Author: chris

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Beyond Four Tracks

Sansui six-track cassette format c. 1989

Otari Compact 8-track 1/2″ format c. 1989.   Also, SECK mixer.

Toa 8-track cassette format

…and you better bet TASCAM made one too.

Above: some short-lived “more-than-four” home-recording formats that were available between the 4-track cassette and ADAT eras.   It’s kind hard to imagine how significant an issue ‘track count’ (IE., the number of available tracks of a particular multi-track recording machine) was just a short while ago.  It’s not unusual at all these days for me to make a production for an artist that has 80 or even 100 tracks.  And I am not talking about some crazy orchestral or prog-rock epic; I am talking about just a well-produced indie pop song.  Modern music means layering.  Lots of it.  When I, and many other folks started doing this, we dreamed of someday having more than 8 tracks to work with.  Well, as it turns out, ‘more’ didn’t mean 16, 24, or even 48: it meant infinite.  “Be careful what you wish for…”

What will be the next technological barrier to fall in the world of audio production?

I wouldn’t mind seeing all those goddamn wires go away, for one…

Any other ideas?

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Ladies and Gentlemen of 1989 (pop music division)

Cyborg chick with some sort of midi-synchonizer

I play the keyboards (for Bon Jovi)

(pointy guitars are) impossible to (avoid) / (resist)

“Well I like your style too, man.  Got a whole cowboy thing goin…”

 

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The 4-Track

The Concept of Home Studio Carried To Its Logical Conclusion

Bathroom Studio

Kitchen Studio

Yamaha home-studio adverts circa 1989.  Click on the images to expand.

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Synthesizers

Synthesizers photographed on stone-colored backgrounds

As the first in a series of “Brief Trends in Visual Culture,” we bring you: synthesizers photographed on stone-colored backgrounds.  Pictured above: Roland  S50, Korg SG1, EMU Emax SE and Emulator 3.  If anyone can explain the significance of the all the stone-gray backgrounds, please let us know.

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Guitar Equipment

1967

The Selmer Varitone Saxophone amplification system circa 1967.  Click here for previous coverage on PS dot com.  I once bought a few of the lil cigarette-pack-sized belt-mount preamp units; they make the most fantastic fuzz sounds when used with gtr or bass.  Long gone to the eBay wilds…

Heathkit rock-band hardware circa 1967, including Heath-distributed Rocket, Silhouette, and ‘Deluxe’ Harmony guitars.  Also on offer: Heathkit TA-16 solid-state guitar amp.  Click here and here for more Heathkit coverage on PS dot com. 

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Wendy Carlos in her home studio 1989

Although I don’t necessarily agree with super-aggressive enforcement of certain copyright laws, OR the fact that she tried to sue one of my favorite recording-artists after he released an affectionate tribute-song about her, I don’t want anyone to think that I am hating on Wendy Carlos.  Given the remarkable and really uncanny life of this great composer, who can really judge?  Pictured above: Carlos with cats and synthesizers.

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Early Electronic Music

Raymond Scott, Electronic Music Pioneer

Raymond Scott in his home studio, 1955

“The composer must bear in mind that the radio listener does not hear music directly. He hears it only after the sound has passed through a microphone, amplifiers, transmission lines, radio transmitter, receiving set, and, finally, the loud speaker apparatus itself.” —Raymond Scott, 1938

“Raymond Scott was definitely in the forefront of developing electronic music technology, and in the forefront of using it commercially as a musician.” – Bob Moog (SOURCE)

Raymond Scott was one of the true visionaries of early electronic music.  You can read his fascinating story here.  Being a huge fan of Eno, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze, it is remarkable to me that Scott was creating very similar compositions (often with his own homemade equipment) a decade or more before any of those artists.  Many early electronic artists seemed interested in sound-as-music, noise-as-music – recall how Varese, Stockhausen, and Luening used electronics in their work.  Others seemed content to replicate traditional harmonic and melodic patterns, using the newly available electronic voices as novel colors.  For instance, Wendy Carlos (no link available due to the fact that Carlos seems stuck in the past as regards YouTube and modern content realities.  Ironic, ain’t it).  NEways,,, Scott, contrary to both of these approaches, walked a middle line – creating often wholly electronic music in which the harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic strategies were both pleasantly listenable but also very true to their synthetic nature: there’s really no attempt to shoehorn trumpet and piano lines into the new voices he established.  To rephrase: the material is very much composed for these particular new voices, but in an approachable way.


