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Scissoring and splicing tape... in the old days...


rasputin1963

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Today,  I'm tweaking a digital audio track...   It's so easy to nudge a  note left or right in time,   'til it sounds perfect  (to say absolutely nothing of all the other FX you can apply to it).

 

This makes me think about the guys who used to cut-and-splice real tape in the old days.    Did you ever cut-and-splice tape  to better achieve the sounds you were after?

 

Have you any interesting stories about what it was like to cut-and-splice tape manually?     It must've been a real art,   and an exacting one.    Some guys must've gotten dazzlingly good at it.    If you made a mistake,  I'd think repairing it would've been a booger.  Was there never an audible "hiccup" at splice-point?      Tell me what it was like.    Any wild or unusual effects created using this method?   Did they just use a single-edged razor blade and Scotch tape?

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rasputin1963 wrote:

 

Today,  I'm tweaking a digital audio track...   It's so easy to nudge a  note left or right in time,   'til it sounds perfect  (to say absolutely nothing of all the other FX you can apply to it).

 

This makes me think about the guys who used to cut-and-splice real tape in the old days.    Did you ever cut-and-splice tape  to better achieve the sounds you were after?

 

Have you any interesting stories about what it was like to cut-and-splice tape manually?     It must've been a real art,   and an exacting one.    Some guys must've gotten dazzlingly good at it.    If you made a mistake,  I'd think repairing it would've been a booger.  Was there never an audible "hiccup" at splice-point?      Tell me what it was like.    Any wild or unusual effects created using this method?   Did they just use a single-edged razor blade and Scotch tape?

 

I used to do a lot of cut 'n splice two track editing using a splicing block mounted on the machine and pre-cut adhesive tape strips.  I never attempted a mulititrack razor blade edit but the owner of a studio I used to use before building my own studio routinely did that.  I think he called it a "rocket punch" meaning there's no way in heck you could get those results with a punch in.  

2" tape was expensive.  It was customary in those days to bulk erase and re use tape on lesser projects, but this guy always gave us the 2" tape because it was pretty cut up by the time we were done.

Terry D.

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No. 

If there were a track were somehow "behind" or "forward" and needed it - I can't think of an example of how this happened but I know I've done this before - I used to delay another track by ear by sending it through a delay that was turned 100% to delay. I just cannot for the life of me remember why I needed to do this, and I think I only did it once ever.

As far as "flying stuff" around, I've had to fix parts of messed up guitar and vocal tracks by replacing the messed up part by sampling a good part with a digital sampler and replacing the bad part. Now, it's a simple cut and paste.

I was recording with analog up until the early 2000s because I was getting a better sound than my Digi001 setup, but when I replaced the converters, I switched to recording to a DAW. But anyway, I was using an Akai MG1214, which had cassettes, not reel-to-reel, so I didn't do edits.

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Lee Knight wrote:

 

Easy!!?? I do window edits on Pro Tools sessions by pulling the hard drive and erasing the 0s and 1s man! Individualy. I haven't perfected it yet but...

 

 

At times I've felt like pulling the hard drive out of a computer and throwing it out the window. Does that count?

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