Recording on a 1970's Tape Machine
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
- Let's party like it's 1976!
Magnetic tape started being used for sound recording in 1930 and was the dominant way audio was recorded for the majority of recording history. In this video we're exploring what the process was like in the 1970's with this 2 inch, 16 track, reel to reel tape machine previously owned by country music star Merle Haggard.
This is the first time I've every recorded to tape. Outside of some small cassette recorders I had as a kid. Outside of that and the wax cylinder video we shot earlier this year, I've only ever recorded with a digital system.
Going into a studio to track on this machine really puts into perspective how much more prepared musicians had to be at the time. There's very little editing if any that can be done to your performance and each take eats up precious time and real estate on the medium.
Featuring Mr. Wibblespoon: ???
Engineered and Mixed Rob Ruccia: www.uptownrecor...
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Sorry about the reupload everybody. Had some weird technical trouble Monday using the mobile app and had to hit the restart button on this one unfortunately.
Hope you enjoy the video!
...especially the Mr. Wibblespoon feature. That man does NOT come cheap. Charges per syllable...
Ugh...
Cheers!
Rob Scallon ok?
Whers May-tallica?
That sounded really cool Rob ;)
Aw,man.... :c
Rob Scallon its fine man! You are an inspiration to strive for my best musical abilities and I love your vids! KEEP IT UP!
people in the 70's: "Man I wish I could do this all on a computer!"
people in the 2000's "Man I wish do all of this on tape machine"
haha right?
Actually it was more of a happy accident. Up until about 1977 digital sampling was in the bowels of Bell Labs. Very expensive and shit quality. :p
@TheJahkal i search wachs zylinder ...will used it for dirty 20s 30s records ;)
Like most things in the 1970's... they were wrong. Idc what people say, acoustic drums (and most percussion instruments) in particular sound better to my ears recorded to magnetic tape at high speed. The lower midrange "thump." I've yet to hear a plugin that accurately recreates that. I also prefer mixes done on analog mixing desks and compressors. Maybe there is a little "hiss" but to me it's like the sound of breathing and it fades into the mix. I believe the ideal studios have 2 inch reels and a "Pro Tools" rig integrated to get the best of both worlds.
@@AnodyneHipsterInfluencer a real pro studio mast can record 100% analog!, mic - tape - vinyl! ...digi is Standard, but analoge not in all studios! A good studio can work with both World's! Completely to 100% (ana or digi) or mixed with both! Thats a Studio!, for me, a studio that can not record on tape, is not a real studio!, analoge is a good technic, its a naturaly electric way to record! Love both, but for me, analog must be standard! ...why should i pay tousend's of €/$ for a digi recording in a studio?, that can made every one now at home on a pro level if he made it good! But analoge have not every man at home! (I have ;) ...pro tape maschines! 16 track on 1" and love thay)
Just imagine bands like Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, EM&L, etc... all Prog Band with 15-20 minutes songs recording in this Tapes. The work they did was just amazing!
The reason aqualung has some serious recordings issues.
Don’t forget about Rush!
Some studios at that point would have multiple tape machines for things like sub mixing.
>i'm going to record something simple
>10 attempts to record a track
Every normal musician recording session ever
Sometimes it seems harder to just play the same 3 chord progression perfectly 100 times.
FrStProductions of course, I know that, I recorded some stuff myself
Garden true that
Even random non serious "i just wanna hear what I sound like" recordings can have so many takes
xX_Gabe_Xx I don't know if you people are getting the fact that I was joking on something I can relate to since I play guitar as well
Imagine being a Prog band in the 1970s recording a complex 20 minute song with this equipment
take that pink floyd
If your music needs more than 16 tracks there is something wrong with your music.
@@lesterpaul9657 if your music needs more you just record solo on back vocal tracks and so on and finaly your tape becomes so thin
I did it in the 80’s.
thats all what i was thinking when i first listened to close to the edge
Wibblespoon comin’ in hot!
Have you ever owned a Gibson Explorer ?
So is Clinton the Bill being hailed in your rocket league song?
What a set of pipes!! I've heard rumors that he keeps full coverage insurance on his larynx!
333rd like. Am I special?
