Playing With Tape | also Strymon NightSky, Hologram Microcosm, Chase Bliss blooper, OP-1
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- In this video I do a lengthy walkthrough documenting the process of me recording something to tape and getting weird with it. This video documents, the better part of an afternoon of having fun playing around with the tools in my home studio (technically a shared office with my wife).
Please let me know in the comments what you found useful about this video!
I use a Uher 4000 Report Monitor, considered by some as the poor man's Nagra :) Regardless it's a great machine.
Addtional gear used here:
Chase Bliss blooper
Strymon NightSky
Hologram Microcosm
Teenage Engineering OP-1
Radial Engineering EXTC-500
A kalimba
Lots of cables and home made adapters.
I'm Jason Gonzales and I make music as Sycamore Willow, find all my stuff here linktr.ee/sycamorewillow
I make ambient, experimental, chill, ambient house, lofi, weird music. Let me know if you come up with more monikers!
Reach out to me if you want to work together!
00:00 Intro
04:24 Getting levels
05:42 Recording at various speeds
07:55 Connecting the tape machine to studio gear
09:32 Playing back at various speeds
12:51 Playing back at half speed
13:50 Sampling into OP-1
14:25 Sound design w/ OP-1
16:14 Sampling into blooper
20:14 Sound design w/ blooper and Microcosm
22:27 Back to OP-1: single cycle waveform
24:09 Performance
What a wonderfully thorough walkthrough culminating with a hauntingly beautiful arrangement. Thank you very much for the time and effort. Absolutely beautiful!
Thanks so much! Honestly I was pretty nervous about a) putting my face in a video b) overall. It's weird once you start making UA-cam videos, you kind of get addicted to them doing well. This one took a lot of effort indeed and I was worried it wouldn't be well received. But then I reminded myself that it doesn't matter. It's fun to try and surely someone will appreciate it. You are that person, so thank you :)
That's just so cool.
Hey, thanks so much for watching and saying a nice thing :)
@@SycamoreWillow you're welcome.
I wonder if theres other reel to reels that could do this stuff--my knowledge on them is very slim, but the uher is hard to find + a little bit pricey. Great content man really helped me out! I hope to hear back from you!
Oh yes absolutely you can do this with other reel-to-reels You can do it with any one really! I think the key things I would point out are the ability to record at a higher speed and play back at a lower speed and having a built-in speaker is a nice bonus if not the ability to connect it to some kind of interesting sounding speaker is a really convenient workflow.thanks for watching the video and ask me questions anytime I love doing this stuff so much!
Awesome! Following you on Bandcamp 👍
Thank you so much!
This was so inspiring, Jason! I recently purchased an Uher 4000 Report Monitor and was wondering which cables I will need to connect it to my audio interface (to send and receive audio) and to my synthesisers (in case I feel like recording directly to it). Would be great if you could help me with this!
Hi Sergio, check out this other video on how I build little boxes for this: ua-cam.com/video/kGGBaME2M_s/v-deo.html
Also, I recently posted about building a bunch of these for people who are interested on Hainbach's subreddit here: www.reddit.com/r/Hainbach/comments/qwu2df/group_buy_for_uher_adapter_boxes/?context=3
If you want to pay for the parts and shipping (see the amount in the thread) happy to build one for you in this batch.
Loving this format of video Jason, very well presented, extremely informative and fun! What a wonderful machine for ambient, looks very well built. Really great to see your process, really inspiring, your making me want to build up a studio! I miss working in a proper studio space, with lots of options. Do you run a recording studio or is this just your home setup?
Thanks tons (tonnes?)! Years ago in the early 2000s I owned a studio but I had to give it up. Many studios I knew went out of business during that time -- I struggled to make enough money as well. I still have some of the gear I had at that time (mostly mics) but I don't really record other people anymore. My home studio is really small. It's a small shared office with my wife and our house is pretty small here in San Francisco. Maybe I'll do a "studio tour" video. LOL, it will be pretty short: "here's three shelves, here's two more, ok we're done." That said, I do have a lot packed into my small space and it's nice because most things are close at hand which makes it easy to try loads of things.
