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   tascam portastudio 414 mk 2 on a desk
   Eric Limer

    1. [103]Tech

     [104]Audio

     [105]This Four-Track Tape Recorder Made Me Fall In Love With Music
   All Over Again

  This Four-Track Tape Recorder Made Me Fall In Love With Music All Over Again

   The cassette is still cool.

   By [106]Eric Limer
   Oct 11, 2023

   For the past ten years or so I've been a musical rut, playing the same
   half-dozen, half-written songs on guitar once every other blue moon and
   listening to the same handful of punk bands I listened to in high
   school. I’ve been a musician for most of my life. Between church
   choirs, garage bands, and a cappella groups, I’ve been involved in
   organized (but never professional) music-making for the better part of
   several decades. But, after so long uninspired, I thought that maybe
   the musical part of my life was mostly behind me. Until the [107]Tascam
   Portastudio 414 MKII brought it all flooding back.

     * Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII 4-Track Cassette Recorder
       [108]$475 AT REVERB.COM
       [109]Read More
       [110]$475 AT REVERB.COM

   Released at the tail end of the 90s, the Portastudio 414 MKII harkens
   back to a time before MacBooks shipped with Garageband. If you wanted
   to record music with multiple tracks that could be altered
   independently, you were looking at booking studio time or buying
   something like this lovely big blue beast. And make no mistake, this
   chunky boy can deliver if you've got the chops. Bruce Springsteen's
   Nebraska, a few early Ween records, and some vintage Weird Al tunes
   [111]were all recorded on a Portastudio of one make or another. More
   recently, Nine Inch Nails' Alessandro Cortini has been almost single
   handedly responsible for making the 414 MKII in particular cool again
   with [112]his unorthodox (and extremely sick) use of the device as an
   instrument in live performance.
   Eric Limer

Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII 4-Track Cassette Recorder

   reverb.com
   $475.00
   [113]SHOP NOW

   The 414 MK II lets you record four independent tracks to a humble
   cassette tape, just enough room for bass, guitar, vocals, and drums,
   with the ability to add more if you’ve got the nerve to "bounce down"
   multiple instruments to the same track, irrevocably intertwining two
   rivers of sound to free up a slot for additional recording. It’s
   ridiculously limited compared to the "digital audio workstations" you
   can get literally for free today. but it does come with one killer
   feature that has only truly emerged in the millennium following its
   original launch: You don’t have to stare at a fucking screen to use it.
   close up of leds
   Much like celluloid photographic film, magnetic tape handles peaking
   more gracefully than digital mediums.
   Eric Limer
   a close up of a play button
   There’s nothing quite so satisfying is pressing play and feeling the
   tape start to move.
   Eric Limer

   I only ever recorded one (very poorly performed) song with my
   Portastudio when my parents gifted it to me back in the mid-aughts, and
   for almost twenty years I hadn’t really thought about it at all. But
   when an album cover featuring its unmistakable visage cropped up on my
   Spotify, it lit a spark in my brain. Mom knew just the closet where it
   had spent a decade plus hiding and soon, with a package of fresh
   cassette tapes in hand, I was ready to hit record.
   a stack of cassette tapes
   The Portastudio is designed to use pricey "Type II" cassette tapes for
   optimal performance, but cheaper Type 1s work fine (or better, if you
   actually want that telltale hiss).
   Eric Limer

   The joy of working in an analog medium, as [114]lovers of film
   photography can attest, is both the friction and the flavor it brings.
   Light leaks can spice up an otherwise average photograph. A little tape
   hiss can give your jam that extra flair. The cost, of course, is that
   your mistakes get baked all the way in, for better or worse. No undo
   buttons here. You have to move slowly and skillfully to find success.
   And so my plan to record guitar, bass, and vocals quickly hit a
   not-insignificant snag: I am neither a particularly good recording
   artist nor a remotely competent audio engineer.

   After a few hours of trying and failing to adequately record the
   beat-to-shit [115]Yamaha FG-335II I stole from my dad on my way to
   college 16 years ago with a unidirectional dynamic mic not remotely fit
   for the task, I tripped and fell into a whole other rabbit hole. What
   you really need, the gear gremlin between my ears sweetly whispered, is
   a drum machine. Also a synthesizer.