I shook President William Jefferson Clinton's hand (at least I think it was his hand) when I was a teenager at the 1999 Philippine Independence Day parade on Madison Avenue in the City of New York. [He was alongside Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and whomever the Filipino-American parade marshal was that day.] I doubt that I'll ever get to shake President Hillary Rodham Clinton's hand, though. My backup plan in life is to sneak into the Clinton mansion in Chappaqua in Westchester County and live there as a [vaguely] liberal elite for the rest of my days. Politics!
This guys studio is absolutely immaculate. Everything is in pristine condition. Not a speck of dust that I can see. And the cleanliness of his layout and effectiveness of his techniques is apparent in everything he does. Very impressed with his work.
Dear Logic Pro X,
I'm sorry for all the times I got mad at you. I just realized I'm really lucky to have you, and that you've helped out a lot and made my life much, much, easier. Thanks. I love you.
What makes you say that?
literally same
Who are you replying to?
I would rather record on tape nearly all of the time. It really would depend on the project, but unless the project required something crazy, that a DAW would simplify, I would rather record on tape. My friends do basics and then tell me they have to spend hours editing the drums, and I'm like WHAT FOR? I've never tracked drums on tape and wished I could micro-edit the shit out of them.
And of course, this is all being said by people who have probably never even been IN the same room as a tape machine, let alone used one.
Half inch 3 track - 1957.
Half inch 4 track - 1960
1 inch 8 track - 1966 (Scully 284-8)
1 inch 12 track - 1967 (Scully 284-12)
2 inch 16 and 24 track - 1969
2 inch 32 and 40 track - 1973
(Only Stephens made a 2 inch 40 multitrack.)
In 1979 MCI came out with the world's first 3 inch 32 track machine. Didn't work. It never went into production.
In 1979 Mitsubishi came out with the world's first DASH digital multitrack. It recorded 24 tracks of 16 bit / 50 khz PCM On half inch dash tape. It ran at 45 ips.
In 1981 Sony came out with the DASH
3324. 24 tracks of 16/48 on 1/2 inch tape. It cost $250 000 USD.
- Mitsubishi brought out their X-800. That is 32 tracks of 16/48 on 1 inch DASH tape.
- in 1988 Sony introduced their new DASH 3348. That is 48 tracks of 16/48 on 1/2 inch DASH tape.
- In the 90's both Sony and Mitsubishi brought out their new high definition DASH multitracks:
Sony 3348HR: 48 tracks of 24/48 on 1/2 inch DASH tape. (Early 90's)
Mitsubishi X-850: 32 tracks of 24/96 on 1 inch DASH tape. (Late 90s)
In 1995 the ADAT was released. This digital recording method was RDAT and not DASH. In other words the heads were mounted in a drum that span hundreds of revolutions per minute over slow moving video tape. Instead of the DASH format which was tape running at high speed over stationary heads.
ADAT used S-VHS and later High 8mm tape to record 8 tracks of PCM 16/48. And later 20/48 but at reduced recording times.
At $3000 each (later the price would drop to just under $2000) you could have 48 tracks or PCM 16/48 for $21 000 US including controller plus tax. As opposed to $250 000 for one Sony 3348A. You could synchronize up to 16 ADATs for a total of 128 tracks!
One of the first projects on ADAT was JAGGED LITTLE PILL.
- The professional industry stopped making analog multitracks and half track recorders after 1995.
2000 - Recording to computer via Pro Tools became the norm.
2006 - Stopped making DASH tape.
Very nice, all true. I can add , early 90’s:
Akai Adam system 12 track on video8 tapes. 16 bit. Very expensive.Amazing sound ( mitsubishi converters).
Tascam DA88 / Da38 system ( mid 90’s) 16 bit on videoHi8, and then DA98 (24 bit). Very convenient and reliable. Sounding better then Adats.
Then a number of Hard Disk recorders through the early 2000’s ( Radar, Akai, Tascam, etc) to finally succumb to the power of Pro Tools. 2003/2004 marked the ultimate death of hard disk recording.
We bought a Studer A827 2″ 24 Track Gold Edition early 2005 from the last Willi Studer run before they closed.We always heard about the term " The Industry's Roll Royce " and we were all blown out by the sound of this machine.Today sits in a collector 's state some where in Nashville after we decided to go all digital and sold it.
