What I loved about cassette multi-tracks was how they created the necessity for inventive problem solving. When you only have a limited number of tracks available you have to figure out methods and processes to achieve a quality outcome. Honestly, working with less makes you a better musician and engineer.

I had a Tascam 4 track in the early 90’s which allowed for some home-made demos without spending tons in the studio. Drums, guitar, bass, vocals. We ran the drums into the mixer for live performance then used the singing signal out into track 1. Track 2 was SM-57 on the Guitar cab. Bass was same on 3, and vocals were on 4. Put everyone in separate rooms and record live. Came out awesome and got us by. When we went into the studio, we basically setup the same way just with nicer equipment.

Owned a Porta 02 in the late 90s. Had a really basic GM sequencer on my PC, so used to feed a line out from my computer which had drums, bass, and synths into one track of the recorder, then use my Line 6 POD 2.0 to track guitars, and the final track was for vocals. No EQ at all. Just level balancing. It sounded rough, but as a songwriting tool to pass to band mates, it was ideal.

The snare sounds magical

"Electron Plumber" hit hard

this channel bringeth the warm hissy joy

Knowing Vance personally, I'll pass along your enthusiasm for his work. He always appreciates those who take a moment to acknowledge his work. He is such a wonderfully humble person, you would like him a lot.

This is the greatest fucking thing i have ever seen

Tascam,linea professionale della teac.ottimo

Midas is a awesome sound board

Glasses make also a good analog sound!

I am about to record with my Tascam 424 in two 100 ft culverts.I am bringing roll-ups filled with beans.

Nice! I still have my Tascam Porta Studio 4 track cassette recorder! Mine is from 1987 and has only four channel faders with a master fader…..

Me and my Songwriting partner used one of these Tascam Porta II Mini-Studio recorder back in the late 80's, early 90's until I purchased an 8 track Fostex reel to reel tape recorder. They both served there puposes. Both were great sounding machines. I sold them both to my Songwriting partner after we stopped playing. a Few weeks ago I purchased a "new" Tascam 8 track digital studio. I have yet to use it. But Ive heard nothing but great reviews about it. Lots of Musicans have recorded their new albums with it and are selling them on line. So thats an option I like to do once I finally start recording my songs! 😍💖🎸

Awesome! Would love more content on recording bands with a four track. Also would have been interesting to hear an entire take with that snare glitch.... lol

I always do stereo overheads, never mono, I like the natural stereo-ness it does to the track with minimal effing around! Mono is just so flat and dull. For basic demos maybe, but even then, I use M/S mode on my room mic and point the mono mic at the kick drum and the left mic at the guitar amp then the right mic at the bass amp (it is one mic recorder but has 3 separate mics inside the small portable mic) I use it as a room mic or as a back-up in case sheet hits the fan in the main recording desk, still got the room mic back-up. No mono crap! I angle it as best I can to get everything separated into it as best I can just in case and so we can move easily without it getting in the way. In fact, several of my songs I uploaded, the drums are ONLY from using this one room mic and you'd never know which songs those were vs songs I uploaded that had a fully mic-ed up kit!!!

I had the High Speed version of this machine. It loved TDK tapes. I have boxes of HS 4track tapes I can't play back now. LOL.

Noice! Big fan of Jack White here, too! Love that garage sound, I'm actually part of two-piece garage band myself. Sounded great 🤘

very nice!

I love that boink snare sound!!

I plug my guitar directly into a dbx 163x and it sounds just fine..

it's all the instruments and playing. this balance would be good enough for a modern (lo-fi) single. sounds amazing, cool channel!

sounding good boys

Fantastic video..... love 4-Tack recording.... keep it up please..........

Very good

Awesome video

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and techniques for recording it helped me a lot God bless you keep up the good work

Ahhh I see an Aston Stealth. Awesome mic.....

I remember these Portastudios featured in GuitarPlayer during my late-70s Uni days. They were fascinating but outa reach then. FF 2022 & have re-adopted vintage/retro analogue hardware (never really embracing computer/digital .. TomSholtze anyone?). A serviced Tascam 246 is the core of my “home-studio” .. nothing ambitious/just experiments in JazzGuitarStudy. Found the Tascam electret mics & remote 4 it. Am about 2 sell off a Teac Model-5B mixer & wood-panelled dbx-160 comp/limiter units as too ambitious now (was looking @ 4ch 1/4” open-reel tape recorder 4 it). Still, there’s nothing like good ol’ knobs, dials & reels .. hands-on “play-flow”. I’ve even been sourcing vintage vinyl JameyAebersold jazz study playalongs. Plenty 2 take away here👍

4:59 sounds good brah hit record 1234!

