When I were a lad I only had one fret and I had to play all the notes on it

[Waddo Soqable]

Some of the non sync'd bits could certainly turn out as cool coincidences, we often built up background "atmospheres" that didn't matter if they were synced up in time or not. 

A case of making use of what you have and likely making you more creative, unlike nowadays when you've got literally everything at your fingertips, but.... 

[Waddo Soqable]

Having piqued my interest now, I've dug out my old Akai reel to reel, the step-up from the cassette doings.. It still powers up, I had a bag of old classical tapes, which were regarded as scrap blank tape and recorded over, I'll have to try and locate those, I suspect any stuff we did has long gone tho

[BigRedX]

3 hours ago, Waddo Soqable said:

Great stuff 👍, I remember the Wasp synth, I never had one but they had a few at a college in South London somewhere, that did a little electronic course in the evenings for a few weeks, a couple of us went a few times, but other than "playing with" their gear didn't really actually learn much. 

Surprising really that an "official" course like that even existed in those early days as it was all very new then.. 

 

My second band recorded both our demos (including the one that had CBS records interested in signing us) in the music and drama studios at Trent Poly where both myself and our singer were studying.

 

The "music studio" was a tiny room with a 4-track reel-to-reel machine, 4-channel mixer and a Mini-Moog synth. We failed to get any decent sounds out of the Mini-Moog either because it was broken due to years of abuse at the hands of uninterested students, or because I simply didn't know how to work it compared to the Wasp. In the end I think we managed to coax some white noise percussive sounds out of it that were used on one track. The studio was only available during normal teaching hours which meant that people kept knocking on the door and telling us to keep the noise down. We managed to record and mix two songs in the course of an afternoon session.

 

By contrast the Drama Studio was a massive hall with the recording equipment (1" 8-track reel-to-reel and 16 channel desk) in a raised booth at one end. This time we were able to record over a weekend so there were no problems with noise complaints. However we did have problems getting a suitably hot signal from the drum machine and synthesisers onto tape, and ended up having to put them through amps and mic them up. Unfortunately this meant we didn't have enough amps to play and record live so everything had to be built up one or two instruments at a time. We did the drum machine and bass first, with me standing as far from the amp as my leads would allow and the singer singing at me very quietly so I knew where in the song we were but she wouldn't be picked up by the mics! It took us the whole weekend to record and mix 4 songs that way.

[Sercet]

19 hours ago, Waddo Soqable said:

Have you got a link to that on YouTube? 

 

[Sercet]

19 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Which band were you in? There's a good chance that I have your record!

I played with the Czechs on the Rough Cuts EP on Z-block, who introduced the world to the Young Marble Giants. 

[Waddo Soqable]

8 minutes ago, Sercet said:

 

Ha! Excellent.. I listened to it 3 times so far 👍

[stewblack]

My old man made my first combo from an old lo-fi record player.

My first 'effect pedal' was one of those old shoe box tape recorders into the mic socket out of the earphone (singular) socket, push up the little tab while pressing record and play, and off you go!

[Beedster]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

My second band recorded both our demos (including the one that had CBS records interested in signing us) in the music and drama studios at Trent Poly where both myself and our singer were studying.

 

The "music studio" was a tiny room with a 4-track reel-to-reel machine, 4-channel mixer and a Mini-Moog synth. We failed to get any decent sounds out of the Mini-Moog either because it was broken due to years of abuse at the hands of uninterested students, or because I simply didn't know how to work it compared to the Wasp. In the end I think we managed to coax some white noise percussive sounds out of it that were used on one track. The studio was only available during normal teaching hours which meant that people kept knocking on the door and telling us to keep the noise down. We managed to record and mix two songs in the course of an afternoon session.

 

By contrast the Drama Studio was a massive hall with the recording equipment (1" 8-track reel-to-reel and 16 channel desk) in a raised booth at one end. This time we were able to record over a weekend so there were no problems with noise complaints. However we did have problems getting a suitably hot signal from the drum machine and synthesisers onto tape, and ended up having to put them through amps and mic them up. Unfortunately this meant we didn't have enough amps to play and record live so everything had to be built up one or two instruments at a time. We did the drum machine and bass first, with me standing as far from the amp as my leads would allow and the singer singing at me very quietly so I knew where in the song we were but she wouldn't be picked up by the mics! It took us the whole weekend to record and mix 4 songs that way.