Now incredibly we are buying Mara Machines (refurbished MCI) and going back to analogue.Not long ago I came across one in Reverb that was selling for around the same price we got ours back in the day.
Thanks for posting this 👍 These are the dates and tech I remember. I recently converted some pre-1995 4 track demo tapes to digital. The same year I have Logic/eMagic projects from a G4 MacBook, so that must have been the big transition.
Which sounded the best ?
@@nebstaism The one with the best engineers, mics, pres, and techniques. I've heard incredible albums made with less-than-stellar stuff like adats and Yamaha 02R's... and horrible records made on Neves/Studers. The recording medium is just that... it's playing back what you feed it. Is tape inherently better? I dunno... define "better". DAW's let you move at the speed of creativity and have certainly put 'red light syndrome' in the back seat since people tend to use $300/hr studios less. But yeah, a Studer a820 fed by an API? It'll give you an edge that plugins still have yet to close that final 5% of. Problem is, we're streaming 192kbps through crummy speakers these days... much harder to pick up on the nuance in the end market (who are mostly listening to hyper-limited sample collages and robo-tune vocals).
recorded on tape, converted to mp3 and compressed for youtube.
Justin Ho In all seriousness, it was guaranteed converted to wav or another lossless and then compressed for youtube. The RUclips compression absolutely effects the quality, but people act like they cant hear the difference between certain elements in a shootout when they are clearly still there (if you have a good enough ear).
Plus on a modern slate mic
still sounds hella good
It really is tape saturation. It's the analog mastering.
It's entirely possible to upload lossless audio to RUclips. When I do it I convert the audio to flac and mux it with MKVToolNix GUI. RUclips is not picky about formats at all, they'll accept almost anything. If you are watching on a PC you can right click on the video then click stats for nerds. The best case scenario is that it says opus 251 for the audio. Yes that's a lossy compressed format of course but if it's lossless->lossy it's going to be a good encode and you will get the best possible sound out of it.
Its been 5 years but every time somebody says "google it" to me, this song immediately plays in my head.
I love the permanence of tape. It's an actual performance that can't really be adjusted. The fact that analog is the direct transformation from vibrations into voltages fascinates me. Of course I really see the convenience of DAW's and the cost reasons, but it does make me sad that tape did fade out, it's an art form and it's just so honest and real. Get it right or don't do it at all.
Lies. Nothing about Bill going to your house
Exactly, I googled it and only got the song.
rudy I love you
benja love u too
You are verified so imma pretend I know who you are
@@daev255 oh go on he’s the edgy guitar guy
This brings back memories. Working with tape machines tends to expose all the fake talent. Yup, ya gotta play and get it right. No excuses.
So true.
I grew up listening to Oldies and it literally blows my mind that all of my favorite songs I know and love were recorded this way... and some even using less tracks then 16.... but I’m glad and thankful for today’s modern technology where we can get a close enough tape sound using plugins and our computers.
You will NEVER get true tape sound out of digital recording.
Bill Clinton: "I have never been to that man's house".
"You can google it."
God that tape sounds fantastic. I don't even care how silly the song is, that sounds amazing.
its super crisp sounding like damn
It is way different in person. In a good way
That’s why I love recording to tape
Ahhhh yes. The 'process'. I love it. I can still remember when some of my friends would complain about how long it took for artists to release something. By the time I broke down the actual 'recording' aspects to them, minus traveling, rehearsals, mixing, mastering, and any other technical difficulties or business red tape, they were in awe.
Still to this day, I find it amazing that some can play an incredibly done multi-tracked record, that was recorded for hours or days, listen to it for about 4 minutes or less, and exclaim in 2 words, "it sucks". Priceless 😉
Ah the good ol tape machine.
Watching this has made me appreciate the time and patience from bands like Buddy Holly and the crickets the Beatles to Queen the eagles to make such great songs
I think eagles produced one of the first digital mainstream albums.
Really interesting series this. Enjoying it.
The first few recordings I did in the 90s were to tape, no computer in sight. Then this new fangled thing called "Pro Tools" cropped up everywhere. 😀
Remember how difficult it was to get an entire drum take without a single slip and also having to plan out exactly what you were doing first and how that related to the tracks available. Would be fun to try it again after years of digital.
