To go with the Tascam 38 tape machine I picked up this Tascam mixer. It was only $350 and a short drive away, the guy that sold it semed nice enough but didn't know much about it and although he had plugged it in to see if it worked he hadn't actually put any sound through it so I will have to wait and see how well it works. Its 99% RCA connectors on the back panel, that might prove to be a pain.
A Tascam 38 1/2" 8 Track Reel to Reel!! I've wanted a reel to reel multi-track since I was about 17 which is quite a while ago now. I got it for a great price and the previous owner serviced it and kept it in perfect condition. I'm now bidding on a mixer to go with it, only 24 hours to go and I'm the highest bidder so far.
It opens up so many new (well, old actually) possiblities.... I can generate SMPTE timecode in Cubase 4 and stripe the tape. Using this timecode I can sync it to my MPC2000XL and make a tune without my PC at all. This is how I used to work in the early 90's. Atari ST running Cubase providing the music and then sync'ed to a tape machine for the vocals. The whole workflow is different and the sound is great. I can't wait to get going, already I think I will dump stems of my album tracks to the 8 track and mix it down off tape.
The manual that came with the machine is incredible, not only explaining the unit and its operation but it actually include enough schematics and diagrams for me to be able to build a tape machine from scratch.
Hours and hours of ahead for me I think....
Just, checked tape prices though.... $110 a reel!!
I've had a computer for as long as I can remember, my first one was a Sinclair ZX81 with a massive 1k of RAM! We upgraded a few years later to a ZX Spectrum with an unbelievable 48k of RAM and games loaded off a cassette recorder, it took so long to load games I often would start a game loading and then go and do something else like eat dinner while I waited for it too load. Soon the Spectrum was replaced by an Amstrad CPC , then an Atari, followed by a Commodore Amiga....by 1997 I had a PC running Windows.
Aside from slow loading times on earlier computers I owned I never had any complaints. Others around me would tell tales of blue screens, fatal exceptions and rebooting in safe mode, I would listen but not had no idea what they were talking about...you see my computer rarely crashed and when it did it was normally the fault of some dodgy software or visiting a dodgy website than the computer itself.
I built a recording studio in 2002 and put together a PC pretty much from scratch...as this was my main music computer I only accessed the internet to download drivers and updates also by this time I had original software and all the relevant dongles it as a result of these two factors NEVER crashed...I upgraded the computer twice and both those systems were also rock solid.
A couple of years ago I was making a beat and thought it would be cool to use the Windows alert sounds to make the music, a few months after that I came back to the beat and decided what it needed was a rap. I wrote a rap about computers crashing based on the stories I had been told and called the song "Control Alt Delete"....that is when things went pear-shaped.
First of all my desktop died...no explanation, after years of solid service it just gave up the ghost...my Dad managed to salvage some components and build another system out of it but I was off to Australia so replaced it with a top of the range, state of the art, mega spec Laptop...soon after I took it out the box troublke began... the Laptop graphics card melted twice and I saw the blue screen of death more often than I saw my screen saver!!
With all of this drama I thought it would be good idea to back up my files so I bought an external drive...while backing up the files the old drive died and the new on caught fire!!
When I got to Australia I began doing shows performing Control Alt Delete and people seemed to love it...everyone could relate...so I decided to make a video to go with the song...I enlisted the help of Dropbear...a Mac user...I told him about my recent computer troubles...he just grinned smuggly of course he had a Mac so nothing like that would ever happen to him...or would it???
A few days into editing the clip I got a call from Dropbear...I was my birthday and I was having dinner with my girlfriend...he told me his Mac had died..the motherboard had frazzled.. and he needed paying the rest of the fee for the video so he could buy a new one...
He finished the video with no further dramas but the day we posted it on youtube my computer crashed again!! The more views it gets the more drama I seem to have...just last week I had to format my drive and re-install Windows...and this morning the power supply on my brand new 1TB drive blew up!!
So...my conclusion is this...Control Alt Delete is CURSED!!
Watch it at your own risk....I think it's like The Ring, and if you dont show it to someone else within 7 days your computer will die...or at least crash.
Today I have been trying to mixdown the last few tracks from my album and the PC is playing up again....here's a demostration of what I want to do with my computer right now!!
Welcome to my blog, I should have done this ages ago but I guess better late than never. Right now I'm having a morning coffee, which actually is more unusual than it sounds as I'm a tea drinker...my Mum is a tea drinker and my Dad is a tea drinker...we are all tea drinkers...1st choice is PG Tips..but in Australia I have to make do with Tetley. Brewed for about 4 minutes, give the bag a little squeeze and add milk (full cream) and 2 sugars, then stir well...anyway I digress, I'm sitting at my desk at my day job having my morning coffee...I'm not sure which is stranger getting up in the morning to go to a day job or having the coffee...wait I should probably introduce myself just in case...
People call me Lotek, but my Mum calls me Wayne, the name Lotek was given to me by my eldest brother Simon as I was always trying to make the most out of what little sound/music equipment I had. At the time it was an 8bit sampling module plugged into the back of a Commodore Amiga running Noisetracker. I've upgraded a few times since then but the name has stuck...partly because I was making music with 3 or 4 other Waynes at the time and I had named my group LotekHiFi....people began to refer to me as Wayne Lotek.
Its not the best name in rap history but it has served me well over the last decade or so. The only real incident was a few years when I received a Myspace message from someone claiming to be "the real Lotek". I saw the funny side at first but soon after I got a few phone calls from people asking me if I was playing at Noise Bar in Melbourne, a few of them told me I was playing!! So I Googled it and in big letters on their latest poster it said "LOTEK" I called them to ask what was happening (OK that wasn't the exact words I used) they told me not to worry as it was another Lotek! turns out it was the Myspace guy...he was doing a DJ set (Ironically his name was Shane, clearly there being a Wayne Lotek and a Shane Lotek was not good for business) After a few "discussions" with him and the venue the gig was pulled and there remains, much like Highlander, only one real Lotek.
Anyway, where was I, ah yes...I'm Lotek (or Wayne if you prefer) I'm a Producer/Vocalist ( I used to refer to myself as a Rapper/Beatmaker but turns out they make way less money than Producer/Vocalists) I have previously produced for Roots Manuva (also directed his live tour for Run Come Save Me) and more recently have just delivered the Speech Debelle album to Big Dada. That album was recorded in Melbourne, Australia where I am currently living with my girlfriend Florelie who is also a vocalist. I am in the final stages of my own album "Rebel Hifi" but right at this minute I am sat at my desk at my day job selling advertising on the Internet....drinking a coffee....which is now stone cold.
