The lowest fi story ever told

[nofi]

many years ago i was in a blues/ jazz type band that rehearsed in a dirt basemant under a music store in downtown atlanta. to record the band live we had this idea of hanging one mic over a rafter in the center of the space. this one mic ran into a battery operated cassette deck. yeah, like the ones people would take to class to record lectures. we were not expecting much but the recording turned out great. it sounded like an old blues record from 1950's chicago.we were thrilled with the results. other such low budget tales welcome.

[OldManC]

I had a first generation Tascam cassette 4 track (Porta-One) back in the late 80's. I never really liked the results I got from tracking demos, but it was the best live recorder of shows and band rehearsals I've ever heard. Two crappy mics placed fairly carefully and I always ended up with what sounded like a well mixed recording with great dynamics and separation (rather than the wall of sludge we got with a boom box or whatever). I just wish the musicianship was better on those things!

If I start playing live again I need to find some digital recorder that will replace that thing. From what I've read there are a few that easily could, but back then that Tascam was magic.

[ilan]

Probably a similar basement at a friend's house in Haifa, Israel, mid 70's. We were teenagers trying to cover Zep and some original blues rock songs. We had one 50W tube amp with a home made 3x12" cab for the whole band - vocals, two guitars and bass. A small old cassette tape was put on the floor. The brand was AIWA, made in Japan, and it had a leather cover. Then we heard the results. It sounded great! perfect balance and my bass was heard clearly, which made me very happy. For years after that I was trying to find another tape recorder of the same model, but never found another one. Around 1982 I gave up.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

+1 on the using a cassette four track for live recording. My old band's best sounding track was a cover of Folsom Prison Blues done live to a Yamaha 4-track. The fidelity was fine, and the difference was that when I played live, I could keep our Tommy Lee-wannabe drummer in line and on time, whereas when we tracked separately through my expensive audio interface and he set the "tempo," everything was a headache and a matter of shoehorning. I still have that song. Does this board have the bandwidth to post mp3's? (Thought Dave might appreciate the irony in that.) If so, I'll share.

[hieronymous]

When I was in high school in the '80s I borrowed a friend's drumset one summer - I had it set up in my room in an apartment building in Tokyo - my neighbors must have HATED me! Well, I didn't play it that much. But I discovered that with my dubbing tape deck (Aiwa?) I could record at the same time as dubbing a cassette, so I recorded "Purple Haze" with a cheesy microphone my dad had from probably the late '60s. By the time it was done I had overdubbed so much it was a fuzzy mess, but I was pretty proud of it. I wish I still had that tape! It disappeared...

[eb2]

We used to record our rehersals for covers and originals to see how things were sounding.  After huge amounts of trial and error we found a portable mono cassette deck that was made by Sony worked the best.  It had a vu meter, and ALC that you could turn off, and the input level would be controlled by the volume control.  Turning the volume down to 1 would limit the mic input so that drums and amps would never go into the red, and combining that with a basic condenser mic would give you some wonderful live recordings and none of the motor/tape noise you would get from the built in mic.  We recorded some live gigs that way, and they always sounded better than the house recording off the board.  Those typically had no audience/room sounds, nasal bass, and vocals that were louder than everything else.  I did use a similar set up for some theater video taping where we found the sound captured by a portable MD recorder with a PZM mic was as good if not better than big buck pro-gear that the camera techs were using.  Low-Fi all the way.

[jmcgliss]

In the 80's I had a Technics portable deck that was less expensive than the comparable Nakamichi.  It had dual VU's, switchable bias, and so on.  The last time I used it was to record our wedding ceremony which featured baroque vocals and organ.  I flew a mic about 12' in the air and it turned out well with minimal ambient noise.

I also have some cool-sounding demos using that deck with a single SM58 set up in my living room that had a mix of hardwood flooring, plaster walls, and large upholstered chairs.  With nothing more than a Taylor guitar, Pedulla fretless, vocals, and tapping feet the tracks sound both muscular and clear. I like those better than the multi-tracks we recorded later.

Going back to the 1960's, my first practice rig was a cheap phonograph wired into my parents' first TV, a 1953 RCA Victor cabinet that had a built in phono amp and 12" speaker.  I figured out how to patch in a bass guitar and practice along with The Beatles, Joe Osborne and Carol Kaye hits.  The maple cabinet is about the size of a Leslie. Now I use it for my stereo gear.

[gweimer]

I used a Sears boombox to record rehearsals.  I'd face the mic to the back wall, into the corner.  It was crude, but we generally got a good enough balance to use the tapes objectively.

[Highlander]

I used to tape rehearsals with an old portable with a built-in mike... basically did enough for judgement on what we were doing... hideous quality... use the video camera for most recent rehearsals...

[Dave W]

Does this board have the bandwidth to post mp3's? (Thought Dave might appreciate the irony in that.) If so, I'll share.

I don't think there would be a bandwidth problem, but we can't host them onboard and our embedding plugin doesn't work for sound files. There are some newer mods that might do the trick, I'll look into it.

[Freuds_Cat]

I record every band practice that my original band does as a reference recording. I record using a single Rode M3 into a cheap Behringer tube pre. Then into a second hand minidisk recorder that I picked up for $20. The results are amazingly clear.

[chromium]

I don't think there would be a bandwidth problem, but we can't host them onboard and our embedding plugin doesn't work for sound files. There are some newer mods that might do the trick, I'll look into it.

Soundcloud's pretty decent for uploading and sharing music via links- http://soundcloud.com/



My lowest-fi involved multitracking via a pair of these-


Record a track on one unit, play along while recording on the other unit (via the built in condenser mics, no less), and repeat until the noise floor overpowered the music 

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

many years ago i was in a blues/ jazz type band that rehearsed in a dirt basemant under a music store in downtown atlanta. to record the band live we had this idea of hanging one mic over a rafter in the center of the space. this one mic ran into a battery operated cassette deck. yeah, like the ones people would take to class to record lectures. we were not expecting much but the recording turned out great. it sounded like an old blues record from 1950's chicago.we were thrilled with the results. other such low budget tales welcome.

So...this is how ya got your name?   

[gweimer]

Soundcloud's pretty decent for uploading and sharing music via links- http://soundcloud.com/



My lowest-fi involved multitracking via a pair of these-


Record a track on one unit, play along while recording on the other unit (via the built in condenser mics, no less), and repeat until the noise floor overpowered the music 

We snuck one of those into the West, Bruce and Laing show we saw in high school.  My friend, who had the tape, went on to do some engineering work at Smart Studios with Butch Vig, and he did a lo-fi clean up of the tape, and cut it to CD.

[Dave W]

Soundcloud's pretty decent for uploading and sharing music via links- http://soundcloud.com/

It is, and there are others like DivShare. They'll work fine as links. But for security reasons we're not allowing embedding unless it's through a mod that allows us control, and so far, that's the current one we use that allows YouTube and a few other video sites. I see there's one available that also allows audio player embedding from several sites including DivShare, but right now it's still in beta.