Alex Ball it was almost like you needed to know your music before recording it..
Mad Dogg Haha, yes exactly!!
Duuuuude fucking same these videos are my life
Crickey! I can do that in a DAW, but with tape, a blade and some chalk - a whole other level! I doth my cap.
did u record on 2 in. tape? is there a difference in the sound, warmer, colder, or no effect?
As I am old, I was brought up recording on tape - it's so funny hearing an explanation of analogue to digital folk!
As soon as I saw the title for this I told myself "This is going to be an awesome vid" and I was right. Great job Rob !
Very good Video. I'm so glad, that there are virtual Tape machines out there with no of the cons of a real one.
Tried googling it, couldn't find Bill Clinton at your house at all...?! :P
Great episode btw! Remember, this was how all the great tracks from the 80s and early 90s were made, gotta pay the old guys some respect for those efforts! :)
Stupid, Wibblespoon wrote the lyrics! Bet you googled for Clinton in Rob Scallon's house, that would obviously give no results. (He's anyway not as well known, wouldn't give much press coverage even if Bill Clinton had been to Rob's house.)
Love your work, Anders
I shook President William Jefferson Clinton's hand (at least I think it was his hand) when I was a teenager at the 1999 Philippine Independence Day parade on Madison Avenue in the City of New York. [He was alongside Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and whomever the Filipino-American parade marshal was that day.] I doubt that I'll ever get to shake President Hillary Rodham Clinton's hand, though. My backup plan in life is to sneak into the Clinton mansion in Chappaqua in Westchester County and live there as a [vaguely] liberal elite for the rest of my days. Politics!
Don't forget to be an asshole. Bill Clinton have the okay and subsequently justified the gassing of my brothers and sisters with cs and the use of tanks which is illegal in any other civilized country. Glad disinformation could let him catch zzzs and both claim someone is crazy and also hold them accountable for drug buster raid style stupidity for making up ruby ridge. Ogre nosed rhode scholar sax cigar pussy Epstein island flight log even shittier wife prick
@@leftaroundabout r/woooosh
That is a beautiful machine. It looks like it was recording at 30 inches per second, too, which is a hard speed to come by. It sounds great! Thank you for sharing.
THIS RECORDING IS SO WARM. Sounds nothing like your other songs!
The magic of tape.
That is actually nice that the tape recorder stayed relevant and largely unchanged for decades. Kinda like how Bluetooth hasn't changed much since it first came out.
For a second there, I thought I went back in time.
Motivational. Miss analogue. Think I'll have to dust of the old 24 track. Thanks to Les Paul and his innovations with tape.
That 2 inch tape sounds pretty warm man 🐻👍
doesnt it.. it sounds so nice...
So, it is not just me noticing it. Cool!
Now play it through a tube amplifier.
I know. Makes it sound richer.
@Philip Meredith
I feel that, you should invest in some side plugins to bring back alot of that good stuff from tape!
There are some really amazing pre-amp, compressor, and Analog Tape Deck plugins that are so good you cant tell yhe difference.
Literally, they were designed in cahoots with the people who built the equipment and they couldn't tell the difference in a blind test!
Check out some of the trailer/introduction videos for the Universal Audio Plugins.
Watch the videos for their:
● Neve Pre-Amps
● Teletronix LA-2A Leveling Amplifier (Compressor)
...and for that sweet-ass Tape warmth and thickness...
● Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder
● Ampex ATR-102 Mastering Tape Recorder
NOW those are ALL expensive, no joke expensive.
BUT the are extremely top of the line and will truly, no joke, give you what you thought you lost! Instantly.
For more affordable and still absolutely fantastic, check out the plugins by WAVES.
Here are two you can look up and they are each only like $30-$40!!!
● WAVES KRAMER Master Tape.
● WAVES J37 Tape Saturation.
sonicscoop.com/2018/03/14/best-tape-saturation-plugins-market/2/
Have fun man, no joke, this is what you have been searching for and thought you would never have again!
You can thank me later! 😉
No Digital Machine Beat this Granpa
I worked as an intern in the 70s at a studio that had a 2" 16-track recorder. They started with an 8-track, which the owner mortgaged his house to buy. Near the end, they had to upgrade to a 24 track as that became the norm (same tape size).
