ok i want to record my band in a distorted lo-fi manner, kind of like the thermals, brainbombs, guitar wolf or phantom pregnancies kind of sound. heres how i plan to do it:

get 5 or 6 cheapie tape recorders with built in mics and use these to 'mic up' each instrument for the distorted sounds. also run a 1/2 inch R2R with a room mic for a degree of 'clean' in the mix.

has anybody tried anything similar to this? how did it turn out? also as alot of the tracks will be 'in the red' do you think compression is necessary?

also the drums will probly sound shit... is there an easy was to improve the sound slighlty without using more than 2 mics?

any other comments would be appreciated too as im a novice at this kind of thing.

Most of the sound that you're describing from bands like the Thermals, etc. has more to do with gain distortion than the colloquial term "lo-fi."

I think your idea is interesting, in a Rube Goldberg kind of way. I suggest using a more traditional recording set up, and using the channel input gains to distort your sound. That way, you can still control the volume and mix each instrument through each discreet channel.

And the vocals? Find yourself a nice old intercom mic. That will ruin everything you try to record with it. Promise.

yeah i guess you are agreeing with my guitarist... in the interest of discusssion heres what he emailed me when i told him:

"I think the dirty sound is a good idea; I was definitely thinking we
should go
for much more of a band in a room sound anyway and it's not like
there's too
much subtlety and nuance to lose in the mix. I don't think the
cheapie
recorders with built in mics is a great idea tho. There's cheap dirty
sound and
then there's horrible unclear muddy sound. Having recorded to
cassette tape a
lot in the past my experience is that you lose all of the top end,
which won't
suit our sound at all. If we can borrow a few R2Rs (or 1x 4 track)
then that
seems the best idea. I know someone who I think has a 4 track, so
that could
solves most of the problem. Also it's pretty important to find a
nice-ish room
(though our monday rehearsal room is pretty good I guess)
We'll get a dirty sound that way, If we force it too much I reckon
it'll be
really dreadful. "

I think you should listen to your guitarist. Also, trying to sync up those 5 or 6 individual tape decks would be a nightmare without some sort of time code. You wouldn't only get 'dirty' but weird phasey modulation too due to the different speeds of the tape players.

Why not try to record it on the clean side and then dirty it up later? At least then you have all the time in the world to experiment.

ebeam wrote:I think you should listen to your guitarist. Also, trying to sync up those 5 or 6 individual tape decks would be a nightmare without some sort of time code.

we were planning to sync it using cubase or similar - i dont really see that being too difficult as you can use, say, a snare hit to line everything up.

ebeam wrote:You wouldn't only get 'dirty' but weird phasey modulation too due to the different speeds of the tape players.

ok assuming i record the separate tracks to computer in realtime & sync them do you still think this will occur? i guess the imperfections of electric motors will make the tape speed modulate slightly out of sync with each other, is this what you meant?

what you do is you buy two shit microphones and record onto cassette. assuming the two mics are cardioid, put them at an angle, somewhere at most 90 degrees, and in the room as ambient mics. use any two track recorder. using special machinery to make it sound worse is not only hard, but retarded. you don't have to break your back to record in lo-fidelity. none of this "element of cleanness" shit. sebadoh tried that on "the sebadoh" and it ended up sounding bad. if you put minimal effort and money into the process, you'll come out with a good result.

so:
two pieces of shit into a piece of shit, and don't go near your computer

what you do is you buy two shit microphones and record onto cassette. assuming the two mics are cardioid, put them at an angle, somewhere at most 90 degrees, and in the room as ambient mics. use any two track recorder. using special machinery to make it sound worse is not only hard, but retarded. you don't have to break your back to record in lo-fidelity. none of this "element of cleanness" shit. sebadoh tried that on "the sebadoh" and it ended up sounding bad. if you put minimal effort and money into the process, you'll come out with a good result.

so:
two pieces of shit into a piece of shit, and don't go near your computer[/quote]

I'd say, go with the cheap cassette recorders, but take the signal out into some other recording device. You put a cassette in, put in on record-pause and take the signal out from that. That way, you don't have to mess around with Cubase or whatever the fuck you were going to try to synch up 6 or 8 cassette tapes with (which, trust me, would have been a nightmare). I agree with whoever said stay away from your computer - it will just add artificial "cleanness" to your dirty sound.

yushbombn wrote:we were planning to sync it using cubase or similar - i dont really see that being too difficult as you can use, say, a snare hit to line everything up.

i think cassette decks are impossible to sync up like this.. all of the recordings will be different lengths.. i would guess up to like 5% longer or shorter depending on how long the recordings are...

have you considered using a 4 or 8 track cassette recorder? if you are doing a 'dirty' recording like this, i can't imagine track width is going to be too crucial.

yushbombn wrote:we were planning to sync it using cubase or similar - i dont really see that being too difficult as you can use, say, a snare hit to line everything up.

Don't even attempt it. A friend of mine attempted to put all 8 tracks from his Fostex R8 onto his PC to mix. He only had a stereo sound card, so had to move them over two tracks at a time. He then spent an eternity messing about with timestretching and suchlike getting them to fit together, due to the wow&flutter of the machine. An R8 runs at 15 inches a second and has reasonably low wow&flutter. Try doing this with cheapo domestic tape-recorders and you can kiss the rest of your year goodbye.