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Although there are some consumer grade tapedecks that are still on the market, with mechanisms no better than lower-end models of 30 years ago, I found out that a professional model exists which may be worth your consideration. The features are interesting because the past definitely meets the present in some very positive ways, with the caveat that Dolby noise reduction isn’t an option. It’s rather unfortunate that it is no longer something a manufacturer can license, and that it’s not been made public domain.

From age 7 to the present, I’ve thought samplers were one of the coolest electronic musical instruments! I didn’t know what they were called, or where I could get one, or even how to explain my obsession to the staff at the local music store, I just knew there was a really cool guy on Sesame Street who had a keyboard that I wanted!

Fast forward a few years, and I discovered Jim snowbarger’s material. One of the episodes of “The Snowman Radio Broadcast” consisted of a tour of his studio, which is where I learned what a sampler was.

Skipping past some false starts in my sampling efforts, I discovered the sfz instrument format, and Sforzando.

All that having been said, I’ve been making several SFZ instruments of rather unusual things over the last few years, 2 of which Andre used in one of his “inspired by sound” videos.

As he explained on the video…

Watch the Tray has a most unusual history, and it begins in a hotel in Wales.
I was away for the weekend some years ago, and I noticed that the silver tray on which the cups and other drink-making accouterments sat, made quite a great noise. This was discovered purely by accident, but it lead me to remove everything from the tray and record it using a recorder that I had with me at the time.

Equally, the Apple Watch case has an interesting start as an instrument. My wife Kirsten had bought me a travel-charger for my Apple Watch last Christmas. You have to have an original charging-cable to-hand, and put this inside the case. To do this, you take the lid of the case off, and wrap the cable around the inside of the unit, placing the magnetic portion in the space provided. You put the lid back on, and the magnet is visible on top. You would then rest your watch on top of the case and it would charge. me being me however, I discovered that after taking the lid of the case off, it would ring for a very long time if struck with an Alan key, so I set out to record this one day when the house was empty.

Later, he sent those recordings to me and I turned them in to playable instruments.

Watch his video, enjoy the track, the breakdown, and join the fun by downloading the instruments from there.

This is just a brief announcement to let those who follow me on twitter and facebook know that future posts concerning lanes audio will be on a separate account. Everyone with any sort of marketing experience who have seen what I’ve been trying to do has told me to make personal and business discrete, not just in friendships and relationships, but on social media as well. That having been said…

Follow @lanesaudio

In addition to restoration services I’ve been advertising, I’d like to make several free instruments and effects available that I’ve created over the years. However, to present them the way I’d like, I need to learn a bit more about Word Press first.

If I just linked to a bunch of seemingly random things, the long term result would be a serious mess that would need cleaning up. Such an effort would also change the address of pages someone may have bookmarked, and dead links are not good.

Big full-range sound, in little tiny grooves… It’s amazing that records work at all, not to mention sound as good as they do. Several people make the assertion that records contain much more detail than audio on a cd. Others may argue that they sound ok at best, and that there’s something kind of nostalgic in hearing scratchy sounding music with clicks and pops in the background. However, in my opinion, the sound of records lie somewhere between those extremes. Warn or scratched records containing recordings that were carefully mixed and mastered are compromised, but records which were properly pressed, and well-preserved will allow someone with a good turntable and preamp to hear all of the detail of badly produced recordings.

Have an example of what I mean. Can you hear the door slam? Given the song and the lyrics, you may appreciate the irony.

If you missed it, the door slamming was after the word “Joy.” Not a very joyful noise for sure, but one captured on the 1972 release of “The little drummer boy” by the Peppermint Kandy Kids.

Listening to this record has been, and is still one of my Christmas traditions. Until I found a copy of it on ebay, I just had a badly recorded tape of it though. All of the subtleties were lost in the background noise, and tinny sound of that bad transfer.

The cheep components in the turntable that were used when the tape was recorded are similar to those used in the portable record players that are popping up all over the place. Just do a search for “Portable turntable” or “Crosley” on youtube, and you’ll see a combination of negative reviews by people who are familiar with higher end equipment, and millennials who think the whole thing is like… so retro! OMG! 😛

That having been said, I’ve found a rather interesting video which discusses and demonstrates some of the advantages of performing upgrades on these low-end record players. I didn’t know that any of the components were replaceable. I figured that short of the stylus, everything else was either soldered, or hot glued together.

What are your thoughts and observations?
In addition to the kinds of things I’ve already posted, would you like me to use this blog as a means of sharing other videos I find interesting?
Let me know by leaving a comment.