Recently had my 8 Teack 1/2 Inch tape baked and then digitally transferred to WAV....
WOW ! The quality even after 40 tears, the recording is so crisp and that ANALOG sound Baby ! 😁👍🏻
I love this video Rob, so awesome man!
Shows how much people really had to PLAY the hell out of their instruments back in the day!
No quantizing or chopping!
BEAUTY.. I recorded in 2000' but did not have that multitrack machine. Beautiful creation.
To this day the Foo Fighters still use 2'' tape and a 24 track tape machine and then transfer it to Logic Pro.
@The SNES Man Satyricon self-titled album also recorded that way
Damn you, Scallon!! This song is now an ear worm and is playing in my head for the last 2 hours. I was walking down the hall whistling it....
Nice job!
i was so happy to see mr. wibblespoon walk in
Absolut großartig, fantastisch. Ich bin selbst mit solchen tollen Bandmaschinen "groß geworden", klasse so etwas wieder sehen zu können! LG Horst Lemke, Musikproduzent, Germany
And now we know how the Beatles came up w cool backwards tape shit... being high as a kite helped.
i mean backwards shit has never been something difficult to come up with
The Question says someone probably born in the post 2000 era.
Pretty sure Jimi Hendrix did it before them.
PotatoDroid 97 Wasn’t Rain Song by Zeppelin?
PotatoDroid 97 Huh. The more you know I guess
I so appreciate you sharing how many takes you go through to get the right one. I get down on myself when I have to keep re-recording something to get it right, but even the pro's do multiple takes. Thank you for the humility and honesty, it's encouraging to me.
whoa!!! merle haggard’s tape machine? thats so cool wtf
I can't believe how ancient this looks. Like it legit looks closer to the wax cylinders than it does to todays technology.
And yet I lived through part of it.
Thanks for making me feel old guys.
I really don't miss the tape days at all.
@You're fake and gay the utility is romanticized, but the sound is not. So many of popular songs today try and emulate the analog sound from the 70s.
you can see how hard it was to make a record. to get it all perfect and sound big and sound like a record. PART, (not all) of that old record sound, was in just how many people and how much time went into the making of a record. conversely, part of why modern music is not always compelling is because there are simply not the man hours and musicianship going into the recordings. Digital, with 30 players, and 4 months of paid for studio time, and the worlds crack musicians - we'd have some good sounding stuff right now. But who is doing that? Nobody. That kind of investment makes a indie movie these days. Not 8 songs.
It doesn't make life easier for engineers, but I've carried out blind tests between 172.8k digital and Sculy 280 8-Track tape, and there's a reason why I'd still rather work to tape. It sounds incredibly lush. Harder work, but nothing good ever comes easy. If your act can play, it's fine!
A lot of analog records simply sound better than digital. Squarepusher recorded his first album "Feed Me Weird Things" purely on analog hardware. That's intense. But it sounds amazing.
i certainly dont sir. tape is real fun to record and track on
Thank you for your video. I appreciate it. Many young people will now understand how difficult it was to record just 1 song, back in the old days.
This video needs a crusty old engineer. Clearly I'm available.
"The first three tracks will be guitar..."
Crusty Old Engineer: "You want bass or kick on edge tracks, you DAW fool! Energy leads to crosstalk, tape wobble leads to pitch changes."
"At the end I thought about chopping things up, but we can't do that..."
COE: "See that razor blade over there?"
Oooh the razor thing! It was an art on it's own to be able to edit on tape
Glenn fricker in a nutshell
Cut and splice, the old ways.
CoTeCiOtm That reminds me of an old Genesis video Phil Collins himself recorded with his (then brand new) camcorder in 1983, showing the process of producing, mixing and recording what became the self-titled "Genesis" album in 1984, but was produced as the "mama" album at the time. There was a scene that is stuck in my head where they made an edit by cutting and splicing the tape and the whole band sat/stood there, joking and nervously watching the engineer do it, hoping it would turn out okay (and it did). The whole video is worth watching even if you're not a Genesis fan, just to get a flashback of how things were done back then in the early 80s. Here's the part of the video I'm referencing ruclips.net/video/iMm-08uZXfo/видео.htmlm41s
edit 17 aug 2019: the channel that originally uploaded the video got nuked by the copyright n*zis, so i reuploaded it here: ruclips.net/video/ClX42OjmbuE/видео.html
L moo hip mlLLP
I could imagine that this highers the apprecation of awesome takes done in older times. It shows the extreme level of craftmansship some musicians had back then.