   A bit of research and a few impulse buys later, I was finally in
   business:

   This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the
   same content in another format, or you may be able to find more
   information, at their web site.

Featured in this track:

   Korg Volca Keys
   Korg Volca Keys
   Korg amazon.com
   $237.00
   $147.99 (38% off)
   [116]SHOP NOW

   Arguably the cornerstone of Korg's budget "Volca" line, the Volca Keys
   has old-school analog circuitry, basic sequencer functionality and
   limited polyphony so you can play chords. It's also optionally
   battery-powered and I've spent dozens of hours jamming on it while
   sitting on the couch. Oh also it sounds fat as hell.
   Korg NTS Digital Synth Kit 1
   Korg NTS Digital Synth Kit 1
   Korg amazon.com
   $95.00
   [117]SHOP NOW

   You have to assemble this tiny, digital synth yourself, but it packs a
   ton of functionality into an itty bitty and affordable package. It
   supports [118]a library of community-programmed instrument sounds and
   effects and doubles as a capable FX pedal for my other gear thanks to
   its passthrough reverb, chorus and modulation effects.
   Arturia KeyStep 32-Key Controller
   Arturia KeyStep 32-Key Controller
   Arturia amazon.com
   $149.00
   $129.00 (13% off)
   [119]SHOP NOW

   My Korgs all sport touchpad keyboards that are... technically
   functional. If you want any sort of precision, an external MIDI
   keyboard is essential. Arturia's KeyStep is a go-to choice that sports
   some useful features of its own, like a sequencer for recording complex
   patterns and an arpeggiator for auto-playing simpler ones.
   Korg Volca Sample 2 Korg Volca Sample 2
   Korg guitarcenter.com
   $109.99
   [120]SHOP NOW

   It's not a drum machine, but I used it as one because it comes
   preloaded with a number of drum recordings (and other sound clips) and
   the ability to load your own. It served me well enough, but I'm putting
   this one back on the market because I've made it redundant with some
   other buys and I've learned that I much prefer synthesis to sampling.

   Like any amateur analog artifact, this track contains mistakes encased
   in amber. The hi-hats are too hot because I didn’t balance the levels
   of the individual drums in my sampler before committing the whole drum
   track to tape. The bass comes in awkwardly because I was doing dynamics
   live to tape with the synth's volume knob instead of using a fader
   during mixdown. The solo, well, it is what it is. But the Portastudio
   saved my ass, not (only) with tape hiss, but by helping me take a deep
   breath and put this song to bed. I won’t waste hours trying to improve
   on the raw material with endless tiny tweaks, because I can't. Lessons
   (hopefully) learned, on to the next jam!
   a piano with a keyboard
   Controlled over MIDI by the Arturia KeyStep, the Volca Keys outputs its
   audio through the NTS-1 for reverb before heading into track one on the
   Portastudio.
   Eric Limer

   In the months since that inaugural recording, the road of my obsession
   has taken me away from analog, and towards digital devices that can
   synthesize and sequence a song’s worth of instruments inside themselves
   (still no computer screens allowed). At the moment, I’m in love with my
   [121]"Woovebox," a petite-but-powerful one-person labor of love out of
   Australia, while I simultaneously lust after [122]the wickedly slick,
   murdered-out Dirtywave M8 Tracker, a Gameboy-sized studio in a
   handheld.

   If the two of us didn't go so far back, I might consider flipping my
   Portastudio on the secondary market, where the prices are currently
   sky-high. I could probably get more for it now than my parents
   originally paid and finance a big chunk of this or that digital
   dalliance. But in a way, I'm glad to be spared the temptation. Because
   if there's anything I've learned over the past twenty-something years,
   it's that the odds are very high I'll come crawling back to cassette.

     * Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII 4-Track Cassette Recorder
       [123]$475 AT REVERB.COM
       [124]Read More
       [125]$475 AT REVERB.COM

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 176. https://www.facebook.com/gearpatrol/
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