When I was young...

[Lawrencew]

Already folks are complaining about the FX. Now that polyphony has been doubled the focus as shifted to the limitiations of 3 MFX. I know I have raised this myself.

Some people will never be happy...

It made me think of my early forays into electronic music. This would have been around 1972/3.

Armed only with a Stylophone 305s http://www.stylophone-sales.fsnet.co.uk/350s.html (the large delux model), and two Sony TC377 tape decks http://www.goldieoldie.com/TAPERECORDERS.htm and a couple of mics.

The tape decks had 3 heads for off tape monitoring - this meant you could feed back the monitor to the recording head and get a delay. But for better effect we used to put the 2 tape decks at each end of the room and have one spool of tape go from one to the other. Running it at 3 1/2" per second we could introduce a delay of 10's of seconds.

So I would play a line into the first deck from the stylophone, and then this would start repeating say 30 seconds later, so I would then layer another line on top of that. The 350s had different sounds too.

Meanwhile my friend would change the levels, so the repeats faded in and out, got distorted, etc., and physically slide one of the tape decks back and forth across the room to vary the delay. We would also physically slow down the reels with our hands.

For effect we would then make vocal noises (hmms and things) to add to the mix - which would gradually get distorted through the delay and end up creating some wonderful pads. plus the obligatory hanging the mics out the window to record traffic noise. Then add the wobble of having the machines so far apart, the inherant tape noise and distortion of the technology of that time, but having this repeat actually added to the rhythmic and melodic nature of the sound.

We would sit there trance like for the entire evening just letting a composition meander on like this.

Funny enough just about this time Terry Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air came out and sounded just like us

Anyway, point was we were making great music (other people actually liked it too) with a stylophone and an old tape deck. And nowadays, a Fantom FX isn't enough to please some people...

Loz

[Flowing]

...and did you notice that the Fantom X display is tilted 29 degrees, rather than the optimal 30 degrees? Who could possibly make good music with that design flaw present?

[Septimo]

Loz I don't mean to sound like I'm "stoking" but you are a true Master Jedi! My ego made me think I knew alot cuz I've been working on music since 1989 (in studio's) but like 83 with my dadz church band!

But I was born in 73' and and your music adventures sound like true genius. That delay trick sounds very cool, and so do the other tricks

and you're right some people will never be happy! I think 3 MFX are more than enough for me. coming from an RM1-X that had only one variation efx processor, one reverb processor, & one chorus processor!(but one cool thing that it had was a midi delay, ever heard of it?) so coming to the FX, I'm overblown with oodles of EFX! wich I still have not used all 3 in any ONE song. maybe I will when I'm more use to the machine, but not yet!

I think we today are very spoiled, and that is why you here people always sayin "Man, they sure don't make music like they use too!" and they're right, to some extent. Thats why I try to focus on my music first, then worry about adding EFX afterwards. Then when I do that, I find out that 3 MFX is far more than enough to make a great song! like I said my RM1-X had only one of what would be Rolands MFX, and I used to rock the S**T out of it!! so I feel truely pampered!

how old are you BTW? You don't have to answer that if you don't want to. and I can tell that Master Jedi mucsusn is up there with you, in knowlege as well

Your Padwan learner

Septimo

[mucsusn]

Loz, do you still have any of those recordings?

[chris__]

Well of course we can all point to The Beatles "Seargent Pepper" album >>> before 1970

Recorded on two four tracks bounced from one deck to the other.....minimal effects....mostly natural room reverbs and tape deck delay (as Lawrence spoke of)....every move being "irreversable" as they dumped to the other deck - no 99 levels of undo.

Cutting up 12" sections of tape and splicing them together at random to get wierd effects - even upside down & backwards, slamming a sledge hammer into the side of a piano for the last note effect on "A Day in the Life" ...... I could go on and on..........