I like how music sounds when it's recorded in analog
Yeah but to really use the advantages of analog recording the entire signal chain, up to your speakers, needs to be analog.
Otherwise you wasted a lot of money in my opinion. Because as soon as you go Digital, you will lose some harmonics.
Probably because it doesn't really provide a benefit
Wupme: you have no clue, sorry
Actually the thing I enjoy is probably the old recording equipment. I like the sound of stuff like Black Sabbath and Saxon; it's most likely the recording equipment.
I would argue it is much more about the artists...?
Wow, that was the best 40 minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind.
This sounds so much more natural and warm. The best you've done so far
Sounds amazing! Great work on the audio, Rob Ruccia.
70s recordings, mics, amps, drums, everything sounded better to my ears
Yeah you do have a point, it just has such a unique sound to it, I just can't explain it
*Analog*
@@2starSwelling no digital is just fine. if you use the specifications that were set as standard in the late 70's when digital RTR was introduced and the equipment like it was made by Mitsubishi. But not the crap Philips and Sony introduced with their CD format in the 80s. So digital was just fine, but not the commercial crap they came up with.
Most difference for my ear is the voice. Sounds on tape very Beatles like, textured and thick.
I was just wondering why the video seemed so familiar, though I've got the notification a few minutes ago... I decided to watch the whole video again no matter what. Keep up the great work, Rob! Rooting for you.
+tell Mr. Wibblespoon that I thanked him for last Friday's dinner. Enjoyed the meal.
Tape Is absolutely worth the inconvenience, plugins can get fairly close these days, take the J37 tape plugin from waves abbey road collection. It's close to the real thing, as close as you can get without the actual unit or the other meticulously designed plugins that mimic everything in abbey road studios, down to the various rooms, even the legendary EMI tg12345 console that some of the greatest recordings in history were made on. Even every key on that Challen upright piano. But when it comes down to it, you can really only get so close to the real things. Recording to tape, being in that time crunch, flying by the seat of your pants can both be scary and electrifying in a way that digital recording isn't, that sense of danger is a special feeling. You can edit digitally an infinite number of times, even pitch correct, undue changes. While its eaiser, it takes the rawness and intensity out of it, it can leave you with so many choices that you can over think. You can only cut and splice tape so many times, it records now, it takes a different mindset to be a studio musician in this way. It has a way of bringing out absolute creativity. You have to truly be on your game. That feeling is lost today. Especially for sound engineers who will apply effects in real time and have to plan ahead some what beforehand. But in the moment. They might do something entirely different result, the more experience they have, the better the intuition. People who are at the mercy of tape can be inspired to do things they weren't planning. Not to mention the sound of red lining those vu meters. Its a tasteful squishy distortion, plugins can get close, but it will never be the real thing especially when you really push it, closer still would be component level emulation, which would require a lot of resources. In another 20 years maybe will really be there without question, especially with ai booming and advancing the way it has. But, it's very different when being in the same room with the real thing.
That pretty much settles the argument. Tape just sounds infinitely better than digital. The lovely little tune made it all that much better.
lol...this is how I LEARNED how to record. All the things you've all grew up around and learned, they all came after my college days were over. Analog recording was an art, just like anything else.
Recording pretty low volumes for tape. I used to hit the meters pretty hard with tape. I miss those days.
Yes
Aah! You can really hear the Tapesound! Its more alive, warm and crispy! I love it!
This is not retro enough you should try recording on wax cylinders one day... oh wait.
unbelieveble headroom! loudness range is so incredible!
It's fun to see you being introduced to the wonderful world of analog! Most of the recording i've done has been on this type of gear....up until the last several years when my 'kids' (now in their 30s) got me into digital. I still prefer tape, though, and have an 8-track studio in my basement. Cool video! Hope you had fun. Try some more tape recording. The dynamics are way better! :-)
This is something I've always wanted to do this!
