gives away what song it is, huh?
Okay, is this rebound?
Yes.
All right, so I've got these three tracks up in my headphones.
And...
Let's see how it goes.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
Dang, I messed up the very first thing.
Okay, there we go.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Okay.
Okay.
All right, I think I'm done recording.
And now comes the mixing mastering part where we just set all the levels and dump it to the Morance.
So, right, this time I will actually make sure that the Morance is at a good recording level.
Let's play it back and listen.
So, yes, the big mystery is revealed.
I'm playing the HPR theme song with a Latin beat and a harmonica, kind of a weird...
So, listen, as we do this, I can turn down the clave completely or turn down the guitar, add the clave back in.
And there's the harmonica or...
Right now, this is the harmonica that's left.
And here's where I would fade out.
I've got a whole bunch of messy stuff going on there right there.
I need to set the level down a little bit more on the Morance, I think.
Let's play it back.
All right, I think that might be about all the mixing I'm going to do.
Let's just set the harmonica level.
Okay, so I think I'm going to pan the clave just a tiny bit right and pan the bongo just a little bit left.
And that'll be that.
Okay, so time to rewind all the way to the beginning.
And now, I'm going to make this the actual master tape.
Man, this is a long episode.
Even on the Morance, it's a 42 minutes and I started that maybe 15 or 20 minutes into the thing.
Okay, I think we're ready.
All four tracks set to the appropriate levels, pan the way I want them and time to dump it to the Morance.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Okay, so what I'll do is I think what I'll do is I'll take that dump
and put it in Audacity and fade out properly.
And then I will include that as a kind of appendix to the episode where I've been talking all along.
I'm going to take these headphones off now.
They've been driving me crazy for a while.
All right, so anyway, I hope you've enjoyed hearing the process of multi track recording using a home recording device from the late 80s, early 90s.
I've found this enormously satisfying.
So the first recording I made with it, I could not wipe the smile off my face because I was having so much fun.
And it brought back so many memories of trying to make little recordings at my friend's house when I was a teenager.
I never had a four track recorder.
I mean, I could barely afford to get the guitar I needed and get an amp and all of that kind of stuff.
One of them even had an eight track that recorded on the quarter inch real to real tape.
But I think he also had a four track recorder.
And I remember one of our friends who was a fantastic musician who went on to have, he recorded two albums with, I think, Polygram records later.
And then when independent, his name is David Mead.
Fantastic songwriter.
Incredibly prolific.
He would just keep asking my friend Stephen, hey, man, can I come over and use your four track?
I want to record some demos of all these songs I've written.
And he kept asking Stephen so many times that Stephen finally just said, look, man, just take the four track back to your house.
Knock yourself out, just borrow it this weekend.
And David took it home and recorded like 30 songs on it.
And just like, I mean, he probably spent like 15 hours a day using the thing.
I mean, back then, that was how you made demos was with a four track.
Now, this is maybe the simplest four track machine I've ever seen, because the ones that my friends had actually had four separate inputs.
So you could, if you had a four person band, you could all be recording at the same time.
On this one, you can only do two people at a time.
But as you see from what I just did, it works.
I mean, it's pretty cool.
And I've really had fun showing my daughter how to do this.
Once she understood the principle of multi track recording, she was all in.
She wanted to learn everything.
So now she knows how to hook up all the cables and how to set her levels and which microphone to use.
And what was really funny is that I remember we put a different tape end to record something and she had to rewind it.
And she said, that I think the tape counter has broken.
It's at like 984 or something instead of zero.
And so I said, honey, just push that little button next to it and it went back to zero and she grand.
And I said, here's the thing about the tape counter.
If you wanted to record more than one song on this tape, so you have to put them one after the other.
So once you're done with the first song, you go forward a little bit.
And then you put the tape counter back to zero.
And then when you're recording that song, you just keep rewinding to zero instead of all the way to the beginning of tape.
And I could see her mind processing and she waited a beat and just said, that's brilliant.
I said, yeah, honey, they knew how to do stuff back in the day too.
It's just a little bit different.
But there were ways to do just about everything.
And like I said, I've talked to five or six of my colleagues since I got this and showed it to them.
Well, I could not wipe the smiles after they said, oh man, I remember my four track.
How much fun it was to record with the band or just with myself.
And I'm having a really good time playing with this.
And I think you'll probably agree.
It sounds remarkably good for cassette tape or a machine that's 30 years old probably.
At least 25 years old.
And it's good.
If you enjoyed hearing this, you might like watching me take the whole thing apart and put it back together and clean it and everything.
That's on my YouTube channel and I'll have a link to that in the show notes and also a bunch of pictures and everything.
Okay.
Anyway, I've gone on long enough.
I've tested your patience through a recording session.
But now hopefully you have a sense of how long it takes to do these kinds of things in real time.
Recording in the studio takes a very, very long time.
Alright, that's it.
I'll talk to you guys later, okay?
Bye.
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