...What's surprising is how fine are the instrument tones, and how well-balanced the mix, on what was a boom box recording of a band doing what was essentially a house party mix. All of which is not only to say the tape is a good one, but that
one-mic tapes don't get their due in modern rock. I just found a living room jam tape done on a ONE MIC recording into protools, bass, drums,
guitar and vocals all live into ONE MIC, and it sounds fantastic. I've made the last couple albums doing a lot of virtual multi-tracking, but I am really feeling the lo-fi call lately.
I've been meaning to respond to this aspect of the discussion for a while now. I totally agree. I am not into "lo-fi for lo-fi's sake" but I am enamored of the idea that you can still use old tape recorders and get interesting results. And results that (IMO) can be more unique than you'd get with your typical "bedroom recordist hero" that is likely using the same essential computer programs/soft tools everyone else is.
A good friend of mine (long time recording partner and most creative person I know...great artist) and I were talking about this recently. How while digital things can be cool, there are simply things you can do on tape and on film that you can't replicate on digital completely.
With a phone and a program you can take any image and make it precisely what you want it to be, but there was, I think, a charm and a craft to physically manipulating sound and images in analog, plastic formats that are largely lost today.
One element of this is the UNEXPECTED result. Instead of nuancing an image/recording in great detail and with countless tools, back in the day we'd try our hands at different things and just see what would stick. You might be aiming for one thing but get a completely different, unforeseen result that was better.
Chance.
I have made a lot of music (sounds, anyway...some people may not classify some of it as "music" per se) over the years--and continue to--with simple tape recorders with field recordings of different things, open condenser mic recordings of me playing bass, guitar, etc., run through effects pedals (poor man's synth!) and manipulated various ways, layered, etc. Today I sometimes input these things into a simple program or, more likely, into a digital 4 track to layer things, but the overall approach and results are (to my mind/ears) fairly similar to what I would have achieved in the pre-digital era.
I remember about 20 years back I was in an acoustic jug band type of outfit. We recorded many of our practice jams and even gigs on some ancient boombox, direct to tape. we went to the expense and effort to lay down tracks at a nice studio, and to all of our ears the homemade boombox recordings sounded far more alive. Might have been a bit more hiss, but being in an honest-t-god studio robbed the music of its immediacy and, more pertinently, it didn't sound any better to our ears with regards to quality.
I once recorded/bootlegged a Flaming Lips show back in the early 90s with nothing but a handheld Walkman-style tape player/recorder. It sounded incredible.