Above, Scott’s ‘Electronium’ music computer of 1965.  Not too surprisingly, it is currently owned by Mark Mothersbaugh; a child to Scott’s marriage of esoteric electronics and pop sensibility if there was ever one.  The ‘Electronium’ currently awaits restoration.  Makes me cringe to just think about servicing that thing.  Good luck fellas.

For more coverage of early electronic music pioneers on PS dot com, click here. 

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Antique Hi-Fi Archive

Hi-Fidelity Furniture circa 1957

Download the complete 36pp 1957 Cabinart catalog (presented in three parts due to size)

DOWNLOAD PART 1: Cabinart_1957_part1

DOWNLOAD PART 2: Cabinart_1957_part2

DOWNLOAD PART 3: Cabinart_1957_part3

Models covered include: well, hundreds of ’em.  All intended for Mono operation, including the ‘Rebel’ series of corner-horns designed by Paul Klipsch.

Above, the Rebel ‘Ortho 315’ which featured University (aka Altec) and Klipsch components.

When I think of ‘Hi Fi Furniture’ I immediately envision the wares of the Bell’ogetti brand (now known simply as ‘Bell’o’).  Their classic 80s and 90s designs were largely minimal, metal, and exposing the equipment in a dramatic manner.  Hi-Fi furniture of the 50’s was designed rather to hide and/or disguise the equipment: to ‘blend’ with the more traditional home-furnishings such as the hutch and end-table.

An interesting side-note: it seems like a mono-system offers more opportunities for designing attractive, unobtrusive hi-fi furniture.  Once you can commit to a single set of speakers, why not simply put the components in the same spot?  The whole system can be aesthetically unified, there are no wires running all over the place, etc.  Stereo console-furniture was certainly made as well in the coming years, but at some point we seem to have entered an era of conspicuous display of audio equipment rather than following a policy of tasteful containment.

Above, a Cabinart print-ad from 1956.  As the advert points out, most Cabinart models were available in three variants:  assembled+ finished, ready-to-finish, or as ready-to-assemble-and-finish.

Above, 99 North 11th street, Brooklyn, NY, former home of Cabinart, as it stands today.  Lofts are available, btw.  This structure is a stones-throw away from Beacon’s Closet and the Brooklyn Brewery, two icons of the ‘New-Williamsburg’ if ever there were.

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Live This Wednesday 6.25.12 New Haven CT: Tomorrow Tomorrow

This Wednesday at BAR in New Haven CT I will be performing as part of Tomorrow Tomorrow, a new group organized around Meredith Dimenna.  Tomorrow Tomorrow is the first full-length album that I’ve produced in my new spot Gold Coast Recorders and it is very exciting to be bringing it to life for the first time.  Meredith is a truly gifted vocalist and the music is unique hybrid of raw country and psychedelic drone.  TT is opening for Daughn Gibson, a fine singer who was been getting acclaim for his new record on the White Denim label.  If you’re in the area, come on down; the show is free and Bar serves some of the best pizza in world too.

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Diggin

Picked up a few interesting pieces today.  Above, an Altec 660B microphone circa 1958.  I already had a 660A (same thing, but fixed impedance) but this was too good a deal to pass up.  Altec marketed these as ‘broadcast mics’ but both of my units, while having pretty good top end, have a pretty weak bass response.  The 660B sounds a little bit better to my ears.

The 660B came mounted on this beautiful Shure S36 tabletop mic stand; that’s a push-to-talk DPDT switch mounted on the front.

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Moving on to stranger fare: above, a “Little Mike” as made by the Brooklyn Metal Stamping Company circa 1930.  This one confused me for a minute as it had no markings on it other than a patent date on the rear:

This was enough information to coax Google into revealing the origins of this artifact.  See here and here for the details.

The Little Mike’s rather long stretch of two-conductor cable terminates in these unusual copper discs.  As it turns out, these discs are intended to be attached thru two of the pins on a radio’s detector tube; this will allow the mic signal to come out of the radio speaker.

The question is, naturally: which pins?  The grid and the ground-side filament, I assume?  I can’t figure out how to get sound out of this thing.  I get no DC resistance reading across the two terminals, and no sound when I connect the terminals across a high-gain, high-impedance input.  I am guessing, based on the patent date, that this is a single-button carbon mic, which would mean that I would need a low voltage source and a signal transformer that can handle DC on the primary in order to test it.  Anyone have any suggestions/advice?

***update: read the comments section for implementation information courtesy of M. Shultz, as well as the not-so-thrilling conclusion to the saga of Little Mike.