The only thing that makes this an un realistic project to create on two four track tape machines today is the fact that they had 1" or 2" wide tape on those decks - holds alot more magnetism (audio fidelity) than is possible on cassette.
and....oh yeah...were missing two Beatles! God bless them wherever they are.........

Septimo- I also have yet to use more than 2 MFX on any one song, although I see it happening as I learn more. Whats the best MFX to spice up the drums for a pop/rock sound?

Chris



http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/CHRISTOPHER_YAMSEK/

[Lawrencew]

I wish I did have some old tapes, but no, they were recorded over long ago.

Annoyingly, I have almost zeros recordings of my past musical experience. It never seemed important at the time.
Thank god for MIDI - that's one format I have been able to keep as I moved from platform to platform

Loz

[Artemiy]

Lawrence, this is a very good post, thank you. You make me respect yourself more and more everyday.

The thing is I have _never_ leaved my oldschool passion to pure-acoustic and analogue electronic experiments. Soon I am opening a whole new site dedicated to my sound experiments. They will be described in detail, even with pictures, and of course, audio samples. I hope to help people realise creative they can be with almost no gear, except for somehing that plays and something that records.

You made me remember my old days when I was 13 and I had a little childish Yamaha keyboard, a tape deck, a pocket Panasonic recorder. With advise from my father, I made a "passive" two-channel mixing deck (with panning capabilities) and I used to record and overdub stuff with this little set of gear. I'd mix beats/melodies from Yamaha with percussion, then overdub and lay some other stuff like vocal shouts...

The more advanced my gear set has been getting, the less creative I have been. Until very recently, when I got my FS and finally came back to my roots.

Creativity is not only about making phaser and delay effects within a patch without using any FX, but it's more about using your house's rain drain-pipe as an echo chamber. More on this very soon...


Artemio.

[nsheldon]

Hello all.

Lawrence and Artemio make good points. All this talk about creativity and how enabling technologies such as advanced music workstations tend to make users creatively lazy makes me reminisce when I would simulate recording multiple audio tracks with a dual tape deck boom-box and a mic that mixed with the played back cassette. I'd record the first "track" on one tape, rewind it, put it in the 2nd deck, and while dubbing the first tape to a 2nd tape, I'd overlay the 2nd "track" with the mic. Certainly not as technically creative as Lawrence's reel-to-reel setup but effective none the less.

Yes, I think even experienced musicians can be spoiled by instruments that are just too easy to use. Many no longer provide a challenge (especially the ones that are easy like the Fantom). Instruments that are easy to use seem to require more "digging" to find ways to "think outside the box." Manufacturers are making that box well sealed these days and it can be difficult to escape. In my opinion, with such complex instruments hidden behind such simple interfaces, the relatively short learning curve required to use the instrument deceives the musician by hiding the information needed to be truly creative with the instrument. Now musicians have to work harder at learning the details and complexities of their instruments because those details are only mentioned in passing, if at all.


Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

[honeyshape]

Loz your so right! Just yesterday I was wondering why Roland did put bluetooth into the X. I bet you never wished your TC377's were bluetooth equiped back in the '70's. I do think technololy is making us dumber. I mean we used to find out way around out limitations and not be as limited as we are now with less limitations (make sense?). Need another delay effect but only have 100 MFX and there all being used? Copy your track and clock shift it a few times and lower the levels of the copied tracks. Need to put abit of "dirt" into your drums? Play it though your monitors and rerecord it, compress it and mix it with the dry track. It's exciting to remember that we are not suck inside the Fantom as I can forget. You've inspired me to get messing with sound by doing stupid things again. Who needs a new OS update FX when they've got a mic, a small speaker and a toilet.


www.tankengine.net

[chris__]

Ha ha !!!!

nsheldon I did the EXACT same thing years ago except with two boom box's !!!!!

Lawrencew:
Lawrence sorry to hear you have no old recordings - I have an abundance of them - not originals but live bands - they are a joy to sit back with a late night beer & listen to. One of my best friends ran sound for years and was kinda obsessed with popping a tape in and tweaking sound. We would fight (band members) over who got to take home this weekends recording.