 

Brings back so many feelings of the time. In 1982 I was hugely fortunate - on the basis of having no A-levels and quite poor O-levels - to be accepted into one of the first Electronic Music Technology Programme (EMIT) which, rather oddly at first sight, was newly offered at the London College of Furniture, the chronological logic being along the lines - teach people to build furniture - teach people to restore furniture - teach people to restore pianos - teach people to build pianos - teach people to build other wooden instruments such as guitars - teach people to record these instruments ergo the EMIT course. The main difference between your story and mine was that in an equivalent small room we had the opposite problem, stinky poo loads of expensive gear including one of the first Fairlights in the country (Trevor Horn at Sarm East just around the corner also had on, so as postcodes go - and perhaps rather appropriately given the genre - E1 was a well endowed area for digital music tech) that almost no-one at the institution knew how to use, I suspect a lot more funding had been thrown at tech than at expertise. Anyway, having until literally weeks before been using cassette machines as above, suddenly I was in a dark room sampling random noises and creating even more random recordings (IIRC one of my colleagues played the national anthem in dog barks which seemed quite radical at the time).

 

But even given the emergent digital tech we had, we were still at heart analogue cassette recording engineers and carried that vibe into the room. It was exciting. And yes, we were often told to turn it down also   

[BigRedX]

46 minutes ago, Waddo Soqable said:

Ha! Excellent.. I listened to it 3 times so far 👍

 

As the great man himself said after playing this track: "Well mine are real and really rather lovely", which we then sampled lo-tech style on cassette and spun in as part of the intro to the "dub" version which was on our next album. Johan Kugelberg was quite enamoured too...

 

You probably couldn't get away with either song from a lyrical PoV nowadays. At the time we justified it by claiming to be ironic.

Edited March 27, 2023 by BigRedX

[BigRedX]

55 minutes ago, Sercet said:

I played with the Czechs on the Rough Cuts EP on Z-block, who introduced the world to the Young Marble Giants. 

 

I have every single Z-Block release apart from the one you were on :-((  (although I do recognise the band name from John Peel).

 

I was a massive fan of both Reptile Ranch and YMG (I saw them play at the Boat Club here in Nottingham where they were persuaded to do 5 encores by a very enthusiastic audience and only allowed to leave the stage because they had no more songs left to play). 

 

I was introduced to Z-Block by John (IIRC) from Puritan Guitars who "bought" (they were available for free to anyone who sent us a blank C-60 and an SAE) a copy of our first cassette album and then wrote back berating us for having released it on a free cassette rather than putting some of the tracks out as a single or EP as in his opinion the music was certainly good enough. I had to politely explain to him that firstly even at Desperate Bicycles production prices producing actual vinyl was way beyond what we could afford, and that secondly since we didn't gig I didn't see how we would ever shift any copies. We did distribute over 100 copies of the cassette in less than 6 months though.

[BigRedX]

30 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Brings back so many feelings of the time. In 1982 I was hugely fortunate - on the basis of having no A-levels and quite poor O-levels - to be accepted into one of the first Electronic Music Technology Programme (EMIT) which, rather oddly at first sight, was newly offered at the London College of Furniture, the chronological logic being along the lines - teach people to build furniture - teach people to restore furniture - teach people to restore pianos - teach people to build pianos - teach people to build other wooden instruments such as guitars - teach people to record these instruments ergo the EMIT course.

 

IIRC Simon of Gus Guitars fame is a graduate of one of these courses. I think he originally went to learn how to make furniture but became more interested in applying the techniques to guitar making.

[Rich]

This is one of the best BC threads in ages.

[Sercet]

17 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

I have every single Z-Block release apart from the one you were on :-((  (although I do recognise the band name from John Peel).

 

I was a massive fan of both Reptile Ranch and YMG (I saw them play at the Boat Club here in Nottingham where they were persuaded to do 5 encores by a very enthusiastic audience and only allowed to leave the stage because they had no more songs left to play). 