Nice.

Sounds good to me!

Very cool video, again. Yes, please, more of this kind, too. It inspires to make more music, brilliant. I could learn a lot, too. And I always anticipate the moment I get to hear how it sounds from a tape. Thank you. Cheers!

Would love to see what you could do with an 8 track Tascam. With a bass guitar, second guitar and vocals added..... cheers.

Great video!!!!! Thanks for sharing

why i feel like he is hosting a cool audio engineering show, i like it

YESSS!!!!!!

It would be cool to see someone record a band with a 4 track the real way most bands did back in the day. We usually only had two crappy dynamic mics, record the drums on track 1 , a mic inside the bass drum, and a mic above the drummers head pointing at the snare. There would probably be a guide guitar at the same time but it didn't get recorded (it would just bleed into the drums!) bass usually got plugged straight into the 4 track recorded on track 2, then guitar recorded on track 3, micing an amp (although some bands insisted on plugging their guitar straight into the 4 track after their boss metal zone or whatever pedal for a fizzy mess) vocals on track 4 with any backing vocals getting sung at same time, then guitar solo's been recorded also on track 4 (hoping theres no overlap). Then mixing it all down to a cassette recorder, maybe with the help of a zoom studio 1201 or something for adding some reverbs, or even something like a Boss BE5 (the delay being perverted into a cheap slapback sounding echo) Some bands went crazy and bounced down the first 3 tracks onto track 4 then started adding more stuff on top, even bouncing again until eventually the backing sounded like it wasn't recorded in the same century (let alone same session)....we instead used to play guitar along with the mixdown to ensure our mixdown had the only copy of that guitar solo so when the tape snapped and we had to mix down again it was lost forever! I love 4 tracks!! :)

Quality infotainment. I should try this on my tascam 388

I think the cassette fits the song a lot better, nice!

You remind me of the keyboard player in spinal tap.

Whoah, man, I really dig what you’re doing. So cool! Obvious you love music and love sound. Great stuff!

AFAIK the album "Equinox" by JMJ is recorded on 4 tracks.

This is really making me crave a ton of brooklyn brews and wild times with you 3. Rock in 🤘

I had the first Teac 144 in 1981, and I still have a Yamaha MT 100 (sic?). Even knowing nothing about production as a teen/20s, the 1 and 1/2- chord punk / garage rock we Sid Vicious/Louie Louie at-the-same-time wannabes puked out would sometimes turn out good-sounding enough on playback that we would look at each other all, "Is that really US?". Lol. And this was half a decade before I knew what a compressor was, and we had ONE Radio Shack SM58-lookalike mic. We always recorded the 1st track doing guitar and drumkit on one track with that one cardioid mic in the middle of the room, pointing at the ceiling, held in place between two books -- hoity toity mic stands were for hippies, I guess we thought. I didn't know we were using the mic "wrong". Lol. I'd plug the bass straight in. Yet some of it turned out sounding better than it deserved to nevertheless. Ahh, the early punk rock days... In small town Texas, 1981 was still "1977"; we didn't know, lol. Cassette 4 track is great.

Ah man, loving the process vids! Now play us a riff!

I've been looking for ways to integrate more of my Tascam 424 into what I'm doing in the DAW. The sub-mix with the mixer is an incredible idea, and friends have told me about that in the past, but seeing it here helps a ton. The biggest issue we have with the four track is, well, the four tracks (even for a three piece band). The other big issue we have with integrating the DAW and the tape machine is that the tape machine speeds up toward the end of the song as opposed to the DAW -- which stays in computer time and the tape goes into its own weird tape time. So let's say we record live drums and scratch bass/guitar/vocals on a ZoomR16 digital recorder, dump those tracks into Reaper, then bounce those drums into the 424 for that sweet tape compression and those incredible EQ knobs, then bounce the tape mix back into the DAW and try to line up with the original it becomes a huge wobbly delayed mess before the end of a 3-minute song. Perhaps we will have to bounce the final mix-down to tape and see what that does, or only use the tape machine for short overdubs/effects. I do love the sound of distorted tape drums.

This is so cool, more please. Subscribed.

Sounds great, I love it!

