Making an Analog Album in a Home Studio - Episode Two ‘Mixing’
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
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This is episode two in a series of videos about the creation of a fully analog album in a home studio. Please subscribe if you'd like to catch the next instalment where we'll be looking at analog mastering techniques!
Here's another of our videos which runs through how to record music on to a HiFi VCR. • How To Record Music On...
#Tascamportastudio
#TapeRecording
#Retrorecordingtechniques
#HifiVHSaudio
#yamahamx8x
#mixtutorial
#analog
#mixtutorial
God damn it, now I want an analog home studio.
Haha, sorry about that! What’s your current setup like?
@@wehappyfewmusic Guitars, Bass, MIDI drums, MIDI keyboard, Sure sm57, Focusrite 2i2 first gen, a pair of KRK studio monitors, the good old Reaper loaded with freeware pluggins and working on getting some sort of acoustic treatment at the moment. I have absolutely nothing to complain about but seing people doing it the old way is something I find truly inspiring. Really loved the video!
Is your music available in any streaming service? :)
That sounds like a great setup you’ve got there and thanks for the positive comment! This album isn’t available on any streaming sites at the moment, but we’re working on our next release which will be online.
It sounds fantastic! The outboard gear you're using has such a cool flavour, and I love the fact you bounce to VHS. Most importantly the song is epic, the playing is amazing and the vocals are great!
Hey dude, really appreciate the positive feedback and very pleased you like the song. Many thanks!
As a new digital person. I have found that analog really makes a huge and subtle difference at the same time. I really appreciate this.... without analog we would not be here. 7:59
Thanks for stopping by and good point! 👍
That's great. Looking forward to the mastering episode
Much appreciated, great to hear you liked the mixing episode!
That sounds amazing, beautifully warm on the guitar but cold on the voices!
Thank you very much!
Really helpful. Looking to record our first EP in our home studio, and this is a great help!
Good luck with your EP and great to hear you picked up some useful tips! 🙌
I like the videos and it makes me want to give it a try myself. I do think that like most guitar players you like the sound of guitar more then you like the sound of your own voice hence your guitar volume is hiding your voice. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for watching and I think you’re probably right, I often mix my own voice pretty low in the track to hide it a bit. 😅👍
I love it! Looking forward to hearing the full album. ✌️❤️
Thanks very much buddy, really pleased to hear you like it! 👍🙌
Saludos, geniales tus videos, me encanta el sonido análogo, y claro los componentes para tal fin, en especial los VHS y los cassettes, al igual que los diferentes portaestudios análogos, sigue adelante, abrazos desde Bogotá, Colombia. ...
Hello, thank you very much for your kind words! You can’t beat the sound of analog recording! 🙌 Best wishes
that magic green morphing display on the reverbunit sounds sooo analog. luv it.
-why do yo print to vhs?
-is it better then summing to a good 90s cassette deck? higher ips? more tape area?
-can you drive the vhs as as hard as you can a cassette for saturation?
Thanks for checking out the video! I printed to HiFi VHS as you keep much more of the detail of the mix than a 2nd generation of cassette tape.
You can’t really drive VHS tape in the same way as normal analog tape, as it’s a FM modulated signal. I’ve done another video which goes through it if you’d like some more details. ua-cam.com/video/fMOxHlzsxRU/v-deo.htmlsi=2bqlphKAbFeMJPjq
we'll be adding a tape to our collection for sure!
Cool, thanks very much! 🙏
I have many cassette decks, and cassette duplicators. I run a small tape label. Which I started mostly for self publishing back in ‘16. Your channel has provided lots of inspiration to get things in motion again. I believe I found your channel looking for others who record audio to VHS. Tape content was surely a bonus. Keep em coming. 📼🎚️🎛️👍🏾✌🏾✊🏾
That sounds like a cool little publishing company, and would definitely be worth getting back in to. Really pleased you found my video inspiring and I’d be interested in getting some advice about tape duplication from you if possible. 👌👍🎵
Until these videos, I completely overlooked the potential in the huge magnetic media in VHS tapes.
Glad they were useful! 👍
Wow! Great simple rig and song sounds great thanks! The echo unit sounds great, as does the Reverb! I have a rack mono spring reverb (vermona vsr3.2) which sounds very similar and is a fantastic addition to my rig. When I was 4-tracking back in the 90's I had alesis quadraverb and I drenched everything in stereo digital verb. Fast forward to now and a real analog mono verb sounds better and being able to control exactly where in the mix the verb sits is the thing I like the best. Thanks for the posting - and hearing this very impressive yamaha 8 track!
Hey Peter, thanks so much for the positive feedback and very happy to hear you like the song and setup! I was also considering getting the mono vermona reverb unit, as it gets great reviews and Andy Pickering has done some cool stuff with one.
