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SentientParadox	Date: December 12, 2007 @ 5:14 PM Hey all! I'm here for the music, and the beer. No, really I'm here to network, share, and glean whatever wisdom, or lack thereof anyone wants to share. At the moment I'm on a mission. I'm in the process of setting up a multi-purpose "Not Ready for Prime Time" website, a section of which will be dedicated to showcasing my musical prowess. I have a fairly decently equipped, but mainly "Direct-Inject" home studio where I create all of my works. I haven't done much with it over the past several years, what with getting married twelve years ago, and subsequently fathering three sons. They are eight, nine, and eleven, and are the greatest source of pride and joy in my life. I create mainly blues-based rock. There are so many bands, musicians and styles that have influenced me over the years, I couldn't possibly list them all. I'm forty-seven, and music from the early sixties all the way through to today has impacted me. From the mid-seventies until the mid-eighties I collected over twelve hundred vinyl albums, about six hundred of which still are with me. Most who look through them recognize up to half of the artists, but everyone so far has managed to find something (usually several) they've never heard of. I used to grab everything I could find from the used section that I had never heard of. I don't have anything of my own to share yet. I haven't recorded much since the early nineties when I was still using a Fostex four-track a friend of mine found in a dumpster. I have much better equipment now, and plan to digitize all the old tracks from tape, then re-record all of them using the new equipment (there are somewhere between forty and fifty songs). Of course, I plan to write new stuff while I'm doing that. I consider myself a song writer, and possibly producer, but I work alone. I do not consider myself a musician, but others have disagreed with me. None of them were musicians. I'm about to switch over from studying for an online associates degree in Web design with a state community college, to an out of state college (Foothill, in Los Altos CA to be exact) online. I will be changing to a Music Technology degree. I'm pretty excited about it. I couldn't be happier to know that I'll be doing what I really love; writing songs instead of code! It may end up a pauper's career, but what good is money if you hate what you're doing? My aim is to do it my way no matter what. If a big label ever came knocking I would certainly talk to them, but I won't go looking for them. The most important thing to me is to maintain complete control of the creative process with the cooperation of others with whom I choose to work. Not that I find it hard to hand over the reigns when someone else is better qualified than I am for a certain task, but I want to have the ability and authority to take them back at any time I choose. If the music is mine, that is. I'm not quite ready for this yet, but I do want others to be involved in my projects eventually. Whether it's to form a band and play locally (something I've never done), or just to collaborate on a song (something I have done, once) remains to be seen. A lot depends on chemistry. There you have it! This is me. Hope to be here for a long time to come. Well, I'm off to the OMD forum. I'm trying now to choose the best formats, services, software, or whatever to securely (if that's even really possible) distribute my own stuff. If you are using a good method, or have any ideas, follow me over there and share! Thanks to DMusic for putting this site out here for us! SP
ChillinBuzz	Date: December 12, 2007 @ 5:23 PM is that a Fostex XR-7 you have? Fostex made some awesome cassette multitrackers back then (i got a second hand one from ebay which works a charm). welcome
SentientParadox	Date: December 12, 2007 @ 5:34 PM You know? I don't remember. It's in a box. Let me get it. It's an x-15 Series II. Very simple box, but man it created some really great quality tapes! It's the last of my "Paper clip and rubber band" set up that I used to use. It actually does have a rubber band for a drive belt in it! The belt was missing when I found it. Probably why it was in a dumpster.
ChillinBuzz	Date: December 12, 2007 @ 10:23 PM I have no idea what drives them, since mine works ok I'm not going to take it apart just yet. Gotta find me a head demagnetiser sometime though... Watch hell break loose as I magnetise everything in sight...
SentientParadox	Date: December 13, 2007 @ 12:52 AM Ha! The only reason I know it's a rubber band is that I put it in when the original broke. Absolutely! You MUST demagnetize regularly, or your tapes will sound like crap very quickly. A badly magnetized head will wreck a good tape too. I would never, ever run without one. Hmm. Thanks for the reminder. I gotta find mine!
SentientParadox	Date: December 13, 2007 @ 1:24 AM Ha! The only reason I know it's a rubber band is that I put it in when the original broke. Absolutely! You MUST demagnetize regularly, or your tapes will sound like crap very quickly. A badly magnetized head will wreck a good tape too. I would never, ever run without one. Hmm. Thanks for the reminder. I gotta find mine!
ChillinBuzz	Date: December 13, 2007 @ 1:39 AM I ran the last machine on and off for almost 10 years and never demagnetised it at all... It sounded crap to start with but at the end, I'm surprised it still made a noise at all.
Opossum	Date: December 13, 2007 @ 1:57 AM I had a friend several years ago who bought a second-hand tape deck, and he showed it to me saying that he couldn't get any sound out of it, and asked if everything was set up right. I took a look at the heads and they were so dirty, it was like a big orange slab that I just peeled off with my fingernail, and it sounded fine after that. Whoever had it before - it looks like they had it for years, only used extremely cheap tapes, and never cleaned it once. Then I told him to get a proper cleaning kit and such after that.
zedsalt	Date: December 13, 2007 @ 11:03 AM I LOVE the sound of a Fostex four track cassette, but eventually, all of mine get to the point where all the lights light up at once, and everything freezes. I've been able to find a grand total of one guy willing to fix this problem. He's an ex-road tech for some of the biggest names in music, "semi-retired" on the other side of the continent (where I lived for a little less than a year). He said the problem is a "power-conditioning chip", that they all give out eventually, and that sometimes, all it takes is resoldering the... I can't remember if it's sixteen or thirty-two...solder points that hold it in place. Y'know what would be really sweet? If I could find someone who'd take a malfunctioning Fostex four-track or two in exchange for repairing another Fostex four-track or two...
ChillinBuzz	Date: December 13, 2007 @ 5:27 PM The sound is something else, analog will always have that over digital.
NickSawyer	Date: December 14, 2007 @ 7:16 PM Welcome
celtaidd	Date: December 14, 2007 @ 7:41 PM
songbird	Date: December 14, 2007 @ 8:26 PM Cool name
Thaspian	Date: December 15, 2007 @ 3:33 PM 99% of what you could learn getting a music technology degree you could learn reading tape op message boards/magazines, and messing around yourself. Infact, 110% of it. I'm not kidding in any way.
Thaspian	Date: December 15, 2007 @ 3:34 PM Check it out. tape-op kicks ass. Search for everything you want to know and read through the discussions, and you will learn a lot. Then record stuff. The problems and situations you encounter will put what you read into context, and you'll be interested in reading about something else. You'll learn a lot.