Nils and Graham Goof Off at Rehearsal

bassDuring a recent rehearsal I managed to catch a few seconds of a really nice improvised jam between Nils Westdal on Bass and Graham O’Brien on drums just before we captured a run through of a new piece we were working on. The kick has a nice thump considering that I was only using the mics built into the PCM-D50. I like the way the kick and rim shot pattern counter the bass harmonics. Undoubtedly there’s a loop in there worth experimenting with.

Nils and Graham Goof Off

Reel to Reel Tape JAM!

Hey Cookbookers,

I’ve had a brilliant few last days, and amongst the highlights were the acquisition of a used AKAI 4000d tape machine. A bit on the machine first – I got it through an very healthy program called freecycle.org here in the UK. I simply put an ad up asking if anyone had any old noise making bits that they didn’t use anymore, and I got a response from a decent bloke who offered me a tape machine he couldn’t get to use.

Delighted I picked it up, he showed me how to thread the tape (a bit before my time you see…) and such. I was immensely grateful and helped him out with some technical computer bits out of gratitude.

Story over, now for the fun. I’ve hooked my Tape machine up to the PC, and routed it through a focusrite preamp and sherman filterbank. I love the retro psychedelic sound – type stuff, and was playing around with feedback loops and such. It turned into a jam, with my loops and samples, and feedback etc. and (i’m not sure if this is meant to happen) but the fast forwarding and rewinding of the tape picked up all the noise, but in super high speed. I think this sounds brilliant. Check it out!

*IT’S LOUD!!!* :D
Tape Machine Jam