My only regret is we were a bit selective as to what we recorded- skipped over some of the slow songs we didnt like to save tape (I was a very young member of a 50's & 60's band) now I wish I had those songs- as you said it didnt seem important at the time.

Chris

http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/CHRISTOPHER_YAMSEK/

[Lawrencew]

the original analog synths with no presets also forced you to be very creative too. And learn how to program patches.

I don't want this to sound derogatory, but I bet there are members of this forum that don't know what things like what the TVA does.

And of course, we should look upon that as a benefit. You shouldn't have to know what a TVA is in order to get a piano sound. As in you shouldn't need to know what a crankshaft is to drive a car.

Some people just want to be creative in song writing and performance, some want to be creative in sound manipulation.

Loz

[Septimo]

I've always known about my cutoff, resonance, decay, attack, release, pitch shift, LFO etc., and always knew how to apply them, but I'll admit, the term "TVA" was a new acronym for me. did not know that there is were all these tools resided in Roland.

Septimo

[Artemiy]

Some people just want to be creative in song writing and performance, some want to be creative in sound manipulation.
...and some in both

One thing I wanted to say in reply to Nathan's post: oh, it's such a hard subject to discuss. I don't really think Roland hides advanced things somewhere - it's nowhere deeper than the EDIT button! I think they even put advanced things much closer and easier to get to newbies...

Remember the XP80 and even earlier XP50 - they were simpler than the FS/FX series, but remember how it was difficult to program them from a newbie's point of veiw. Yes, personaly I was feeling like a fish in water with XP80, but I see that FS/FX put advanced things right in your face and this is good for both newbies and hackers.

One thing to say about the progress - yes, it makes all things easier to dummies, as you now can make music "with little or no music skills" - this is ridiculous! However, I haven't ever heard any commercial recording created with preset grrovebox patterns/phrases.

Another one: I'm very glad that I didn't forget how to get a huge something out of nothing, but I'm also happy that technology advances and let's me choose among so many ways to tweak the sound.


Artemio.

P.S. Loz, you've started a very good thread, thanks!!!

[rf_]

I had one of the very first Tascam Portastudio's ever released (4 track cassette), and at the time it was absolutely genius. I used to make all of my friends (musicians) play in the bathroom....with me crammed into the tub with my portastudio, so we could capture the natural reverb in there. There was no available reverb effects that any home musician could afford at the time. Some times I would wire accross my house into the other bathroom too, so I could have two persons playing at once, so I could record them both in Mono together, and not have to bounce more than necessary due to tape hiss. So in essense, I had 2 MFX processors with those two bathrooms. And generally...that was enough. Sometimes we would disassemble the cassette tapes and turn over the tape itself, so we could capture reverse delay effects and such. I guess that is what you would now call tweaking and programming your effects. We used to record an 8 bar lead in click track on each of two 4 track recorders, and then me and a friend would hit play...time after time after time until we got "in sync" so the two things would run a few bars together locked up before drifting apart, while we recorded it all to stereo cassette, while someone was playing a new part live on top of that. It took a few hundered takes to get it right, but in the end we had like a massive 16 track recording. WOW! Yea....times and needs are definately different. That is for sure.



Ron

[Lawrencew]

The prize for the most mystical beast to program (IMHO) had to be Yahama FM synths like the DX7. Not only was it complex to understand how FM worked, but you had to program it all through a small display. I, like many others at the time, loved the sound though.

However, this complexity meant I could have a nice little sideline by building and selling a DX7 Editor for the Atari ST. The DX7 was one of the 1st MIDI instruments, and probably one of the first for which software editors were produced.

The references here at the bottom of the page to FivePinDin Software in Sound on Sound magazine http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun01/a ... inotes.htm are to me. In the very early days of SOS magazine they used to sell it for me.

Loz