I never got to use an 8 track Yamaha deck.Used 4 track reel to reel, cassette 2 track & 4 track, then Hi-Fi VHS since 1989, switched to DVD for recording in the 21st century and now multi-track mixer to MacBook pro. What did you use for mics? Did you plug the instruments direct to the recorder? Metal tape? 3 3/4 ips? Noise reduction? When you went from VHS to computer to be able to put this on UA-cam what was the A/D interface? What resolution on the digital mix(44.1khz, 48khz, 16,24 or 32 bit float) What DAW did you use? Looks like UA-cam normalized your audio -5.4db as a mp4a 40.2 kHz 140kbps. Sounds interesting, but its nice to know a "bit" more of the story. Sounds nice on headphones. I noticed on your song Going Home UA-cam normalized it @ 0.3db. Cheers!
Hey thanks for having a listen and leaving a comment! That’s interesting to hear how UA-cam has processed my audio too, as I’d not looked into that so many thanks for sharing 👍 I use a mixture of type II tapes with the Yamaha and a combination of the inbuilt mixer, and a focusrite mic pre with dbx on. I’ve got a Saffire pro 40 for digitising audio for UA-cam and use 44.1khz & 24 bit resolution. I picked up the interface on eBay recently and although it’s pretty old, it’s a similar age to my Mac so works pretty well. Cheers!
I have bothTechnics and Sony cassette decks. Tape rocks!
Nice collection, yeah tape is great!
Sounds great!
Thanks very much for watching and really pleased you think it sounds great!
Love watching these. Have you already done a video on the Echolette? That thing looks and sounds amazing! Also, wanted to share that there’s a video somewhere here on YT talking about why running a VHS master at EP instead of SP actually yields better results because you lose tape hiss without a loss in audio quality. It’s a bit counter-intuitive for analog heads like ourselves, but when you think about the speed of the rotating head of the VHS player, it does distinguish itself from a static R2R or cassette machine. Maybe give it a try! Keep up the great work 👍🏻
Hey, thanks for checking it out buddy and glad you liked it! I’ve only just borrowed the Echolette but will definitely do another more in-depth video about that soon. It’s such a cool unit to experiment with. That’s really interesting about EP yielding cleaner results with HiFi VHS recordings, I must check out that video. Do you remember the title? 👍
@@wehappyfewmusic So I’ve been digging all through the search engine and not finding the guy that posted the video I originally watched (he does an actual demo of this principle). But I did find this video where this VCR-obsessed fellow talks about the exact same principle:
ua-cam.com/video/051Mc-9VcKg/v-deo.html
Fast forward to 8:26
I really want to test this myself but my VCR needs fixing, hopefully happening soon 🤞🏻
@@ericvannielsen oh cool, thanks for digging around, I look forward to checking that out.
In that video link below about EP, he doesn't state that the audio gets better, only that it doesn't get any worse. Here's some transcription from that part of the video: "HiFi audio doesn't get worse when you switch speeds. The tracks are closer together so there is potential for more noise in your signal
but when you're recording at such a low frequency like audio it's basically immune to that."
Also the bad thing about EP recording is it's more prone to mistracking and dropout, both which will add distortion noise to a HiFi audio track.
Thanks for the info about EP, that’s good to know about the potential issues.
Nice work as always!
Much appreciated, thanks buddy!
It sounds epic.....good luck with the release. Alas, I do have a cassette deck but wouldn't be interested in buying anything on this format ever again. I still have about 200 cassettes of stuff I recorded in the 80s (old BBC Proms stuff and contemporary classical music that has possibly never been recorded) which I want to upload sometime for posterity.
Thanks man, it’s taken longer than I’d hoped but we’re almost ready for the release now! Yeah, you should definitely share your archived cassette tape collection sometime, it would a shame for those recordings to be lost. 👍🙌
@6:35 - I've tested general grade to hi grade tapes in SP and EP (FOR AUDIO) ..and usually no difference at all in the particular machine I use. When I tried LP mode I get dropouts and other weird things happening .
That’s reassuring to know that the tape grade doesn’t make much difference. I get tracking noises from time to time but it tends to be at the start and end of recordings in SP.
@@wehappyfewmusic yeah.. it's probably not dependable you know 'results may vary' LOL . Machine to machine and tape formulation ect.. so many physicial variables actually. Yes.. you should always FFW a few minutes into a VHS tape. I learned the importance of that when I worked for a TV station in the 90s and then a radio station where we used HiFI VHS to record archive the blocks of shows :) We would use EP on most broadcasts to cram as much on the tapes.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 yes it can by annoying when you think you’ve done a good mix, then you listen back and it has some weird noises here and there. 😅 Its interesting that you used vhs as a storage medium in a radio station. Must of been so much cheaper than any other option at the time.