 

I was introduced to Z-Block by John (IIRC) from Puritan Guitars who "bought" (they were available for free to anyone who sent us a blank C-60 and an SAE) a copy of our first cassette album and then wrote back berating us for having released it on a free cassette rather than putting some of the tracks out as a single or EP as in his opinion the music was certainly good enough. I had to politely explain to him that firstly even at Desperate Bicycles production prices producing actual vinyl was way beyond what we could afford, and that secondly since we didn't gig I didn't see how we would ever shift any copies. We did distribute over 100 copies of the cassette in less than 6 months though.

This is possibly of no interest to anyone, but you’ve got me started.  In 1978 I was still at school and lived 20 miles from Cardiff.  I was at school with Spike Reptile’s younger brother, so saw Reptile Ranch and YMG four or five times before YMG signed to Rough Trade.  There were typically fewer than 10 people at those gigs.  At the time of the Nottingham Boat Club gig, I was living in Ashby, 20 miles from Nottingham.  I was still at school and couldn’t get to Nottingham for that gig, though I did see Joy Division at a disused cinema in Derby with 20 other people.  Last week Peter Hook signed the scratch plate of my Hooky six…

[Beedster]

10 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

IIRC Simon of Gus Guitars fame is a graduate of one of these courses. I think he originally went to learn how to make furniture but became more interested in applying the techniques to guitar making.

 

A good friend of mine who builds highly regarded (and very expensive) guitars was also there. In fact at one time most of Denmark Street's guitar techs (and a couple of shop owners) were MIT graduates

[Beedster]

5 minutes ago, Rich said:

This is one of the best BC threads in ages.

 

Agreed, some great contributions 👍

[Mike Brooks]

On 26/03/2023 at 14:11, Beedster said:

Strings, who mentioned strings, luxury, all I had was a fret 😀

I just had the slot for the fret to go into.....

[Beedster]

3 minutes ago, Mike Brooks said:

I just had the slot for the fret to go into.....

A slot, luxury, in my day......  

[BigRedX]

23 minutes ago, Sercet said:

This is possibly of no interest to anyone, but you’ve got me started.  In 1978 I was still at school and lived 20 miles from Cardiff.  I was at school with Spike Reptile’s younger brother, so saw Reptile Ranch and YMG four or five times before YMG signed to Rough Trade.  There were typically fewer than 10 people at those gigs.  At the time of the Nottingham Boat Club gig, I was living in Ashby, 20 miles from Nottingham.  I was still at school and couldn’t get to Nottingham for that gig, though I did see Joy Division at a disused cinema in Derby with 20 other people.  Last week Peter Hook signed the scratch plate of my Hooky six…

 

Did you know Dean Poole who ran the "cassette label" Sexy Records from your time in Cardiff?

 

I missed out on the joy Division gig either because I was still in Swansea (where I was at university) or because I had decided instead to go an see Vice-Versa (electronic fore-runners of ABC) play in Sheffield, but had moved to Nottingham in time to see Bauhaus play at the same venue later that year.

[martthebass]

On 26/03/2023 at 14:52, BigRedX said:

 

We were only using analog synths live from 1983 until mid-way through 1985, by which time we had upgraded to a Yamaha DX7 and Casio CZ500 each controlled by a Yamaha KX5 keytar. However the idea that analog synths went out of tune a lot was mostly down to poor designed US-made models from the 70s. Once the Japanese had got involved, tuning stability was much improved. We hardly ever had problems with the Roland SH09 or SH101. The only one that generally needed tuning before a gig was the Korg MS20 and that was probably more down to the location of the tuning control than any inherent stability.

 

We had 2 SH09's in the first band I was in (a JD tribute iirc), they were absolute pigs for pitch stability.  Great sounds when they were on form though.

[Waddo Soqable]

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

 

Brings back so many feelings of the time. In 1982 I was hugely fortunate - on the basis of having no A-levels and quite poor O-levels - to be accepted into one of the first Electronic Music Technology Programme (EMIT) which, rather oddly at first sight, was newly offered at the London College of Furniture, the chronological logic being along the lines - teach people to build furniture - teach people to restore furniture - teach people to restore pianos - teach people to build pianos - teach people to build other wooden instruments such as guitars - teach people to record these instruments ergo the EMIT course. The main difference between your story and mine was that in an equivalent small room we had the opposite problem, stinky poo loads of expensive gear including one of the first Fairlights in the country (Trevor Horn at Sarm East just around the corner also had on, so as postcodes go - and perhaps rather appropriately given the genre - E1 was a well endowed area for digital music tech) that almost no-one at the institution knew how to use, I suspect a lot more funding had been thrown at tech than at expertise. Anyway, having until literally weeks before been using cassette machines as above, suddenly I was in a dark room sampling random noises and creating even more random recordings (IIRC one of my colleagues played the national anthem in dog barks which seemed quite radical at the time).

