A little bit of old-school half-track fun

[The Nick]

Since the studios we use at school here are beautiful behemoths with HD rigs and whatnot, one of my housemates and I are constructing a hybrid analog basement studio for the year. We've adopted the "{censored}ty is pretty" sentiment. Hope y'all can dig our first cut.

 

Tape Sheds Vol.1

[Phil O'Keefe]

Can you tell us more about the the studio you're setting up, and that session Nick? Which Otari are you using?

 

I liked the bass and the snare tones.

[The Nick]

Thanks Phil! For this particular little tune I used a cascade fathead as a kit mic and a KEL HM7u on the bass amp and sent 'em into a Presonus Firepod. Added a little bit of a spring reverb (PSP easyverb) and compression (Cytomic The Glue) on the drums to to get a little pump and breathe from the hi-hat. The bass just took a little shaping from a Nomad Factory BlueTubes channel strip - pushed its output limiter just a little.

 

That was in the box, but I sent these channels panned hard out to my Otari mx5050 and back. The tape is quite old, and I don't know the formulation. We (the drummer, who is also a student engineer and I) decided to bias it to maximum output for now and roll. Next up is some 456, I think.

 

Currently, we're switching over to a 16 channel Allen & Heath 16 FireWire desk, and have about 15 RCA, Audix, Shure and AT mics on long-term loan from a fellow student. It's not pro, but we're not pros yet, so this is our opportunity to experiment!

 

Btw, the majority of our school

work takes place on an API Vision

[flatpickle]

Sounds cool. The drums have that "listening through two screen doors" sound.