Blogging...Recording...Random Thoughts...Music....Repeat.

I've never written a blog. I'm more of a dabbler than an expert on anything. I like figuring out how things work though. That's the one common thread that seems to hold most of my life together. I like to take chances and make mistakes. I don't mind breaking things if it means I get to see what made them tick.

I like music. It's the closest I've come to feeling like I have a magical power. I like recording music. It's like preserving a feeling that can't be described otherwise. Like capturing some primitive language that we all know without learning. When it's right, you know it.

My first experience home recording was on a used 4-track cassette tape machine. I remember buying it off my good friend and bass player Dan Herman (the 2nd) in the 90's. I'm pretty sure it was a Tascam 424 Portastudio. It was more than I could afford at the time, but It was my first official piece of recording gear, and I was giddy to own it. I would tape myself playing the drums and (mostly borrowed) guitars (thanks Eric) on that machine for years before moving on to digital recording, which I was convinced was somehow "better".

I was in a Milwaukee rock band called Kickstand. It sounds a little backwards, but I had only been in "professional" music studios with proper recording engineers up to that point, and much of what they did seemed like voodoo to me. I didn't know exactly what they were doing, but I knew I loved it, and I wanted more of it. The problem was that it was expensive and we spent a lot of our hard earned gigging money to afford recording time there.

With the 4-track I suddenly found myself in the position of recording music whenever I wanted without any budget or time constraints. It felt good to be in control of something musical without the need for an entire band to play with. Was I good at it. No. Not really. But, as my interests grew, I realized that playing the drums live was only part of my musical passion. I wanted to write and record music. I also saw it as a way to convey my ideas to the band without having to impress three talented guitar players with my rough guitar skills. I could present a semi-complete song idea with the press of a button. No missed chords. No forgetting when to go into the bridge.

This particular 4-track was a simple, fun machine that sounded surprisingly good. I would mic the snare, the kick and put a 3rd in front of the kit. Once I was done recording my drum parts I would bounce (those tracks) down to a single track. I'd use the other 3 tracks for a couple of hard panned guitars and a bass track right up the middle. The result was a decent sounding demo tape, minus vocals, with minimal effort. Sure, they were never going to be radio hits, but it got the songs out of my head and into the rehearsal space where they could take on a life of their own.

I miss the simplicity of those recordings. I could knock out a couple song ideas over an afternoon and have something to show the guys at our next practice. I could take chances and pay no price for failure. It was all good fun.

I ended up selling that 4-track to our singer's brother (I wonder if Darrin still has it?) after I picked up a Zoom MRS-1044 multi-track recorder, which I still have. I'm pretty sure the Zoom memory card is still full with old song ideas and demos. With that digital machine I had 8 tracks to work with. 10 tracks if you counted stereo track 7/8 and 9/10! The biggest down side was that it only had two inputs. That meant that my drum recordings suddenly got 1/3 less impressive since I could only record two tracks at a time. I later settled on the simplicity of recording a single mic in front of the drums since I never ran into phase problems that way. I had more tracks to embellish the music with, but the end result was never as satisfying. I missed my 4-track cassette recorder. So, the hunt was on.

Eventually I found a new tape machine on craigslist for dirt cheap. It was a Fostex X-28H. I remember trading a 12 pack of beer for it and thinking the guy was crazy for letting it go. He saw it as a 20 year old thing that sat in his closet. I saw it as worth it's weight in gold, or at the very least golden suds. I now use that same machine as an outboard EQ and for summing drums and guitars. More on that another time.

Years later singer Eric Wolf and I purchased a Zoom R24 digital multi-track recorder. If you've listened to ANT#ONE, then you've heard recordings that started on that 24 track machine. It's an amazing little piece of technology in a tiny package, and I've recorded dozens of songs over the past 10 years or so. I do most of my tracking straight to the Zoom before dumping it into an old laptop to make edits.

I've settled on a mix of Audacity and Reaper as my preferred DAW's. If you're a recording junkie, you'll probably wonder about the Audacity part, but I do swear by it. It was one of the first programs I felt I mastered and I keep going back for edits and plug-ins. You can't argue with free.

Anywaayyyy...

I haven't figured out how to end blogs yet. I do have more to share about recording, but will save those thoughts for another time.

Blog off, or out, or something. I blogged.

Bret