Very cool vide, I'm living vicariously through this
Those were the times artists needed actual raw talent to create great records. So stunning how much easier it became for goofs like us to do this stuff today.
Cool!!! That MCI JH-16 is the machine I started on. Did hundreds of albums on that machine.
Recording on a tour bus? That must have been fun to align and keep working daily.
I'm sure Merle could afford to bring a tape tech on the road with him.
So many moving parts and endless maintenance, the digital domain flattened the field and makes it available to the hordes
But it won't have the same quality as analog tape does. Don't get me wrong, I like doing some audio work with a DAW, but I still use analog tape as well.
Gotta love Mr.Wibblespoon
Damn, it sounds amazing, there's just something about the tone, and wow your engineer is an absolute master! Amazing job!
I just wanted to let you know, I came across this video about a year ago and I can no longer tell anyone to “Google it” without singing the words 😂😅
Thanks gor the lesson. I knew it was something like that but seeing it in action shows how technical it was.
Ah tape recording, it separates the men from the boys.
Why?
Because you have to make decisions... the RIGHT decisions.
You had to be good at your instrument to make it sound good on tape.
Thank you Rob Scallon this song is gonna be stuck in my head forever!
That sounded sweeter than digital. I say this as I have recorded onto multi-track tape a few times, its just lush sounding, even with distorted guitars. :o)
This sounds so much better than digital...dang
Cool video, Rob. That is a sweet piece of tech. Love vintage stuff like this. I know it's cliche, but kids today just won't know how we listened to music back in the day. Lugging a Walkman around, keeping a stack of cassettes in your car, etc.
still have that. My walkman is just right behind me..like my 25 years old sennheiser headphones. there is still hope :)
Cassettes have made a big comeback in recent years. I hit up local estate sales every weekend, and you can grab them for a buck or less, so I've started collecting again. I have a SWEET Technics tape deck, and the sound quality is amazing. It's no Nakamichi Dragon (someday...someday), but it sounds incredible.
The beauty of recording to tape is that it is imperfect. You might get something slightly different than what you recorded. There is also the matter of depth and warmth that digital recording cannot replicate.
I swear, Rob has some kind of thing where he just *has* to strum a chord to end a song lol. It doesn't always work the best, but I like it here.
man, the vocals sound gorgeous! I'm not saying his voice is bad, it's actually quite pleasant, but I mean the sound of the recording, it's so perfect sounding!
It's crazy to think this how albums like Dark Side of the Moon were recorded.
And yet they were still better than most made today
Never seen a reel to reel with 16 channels plus a full remote like that. Definitely very advanced for it's time. A lot of studio recorders went up to 8 or so channels.
Has anyone told you how calming your voice is?
Ikr
He wasn't singing? Was that beardy guy smh
Omg yes
Listen to his "Scarves and Sweaters" video. Or just the entire "The Ride Home" album.
I dont know why he thinks he has a bad voice he's a great singer.
When he says "Hey everybody!" at the beginning of each video, I feel so warm inside.
This bring back memories! Happy days in the mid 80s. Last time I used tape was in the mid nighties. Prices on eBay aren’t as cheap as I thought they would be.
When you consider The Beatles recorded most of their stunning albums on even more primitive equipment than this it reveals just how phenomenal they were. Even today with very sophisticated DAWs and every plugin you can think of, nobody has ever come close to what they achieved. Just take a listen to Revolver and marvel at their genius:)
They suck tho. But I get the point
The beatles is one of my favorite bands and even I can acknowledge that they were super overrated.
Alberto Sk Rico how?
Some people view tape as superior, sonically.
@@ericfricke4512 I knew a guitar player who was kind of the savant type, and had incredibly good ears. He could tell tonewoods apart by sound in a blindfold test, that kind of thing. Anyway, I'll never forget how he described the sound of analog vs. digital to me. He said, "I don't understand the technology enough to explain the mechanics of it but, it seems to me that audio tape 'captures' the sound while digital 'renders' it." He said all digital recordings sound as if they're made up of what he described as "audio pixels". I can't honestly say that I can hear what he was hearing but I don't have dog ears like that
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I used to record on those machines every day.