 

But even given the emergent digital tech we had, we were still at heart analogue cassette recording engineers and carried that vibe into the room. It was exciting. And yes, we were often told to turn it down also   

I have a feeling that the electronic music course thing we rolled up to was at Goldsmiths college in SE London ( but I could be wrong it was a very long time ago! ) it was only a kind of evening class type of thing, you could probably go to it free if you were signing on, as we mostly were. 

A couple of years before that I was at art college, foundation course or whatever it was... they had a great "drama studio" bit, that literally never got used anymore, naturally a bunch of us would mess about playing in there to our hearts content, and left to get on with it with no moaning about noise or anything

Incredibly looking back they had a VCS3 in there.. we messed about with it but couldn't get much joy with it unfortunately.. my mate John was very much into Roxy Music & Brian Eno so he was designated VCS3 operator.. We should have just found one of the college technician guys and asked if they had the manual really! doh.... 

[BigRedX]

So many colleges and universities had EMS synthesisers somewhere in their music departments. Nottingham University had a Synthi AKS, and IIRC someone I knew from another local band got a job as an audio-visual technician at one of the 6th Form Colleges here and discovered lurking in the back of a storage room a fully functional VCS3 that had been put away for over a decade.

[Waddo Soqable]

5 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

So many colleges and universities had EMS synthesisers somewhere in their music departments. Nottingham University had a Synthi AKS, and IIRC someone I knew from another local band got a job as an audio-visual technician at one of the 6th Form Colleges here and discovered lurking in the back of a storage room a fully functional VCS3 that had been put away for over a decade.

I bet a few ended up in a skip too... 

[BigRedX]

46 minutes ago, martthebass said:

We had 2 SH09's in the first band I was in (a JD tribute iirc), they were absolute pigs for pitch stability.  Great sounds when they were on form though.

 

TBH I was never that keen on the SH09/SH101. When I bought my Wasp synth, the SH09 was the only affordable alternative. I had to weigh up if I'd rather have a proper (if somewhat clacky keyboard) and a Filter capable of going into self oscillation against two Oscillators and two Envelope Generators. In the end the additional sonic capabilities of two Oscillators and Envelope Generators won out. I later picked up a second hand SH09 which was used mostly for background sequencer parts and for really fattening up the bass sounds we were getting from out Korg MS20. One of the other band members had an SH101 complete with modulation grip as a primitive keytar.

Edited March 27, 2023 by BigRedX

[Leonard Smalls]

Youse lot were all proper lucky!

Me and my mates Swamp and Sgav attempted to record our "band" live (me on terrible sounding Farfisa copy organ, Swamp on Kays Cataloge bass through Winfield 25w amp and Sgav hitting Swamp's mum's pots'n'pans) using one of these:

 

 

Results were poor... But then that's not surprising with the lyrics of one song beginning:

I wish I was a paramecium

Life would be so very eacium

 

(nick it if you want 😁)

[Waddo Soqable]

34 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

TBH I was never that keen on the SH09/SH101. When I bought my Wasp synth, the SH09 was the only affordable alternative. I had to weigh up if I'd rather have a proper (if somewhat clacky keyboard) and a Filter capable of going into self oscillation against two Oscillators and two Envelope Generators. In the end the additional sonic capabilities of two Oscillators and Envelope Generators won out. I later picked up a second hand SH09 which was used mostly for background sequencer parts and for really fattening up the bass sounds we were getting from out Korg MS20. One of the other band members had an SH101 complete with modulation grip as a primitive keytar.

One of our mates had an SH101, this would be a few years after the period we've been discussing, he had one of the little handle faux keytar things, (I think they were an optional extra) we would tease him about this and call it his W@nk handle 😁