Entertaining and a well put together session and video!

Awesome! Subscribed!

Nice bass! I have the guitar version of that.. a '74 Les Paul Signature semi-hollow, gold top. Same body and whatnot. I'd like to get a matching Jack Casady bass someday though! 🤘

I made my first Live recording of my band in about 1970-71(?) My band played a chorus concert at thjr, high and we were like halftime entertainment. Two songs. Let It Be and In-A-Gadda-Da -Vida Single mic. Near the guitars, Poiknted up for Omnidirectional effect as it had a pattern. Some early EV mic looked like a shotgun mic with the EV664-666 vents and holes. Came out well except vocals got buried from the gym PA speakers. Did some home recording after that with the schools two Wolensaks bouncing tracks like in the real old days. I was also working on a radio play, that's why I had the schools stuff at home. A few school gigs with my BF's band at the High school Cafeteria With a 4 channel mic mixer and a line off the PA head. That's how I found out about maintaining a reel deck. Second set was a mess. Didn't fine out until I played back the tapes. Also the M8 style AKAI machine was in desperate need of RUBBER RENEW for it's drive tires. Wasn't until 1978 when I met my BF in Ann Arbor And we got together at his friend's house Ivy Hunter Motown Writer performer I got to work with my first TEAC 3340. My friend bought himself a 3440 with mixer and meter bridge soon after and I bought a three head deck we ended up using for echo. My friend brought in different people to help with his demos. During that time I got access to do mine. Jump to about 1998 I started at home to rerecord some of the demo's with things we didn't have back then Still TEAC 3340 and a hi-fi VCR Mackie tiny mixer. The computer didn't really happen til about 2004. Most tracks mastered at 44.1khz and 16 bit. Now everything is at least 96k/24bit. And my sound card is 4 channel for dubbing the 4 track the right way. Abreciated history of my life recording. U have stuff everywhere on the internets including my youtube channel. I have 4 of those. I had the bug and had to record everything.

Very nice guys 👏🏻

8:44 yes, ...but hey, work with what you got :) ...thats the way ;)

The snare issue LOL had me laughing !! glad you worked it out 😂

Some of the drawbacks of cassette tape recording are covered up by high-energy, high volume music. Acoustic music is a whole different situation. I have an old Tascam 424 that I used for acoustic work in the late 90s, but eventually computer DAWS made life much easier. However, I still occasionally use the tascam for tracking a strummed steel string guitar. I have trouble getting that "sugary" sound on anything except saturated, or near saturated, tape.

Keep em coming! Just bought a tascam to record a local band here on Aruba! Would love to see a video about mastering (tape workflow)

🍓. Loved this one. Shoving studio-quality pres into a Tascam is just what I’ve been dreaming of... You should buy some rechargeable C batteries and do some field recording next!

Great channel!

If you take away your options you can increase your creativity and output. Get a decent song, decent players, get decent sound then release it to the world. Rinse and repeat. Looks like you guys are having a blast. I bet you could fuss more and send all 4 drum mic’s to tracks 3 and 4 pan them in your mixer to get a little stereo effect. I think you could do similar with the guitar. Pan one mic left and one mic right then run them through track 1and 2 in stereo. If you like the mono drum sound with some messing around you can find a sweet spot with just one mic. Then you wouldn’t have to overdub the bass. Sounds great 👍

I'm working with two 4 tracks, a 1994 Yamaha MT4X and a 1979 Teac 144. since the Yamaha MT4X has a studio out I'm thinking of just running that into the Teac 144's track 1 and then record tracks 1-4 from the Yamaha's tape onto a another tape which is known as ping ponging (a 5th track if you will) then record that into a computer running adobe audition 1.5. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone.

Great job! I've got to get myself some of those friends. Does Sweetwater sell those? 😁

"Pencil Factory?" Is that a David Lynch/Eraserhead reference? PS: Great video! ✌️

Yep so cool until the tape twists or breaks or wraps around the pinch roller

🍕 because you can eat it for breakfast also! The recording was awesome guys, lots of fun! yet technical issues aren't important at all when you're enjoying the process 🎶 PS: I have a Fostex X28H that's broken, due to an overload using a Sansamp in front of it ;) Lessons are learned!

love the vid! did you know that Jeff Lynn mics up top and bottom snare too? check it out.