@@SycamoreWillow Interesting man, there are many people in the same boat re: studio, so much talent but hard to make ends meet. I've never worked commercially but I studied music production at Uni, I really miss having a nice studio space to work in with loads of microphones. I'm similar to you, I share a small studio setup with my wife. I kind of like using small spaces too and it stops you accumulating huge instruments and mixers etc. These days we are lucky really, small boxes are so feature packed you can do almost anything you want in a small space, digitakt, octatrack etc! I must admit there is something about working with tape that I absolutely love, however these days I tend to bounce off the tape onto the Octatrack as it is far less finicky. This video has me inspired, thanks again Jason, take good care
OMG that tape recorder is like new. Who's the german vendor you mention in the video? Btw it's really inspiring, I have to try those techniques you show here, in hyper Lo-fi version with a Sony cassette recorder.
Yes! I purchased it new-old-stock from these people: www.sds-consult.de/UHER/index.htm
I don't know what the current state of things is with them but I heard recently they weren't shipping outside the EU.
Lastly, I am super flattered you found this inspiring! I have other process oriented videos in mind, so thanks for the encouragement and thanks for watching!
Beautiful stuff! Thanks for sharing. What tape are you using with the Uher? And does the power supply on the Uher work in the US with a simple wall adapter?
Thank you for watching! I'm just using some old used BASF purchased on eBay. And yes the Uher PS does 110v and so I only need a wall adapter.
Hello there! I acquired an Uher 4000 Report Monitor somewhat recently second hand on eBay (before realizing I could get one NOS haha). Anyway, my question to you is have you had much luck trying to record on the Uher using a microphone like a Shure SM57 or a PGA48? Realizing that this machine operates using DIN socketry I bought a 5pin DIN to Female 1/4 jack to plug into the Uher (for both Mic Input as well as the Radio/Phono input/output on the side), so I could feed an XLR to 1/4 male jack into it to record. Well, I've run into some issues with that. I have to turn the gain on the Uher all the way to the max in order to pass any signal onto the tape, and I have to raise my voice or crank the volume on my source (ie: Yamaha CP Reface into Amp) just to get any decent signal to transfer. Because of how much I've got the gain up I've got all kinds of tape hiss. So I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on what I could possibly be doing wrong? Perhaps the 5pin DIN adapter I have is not wired correctly? I'm stumped. (Unless it would just be easier to track down an Uher Microphone for it).
Hey Robert, thanks for watching. I suspect your cable isn't correct for the way the Uher is wired. I field this question and lots like this on the Hainbach subreddit, so you can search there for some detailed discussion about it. But you've just made me realize I could make a detailed video about this. I'll try to bang one out this week so keep an eye out!
@@SycamoreWillow aye thank you very much for the reply! I'll definitely check out that subreddit! Also that'd be cool as well! I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for that video! Thank you!
Those mics have AKG capsules in them. instagram.com/p/CAV1lh4hCvv/?igshid=zbr2rgt5yyi2
Thanks for the validation!
Face reveal!?
Deep fake
Very weird way to use those pedals i need to get me a tape. I am probably going to go with a 4 track to start out and see if its something ill stick with then bump it up to a big boy. Definitely good choices of pedals i love them all. Get yourself a mood if you haven’t already
I feel like "very weird way to use those pedals" is one of the highest compliments I've received. I do have a MOOD, it's in at least half a dozen of my other videos. I love that thing. I plan to do a video soon where I use it in a way that I hope you also find weird :D
@@SycamoreWillow i was getting a weird feeling listening to it which thats the point of music/sound is to move a person and create an emotional response which definitely did the job lol. It was different but i meant it as a compliment. Sound quality was on par. Loved the tape sound. The tape was definitely in beautiful shape as well.
This inspired me to get into tape even more. I just put a bid in on a tascam 464 so hopefully i win it and then i will copy you next lol. You should do more videos doing this and different styles of music genres especially what everyone is doing now like ambient step sequences, small chord progressions, also the lofi vibe as well and show how you achieved it if you have the time. Awesome stuff keep it up.
@@joeymc5272 Thanks so much for the suggestions! I will def do more process videos. It's fun for me and I'm glad to know folks find them useful.
@@SycamoreWillow absolutely. Another thing to that may be of more interest is others who are interested in getting into this type of recording experimentation. Maybe go through and show a quick tutorial how you route things and such and how to use the tape to tape. You may have already and i didn’t see and apologize if you have already but just another thought as musicians interested in getting into things are definitely intimidated by not know how to set things up and i notice tutorials do pretty well. Just a thought. Take care