I finally have the Tascam Portastudio 424 Mkiii working again. And I have 23 demo tracks that I’m going to try and record to the best of my ability on this bad boy. No digital cut and paste. It’s all gotta be native to this analogue workstation.
Why do this? No, this is not some nerdy ‘analogue is better than digital’ mission. I love digital, I think it is awesome. But I started out using this machine for demos, and it requires a different approach and mindset. First, I need to be better at my instruments. Over the years I have become quite lazy with digital workstations, cutting out fret scratches and breathy vocals. Sometimes I left them in just to stop it from sounding too polished, but this machine leaves me with little choice. And it is the limitation of choice that I am interested in (not excited about, if I am honest, just interested in.)
It feels like a neat way to end a chapter of my musical journey that has been quite prolific. I had a hiatus of nine years in which I produced nothing. Then, in the six years since 2018 I made Lunarticks, Qualia, An Unreachable Peak and The Hobbyist. All of these were based around a similar approach inspired by Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget, which decried the MIDI and computerised approach of a lot of modern music. Nevertheless, all of those albums (plus the ones I recorded earlier in my life) were made on digital workstations. I have only ever released a handful of tracks that were made on analogue 4-track. I think this particular project will be the last for a little while. I have a collection of songs that lend themselves to being recorded this way, and I think it will be the closest thing to ‘live’ that I will release. It will be the closest thing I can produce in the spirit of You Are Not A Gadget. The antithesis of all the A.I. hype.
What’s the plan? Well. Bee has gone away for a while to visit family, so I have the house to myself. Plus, the neighbours upstairs have moved out. Plus, I have reduced my hours at work. So, I intend to try and do a song each day. I’ll have to live with the consequences of each decision, as there can’t be the endless tweaking of previous projects. At the end, I will see what I have, and hopefully release some of it. I reserve the right to abandon it at any point where I am no longer enjoying it!
I may post some things here to expand a little bit on process, just in case anyone is interested, and for the sake of my own memory.
