Rich_S
HomeGrownToneBrewologist
Back in the '80s I was briefly associated with a weird little band from Philly called The YaYas. I wasn't really a member. By the time I "joined" they were in the process of breaking up and going their separate ways, which for a couple members meant transcontinental relocation. Before they split completely, they wanted to document what they had and convinced me to play guitar and engineer a 4-song demo tape. We played one live gig at a rooftop 4th of July party near 2nd & South, and that was that.
A while back, a really nice guy I met on the Intarwebz volunteered to transfer the old 4-track cassette to digital for me. After a lot of procrastinating, resurrecting a laptop I inherited from daughter, building monitor stands, goofing around, and being distracted by "real life", I have finally gotten around to re-mixing the first track, "Monopoly".
https://soundcloud.com/goldtop-pt <== New & Improved Link to Soundcloud.
The songs were originally recorded in 1986 on a Tascam 246 Porta Studio, which was about the biggest, baddest 4-track cassette setup ever made. I mixed the original version of the demo on the 246, using nothing but a pair of Boss DD-2 pedals on the effects buses. Those mixes were lackluster at best, however, when we bounced the tracks to digital (using a very nicely maintained old 246) we found that there was a lot of detail on the multitrack that was lost in the mix. The raw tracks sounded really good, but were of course limited by the format: 2 guitar tracks, bass and drums bounced together, and two vocalists sharing a track.
This is my first shot at mixing anything in the digital domain, using the biggish Dell laptop, though a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, '80s-vintage Yamaha receiver and a pair of Infinity Primus 160 (ahem) "studio monitors". (Okay, they're just bookshelf speakers, but they're what I had around.) No outboard processing gear, just Reaper and the included assortment of plugins. I thought I was "done" last night, but after blasting it in the car about eight times in a row today, I concluded the mix was too bright, bordering on shrill. So, I spent some more time tonight trying to tame it a bit, with the results you can hear above.
Constructive criticism is welcome, but be gentle with me... this project is near & dear.
A while back, a really nice guy I met on the Intarwebz volunteered to transfer the old 4-track cassette to digital for me. After a lot of procrastinating, resurrecting a laptop I inherited from daughter, building monitor stands, goofing around, and being distracted by "real life", I have finally gotten around to re-mixing the first track, "Monopoly".
https://soundcloud.com/goldtop-pt <== New & Improved Link to Soundcloud.
The songs were originally recorded in 1986 on a Tascam 246 Porta Studio, which was about the biggest, baddest 4-track cassette setup ever made. I mixed the original version of the demo on the 246, using nothing but a pair of Boss DD-2 pedals on the effects buses. Those mixes were lackluster at best, however, when we bounced the tracks to digital (using a very nicely maintained old 246) we found that there was a lot of detail on the multitrack that was lost in the mix. The raw tracks sounded really good, but were of course limited by the format: 2 guitar tracks, bass and drums bounced together, and two vocalists sharing a track.
This is my first shot at mixing anything in the digital domain, using the biggish Dell laptop, though a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, '80s-vintage Yamaha receiver and a pair of Infinity Primus 160 (ahem) "studio monitors". (Okay, they're just bookshelf speakers, but they're what I had around.) No outboard processing gear, just Reaper and the included assortment of plugins. I thought I was "done" last night, but after blasting it in the car about eight times in a row today, I concluded the mix was too bright, bordering on shrill. So, I spent some more time tonight trying to tame it a bit, with the results you can hear above.
Constructive criticism is welcome, but be gentle with me... this project is near & dear.
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