I've been using tape for 20 years and wouldn't trade it for anything. Man, I have a friend who is always telling me stuff like, "I just recorded basics for a session and now I have to spend the day editing the drums," and I just want to scream FOR WHAT? If they were that bad why didn't you recut?
I've done literally hundreds of analog sessions and never listened to playback after recording basics and ever said to myself "Man, I totally want to spend the next 8 hours micro-editing the shit out of these tracks." I just don't get it. And yes, I do have a DAW and do use it when I have to. But even then I don't spend hours editing sessions. I might clean up noise at the beginning of end of some takes but that's about it.
Whatever would they do in a world where engineers relied on their ears
bobby w... better music might happen?
@@sonus289 Nah not really. If you're going by your ears, you have imperfections and don't hear things and notice things that you could in a DAW, e.g. clipping and distortion.
I remember that in the Recording Bus ... After we Pulled all of the Equipment out of the Bus it sat in Merle's Home Bar/Club where he had his Studio in Palo Cedro , CA ..
My man isn't pushing the meters enough. You need to go into the red for that lovely saturation
May not have wanted saturation...there are times when it's better not to.
I LOVE THIS. Please keep this series going. Your videos are so unique and well done.
Still have an old 4-track recorder and a bunch of tapes I recorded from the old days.
Tape recording..when artists actually played instruments,and producers did more than clicking a mouse 😂Epic episode! please more music history 😎
How many strings does that washboard have?
You shredded that thing. The strum at the end was epic.
And his washboard muting, great technique!
This was a truly fun video. Informative and funny. Great stuff!
One year newer than the one I owned. My auto-locator was in a home-brew wooden box. To this day I will argue that analog has infinite resolution where digital does not. Nobody can ever change my mind.
This is simply a beauty and the sound is incredible :)
Oh, tape recording. Loved by many people. Used by: lots o bands. Band I was thinking of: Metallic🅰️
Megadeth too
Bruh.. Metallica Megadeth Guns n' Roses Danger Danger Brittany Fox Motley Crue Dokken Ratt Europe..you name it.
WOW! It is really entertaining to watch y'all youngins that have never seen what the rest of us grew up on.
I didn't see/hear you mention tape alignment or tone alignments, tape degaussing or bias which is all stuff y'all needed to deal with before pushing record.
You have a nice machine there. Make sure you retro your learning curve too so you don't mess up the new toy and so you don't destroy your recordings.
I've recorded in a studio once and it was on tape. If I ever record with a band again I intend it to be done on tape again. Live and all recorded at once or not at all. This whole process is not that time consuming or difficult if you don't get accustomed to doing things any other way. Just be practiced at the songs you wrote
still having a tough time wrapping my head around musicians who choose to be unprepared when they arrive in a studio
Can you imagine in the days of direct to disc or cylinder recording, they gave you 5 takes, (that is you changed the wax blank, either cylinder or disc and one of those was chosen out of those 5 and sometimes if the tune was popular, they would choose one of the other masters to release on., and turned into the stamper, through gold vaporization and electroplating and stamped into celluloid, shellac, or molded in metallic soap into the final product. It was all recorded with all instruments at once If you flubbed enough the recording company would fire you, or cancel your contract. The direct to disc was still popular and though recorded on lacquer discs, electrically (1925 was when electrically recorded 78's replaced horn recorded 78's.) about 1950, even though tape came readily available to be purchased in the late 1940s, some of the disc equipment was still much cheaper than the tape for a while, although a new Neumann or Scully lathe was very expensive a Presto, or Rek-O-Cut lathe was around a grand or less, compared to early pro reel to reels, by the mid-1950's the Ampex tape recorders were less than $700.00 and you then could see tape in almost every studio. The first magnetic recorder was made by Danish inventor Vladimir Paulsen, it used wire from one reel to another, a version made in the 19teens used a steel disk with two steel phonograph needles, connected with a coil of wire, the needles did not touch the disc, but created the head gap for the magnetism to magnetize the waveform into the steel disc, in a volute spiral, like a phonograph record, except using magnetic lines of flux.
🎼Thx Rob for the trip down memory lane & saving equipment like this!!✌❤