So you want to make an album? (part 8)
KeithHandy posted in Producing, So You Want..., Tools on April 1st, 2007
Installment 8: Digital ping pong
We take digital recording for granted today, but in 1990 it was still fairly new and unaffordable. Nonetheless, I wanted to be cutting edge. I wanted the “wow” factor. Although digital multitracking was out of the question, consumer DAT (digital audio tape) recorders — which merely recorded and played back in stereo, using small tapes similar to what some camcorders use now — were just starting to dip into the three-digit price range. In a flash of inspiration that was as regrettable as it was brilliant, I reasoned that with all of my cassette ping-ponging experience, I could certainly employ a similar approach using two DAT recorders. Then I could boast that my album had been recorded digitally.
I had to get two DAT machines right away so I could get to work, even if I had to “beg, borrow or steal” to get the money. Well, I didn’t quite steal, but having already received a few of those credit card offers banks love to tempt college kids with, I had a feeling more such offers would be in the mail soon. In fact, I think one arrived within a day or two of my epiphany. My parents had already warned me against the trappings of easy credit, so I did the smart thing: I rented a post office box, so they would never see my bills.
When I found that I wasn’t coming up with a satisfactory way to create a percussive foundation for the songs, an offer came in for another card — presto, instant drum machine. Somehow my parents didn’t think to ask how all this electronic stuff was being financed. Personally, my conscience was less troubled by the additional debt than by the scandalous fact that I was using a drum machine at all.
As a mixer — just to mix whatever new part I was overdubbing with whatever was already on tape, and record the output of that to the other DAT machine — I used the inputs and outputs of a cheap 4-track cassette portastudio. So, yes, my pristine digital sound was repeatedly going through a rather cheap device, but surprisingly it didn’t impact the sound much.
What made DAT tapes a pain, more than anything, was dropouts. Unlike analog tape, where you might hear the sound get a bit muffled for a moment where some of the iron oxide has worn off the tape, DAT players stuck zeros between good samples wherever it couldn’t read the data, making an obnoxious digital “zipper-like” ripping sound. All it took to cause a dropout on a DAT tape was to leave the tape in pause for a few seconds. For this reason, I bought a lot of tapes and avoided re-using them.
It’s often the people you meet in the least likely settings that make the biggest contribution. I had already made substantial headway on several songs by the time Mike Pinto, a customer at my part time workplace — I think he generally went there to get cigarettes, but I can’t remember for sure — decided to get into a conversation with me about recording music. I think he was interested in using one of my DAT recorders to mix his project down to (which I think he and his friend Aaron had been recording to a borrowed 1/2″ 8- or 16-track machine, I forget the specifics), and in exchange he would hook me up with a version of Cakewalk that ran on DOS — just a MIDI sequencer, no audio capability back then — which he dutifully photocopied the manual for, page by page.
What Cakewalk looked like on a monochrome monitor.
Mike had only been using it for drum parts on his project, and had it slaved to a sync track on the tape machine, so that it would automatically be in sync with his overdubs, even if the tape was started in the middle of the song. (I would have just recorded the drum machine straight to the tape, unless they really thought they were going to change the drum part later on.) At home, I installed it on my father’s prehistoric IBM compatible “Zenith Data Systems” computer, and only needed to buy a relatively inexpensive MIDI card to hook it up to my synthesizers and drum machine. It actually worked, believe it or not. I used that computer, with that version of Cakewalk, for nearly a decade.
As I was now able to quantize (auto-correct timing of notes), modify, and perfect all of my keyboard parts before committing them to tape, I became less and less of a keyboardist and more of a “part composer”. And this didn’t bother me at all. Meanwhile, since I had to play my own guitar parts, initially with borrowed guitars (I think I used Mike’s Stratocaster — or something resembling a Strat — for all the guitar parts on Open the Window; thanks again, Mike), this is pretty much when I started to become a guitarist.
I tried to improvise a little, but on listening back to an improvised solo, I could tell I wasn’t ready. Especially since the nature of my ping-pong setup didn’t allow me to record over (”punch in“) parts of my performance; I had to do the whole thing right in one continuous take, or not do it at all.
In some cases, the solution was to fake the guitars. A heavily-distorted guitar can be reasonably faked by running a keyboard through distortion. Sometimes to simulate a fast or otherwise difficult guitar part, I would sequence it on Cakewalk, and painstakingly edit the sequence to create vibrato, pitch bends, and whammy bar dives. For one “solo” in particular, I fed the playback through a wah-wah pedal in addition to distortion, and just stood there rocking the pedal back and forth with my foot while the Zenith did all the fancy fretwork for me.
I did do a healthy amount of actual guitar playing, though. I distinctly remember spending hours sitting through the whole length of a song over and over just to put down an overdub that might only last twenty seconds. If one note sounded “off” to me, I’d run the whole song again. I’d hunch over the guitar, in an extreme state of concentration, and just stare closely at the exact frets my fingers needed to be on. One time I was having trouble with accidentally hitting open strings while playing a lead part, so I stuck a piece of cloth under the strings near the headstock to keep the open strings muted.
Things were going slowly and tediously, but generally I was able to achieve results that I was satisfied with, until I came to an impasse: the vocals.
Next: Mr. Pinto saves the day, again.