@@wehappyfewmusic Yes the low cost was why we used it.. the guy who was 'running' the station which was a Community broadcaster turned to be a total scumbag - he was a cocaine addict and alcoholic who was skimming funds coming in from the GOVERNMENT (grants) ..and money that should have went to equipment ect.. (over $300,000 he stole) he was pocketing. He got caught 4 years into the whole thing.. unfortunatly they shut it down because there was crime with the Board members as well. Shady stuff everywhere in business man. I even called him out because he came to work stoned and drunk and treated people like garbage.. to the board members but didn't realize they were all in on it. They would pander to me 'oh he's just someone who needs help with his problems.. just give him a break".. They all got it in the end.
Great video Adrian, the sound is superb. I have four stereo double tape decks that i'm planning to use for duplication of my cassette albums. Analogue is so cool. Kind regards. Paul.
Hi Paul, good to hear from you and really pleased you like the sound of the song! The cassette revival is definitely going strong in your house then, and that’s a healthy collection of stereo decks. Best wishes 👍
@@wehappyfewmusic yes I agree about the cassette comeback. I used to have the tascam 488mk1 youtube channel. Kind regards. Paul.
@@spooktasticaparanormal yes I remember that, have you changed your channel name or made a new one?
Hi! Your Yamaha looks delicious, I had a couple rounds of machines but right now only one I have is the Sony WM-D6C! It can record to metal tapes, have you tried that? What do you think about recording a mix to metal tape instead of the VCR? Track sounds awesome btw. Its not over!
Jimmy page said in interviews they used to record AAD, I wonder when they started with that. Cheers
Hi If you’re only going to have one tape deck the Sony WM-D6C is an excellent choice! I’ve not had the chance to use one yet but have heard they are supposed to be the best Walkman Sony ever made, right? I have tried doing a mix to metal tape but I don’t think my technics deck is good enough to do it justice unfortunately. At some point I’d like to upgrade and will try it again. That’s interesting that Led Zeppelin recorded some AAD albums, I guess they would of been the later ones? Many thanks for watching and your positive feedback about ‘It’s Not Over’!
These videos are lots of fun! I just got an MT4X and I'm wondering how I can record multiple songs. Should I go for a song per cassette or use all the minutes up on each cassette?
Congratulations on getting your MT4X, I've heard good things about that model and it should have better audio quality than the MT8X in theory. I've personally tended to keep one project per tape, but often do a couple of takes in a row and pick the best one to develop after an initial session. I guess it's because I'm worried about losing lots of material if a tape breaks or goes missing. That said, it's not happened yet and it'd be more economical to do a whole EP etc on one tape.
You can see the Echolette in the rare TV footage of the US band "THE MONKS" playing Germany live the keyboard player has one on top - maybe it's German made.?. i can see german on the face.. your video confirmed what it was never seen one up that close. Nice Rig. Sounds good overall. I personally can't stand all the digital these days - I always saw it as a tool but it became the standard unfortunately.
Hey, thanks for checking this video out and stopping by again! Oh cool, I’ll have to see if I can find that clip. The echolette is great fun to use and it has way more personality than any digital delay unit I’ve used!
@@wehappyfewmusic was that kit in your family or did you purchase it private?
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 I’ve borrowed the echolette but the rest of the gear I’ve bought. I’m planning to do a video about the echolette before I need to hand it back.
Hey I'd buy a tape, I don't get my old deck out much but it would be still cool to own
Hey thanks very much! 🙌
Can you do any videos the 4 track version of your machine?
Hey, I don’t currently have the 4 track version but want to get hold of one to do a sound comparison with the 8 track at some point. Watch this space! 😀
@@wehappyfewmusic well hopefully you end up getting one! Love your videos. I just need a more in-depth video on the proper way to use it and all. I love mine so much and recorded on it a couple of times but still get confused at times.
@@grex3324 Yeah the routing can get a bit confusing on the MT8X at times too, so I’d assume it’s similar with the MT4X too. It’s alright when you get your head around, but I’d be happy to do a tutorial if/when I can get hold of one. 👍
Awesome workflow. I find out this analog system to be more efficient to get the music done. Computers are made, apparently, to distract you so you can't complete the work.
I own a couple of regular VHS, have you try it out for this purpose?
I know what you mean, it’s so easy to get distracted when recording music on a computer! Thanks very much for watching the video too. 👍
Cool, I’ve not tried recording audio on regular VHS deck yet, only HIFI ones.
@@wehappyfewmusic I get inspired by your demonstrations, really would love to give it a shot soon!
@@allanlacayomora yeah you should definitely give it a go. It’s a fun way of working.
Where did you get Panasonic SuperDrive with sign "A készülék burkolatának eltávolítása életveszélyes!" :)
My brother got it from a charity shop in Norfolk.
@@wehappyfewmusic I thought you had Hungarian relatives. Best Regards.
@@danielkeviczky4887 I’ve got a Hungarian friend though, who lent me the Echolette. Best wishes and many thanks for watching the video! 👍
@@wehappyfewmusic In any case! Im a musician and a reluctance hurdy-gurdy guy. Hope we will talk again in future.
WHAT ABOUT LEAD VOCAL?
I mix the vocals at around 2 minutes into the video.
Sounds bad.
🫤