Okay... today I’ve got something amazing for you. This is a way to get some nice warm analogue dirt into your normally stale, digital recordings. What’s better it shouldn’t cost a cent and it can be done with things you can find in your own home. For starters you’ll need something that you wanna spice up. I’m gonna be using this drum-loop. (Check it out on the video below).
Now you'll hear that it sounds just like a drum loop on a computer because frankly that’s what it is. But if I want to make it sound a bit less sterile, I’m gonna temporarily send it to the analogue realm. So I’m gonna dust off this old VHS deck and use it add some genuine analogue dirt to my drum loop. You could also use a cassette recorder.
So I’ve gotta get my signal out of the computer into the tape recorder using a bunch of RCA's. Then I’ve gotta get it back out of the VHS and onto the computer. Now it’s time to grab a tape to record over. Remember to put sticky tape over the tabs of the VHS tape otherwise your machine won’t be able to tape over it. Then you’d be stuck with a pristine copy of ‘Bloody Pom Pom's’ and the stale drum sound that we’re trying to avoid.
Open a channel to record back onto in your audio program. Press the record button so you can monitor the signal coming back into your computer. It’s important to listen to the tape before you record onto it. To make sure you get your levels in the ballpark. Keep in mind that the volume of an old tape might be a little bit low. Then start recording. And press play on your software. You may want to record it more than once especially if it’s a short loop. Remember the numbers on the display of you VHS so you know where to rewind it back to.
After you’ve finished recording, rewind it and record the loop back onto you Computer. You’ll need to trim the loop up a bit. But, you should now notice a nice amount of muddiness on the drums. You might get an annoying hum in the sample from the tape head. You can try to notch it out with a filter but I prefer just to put a gate on it. There are dozens of little tricks like this, you can use to spice up your recordings and add an extra dimension of flavour. And there are no rules. If it sounds good, it sounds good. So give it a crack. It could be what stands out between you and the next guy.
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