Time future's melody reminds me of The Waitresses "I Know What Boys Like" lol

This is probably a dumb question, But can I just use guitar pedals instead of those fancy thousand dollar compressors and eqs with a 4 track tape recorder to get similar results?

Give me analog his distortion and plenty of wow and flutter

now do it JUST using the 4 track

I would of record that error sound in a daw and make for a sample for midi lol

I Now loving this method of recording, i trying to make some aproximation in reaper, I liked how simplifying the recording method, great results are achieved, I'm learning a lot! I would also love to have a recorder like yours!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣

I am wondering if you can directly plug a guitar amplifier directly to scarlett 2i2 and record to a software without clipping and hearing what you hear ambiently would this be possible?

Hey, sir. I’m near Boston Mass, and you hav made a new fan( no not a window fan, more a Red Sox fan… or human-wise, you mentioned Jack White, who is very interesting, but my Jack White analog(-he)-I just had to get the”A” word in there-would Be Jason Faulkner (ex-Jellyfish). So I’m about to try to record an album onto a Korg32xd, which I’ve never used and I am openly a “Digital Dunce.” So after watching a bunch of your videos, I’m thinking I should pick up an old but working well Fostex or Tascam 4 track ( 7 tracks if you bounce. Right?) Because the 359page Korg manual is so daunting I’ll never finish/nor start anything. So thanks for the ideas. I’ve always been a fan of making more with less, whereas computer recording seems to all too often be: making less with more. Hasta Las Vegas.

I'm thinking of getting a tascam 424, but I don't know how to master the tapes or how can i digitalize the recording tapes, should i get an audio interface or a tascam, I'm really into velvet underground stuff

I had to pause the video and check to see if the DBX was on. It would appear to be off! Considering this, I would say that your 4 track is missing some of it's high end. Oh course I realize all the limitations of that technology...but even then the kick drum should sound much better than that? You should still be capable of capturing an 8 kilohertz bandwidth with that tiny track width. Assuming of course that your recording at 3 3/4 ips?

I can't remember whether the Portatwo can record to all four tracks at the same time or not.

How much of the top and bottom snare did you use? Each mic you add is just another opportunity for phase issues… i mean nobody is listening to drums with their ears right on the drum (hopefully). We experience everything (most of us) via 2 mics aka our ears.. so theoretically you should be able to get a great drum sound with 2 mics. Same with kick… less mics will also help with the obnoxious cymbals… also drummer etiquette… the technique for playing drums at a show and recording are two different things. Check out Khrungbin tiny desk video… watch how their drummer barely hits the drums and the recording sounds fat AF. Ultimately there is no wrong way… just sharing what i learned..what works for me.. hope I’m not coming off as condescending. (As I’m typing your guitar player touches on what I’m getting at). I enjoy ur videos. Thanks you

Now I've got "I Know What Boys Like", by The Waitresses (1982) in my head, lol. No offence intended! It's just the exact same melody :)

Digital also has major problems!

Next time, please do a video of you making a recording using just the mics and the Portastudio, and nothing else (no other outboard gear, no big mixer, no preamps, )…. Just a simple setup with no more than four mics plugged directly into the Tascam. Not everybody watching this can afford all that extra equipment that you were showing in the beginning.

Vocals in the next session?

a lotta people spending a lotta money trying to make digital sound good for bands but really analog is still miles ahead esp if you've got drums, trumpets and vocals going on, which to my ears all sound a lot worse straight into the box. hybrid always for band shit

Hello there. I have been left a Tascam Teac 244 that I am selling. I can't use it and wish to find it a home where it will be loved. I am in Ireland. Do you know how is the best way to show that it is for sale.

Is there a reason you went from mixer to preamp and not preamp to mixer?

This experiment is pointless if you are using outboard preamps and sub mixers. Unless you are plugging the mics directly into the 4 track then this is a lame experiment that doesn’t really prove anything except that any recording medium sounds ok through a bunch of front end gear.

Awesome stuff, but "lo fi"? C'mon now.

I just started recording at home again and am planning on using a new digital 12 channel Teac mixer into Studio One. Once I have everything recorded and sounding the way I want I’m going to play it back into the room through my system because that’s when it usually sounds the best. Then I’ll use my Ribbon mic to record the mastered song into a 1968 Teac 3 mixer and from there into a cassette. The deck recording will then be fed back into the computer. I’m assuming they recorded a lot like this in the 50’s but I can’t really find out much about this method. I thought of this method because I do it all the time with my cell phone. Any suggestions?