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
I like it (tape is nice), but it’s a little too loud. Might scare some folks out there :-)
Yes, that is terrifying! And I love it. Such warmth and depth. It reminds me of Karlheinz Stockhausen. This is an excellent example of the type of experimentation I like to hear on ACB. Thanks, Tom!
Great noise! Did you record yourself to tape and then playback/shuttle the that tape thru your filterbank? Or was the source tape just a random tape that came with the recorder?
The source you can’t hear much, as it’s pitched up 2-300%, but I was previewing samples from my library and outputting that to the tape machine live.
The signal chain was PC>DAC>TAPE>SHERMAN FILTERBANK>PREAMP/CHANNEL>ADC>PC. All live tweaking.
I think the reason ffwd/rwinding made a sound is that I hadn’t run the tape over the right rollers. Happy accidents huh?
ps. Me and Stockhausen would have got on…he’s just a knob twiddler like me *cough*!! ;-)
Man, that’s sick! I gotta pick up one of these old machines!
if anyone wants to buy it let me know