High School 4 Track Recordings
My memory is a little hazy at remembering the details. These songs were recorded while we were all in high school. I graduated in 2000, so I think most likely these songs would have been recorded in 1997-1999. These would have all been recorded on cassette 4 track. At the time I had a Blue Tascam 424mkiii portastudio. This may have been the of the last cassette portastudio that Tascam produced. Its too bad, they sounded great and were super affordable, but the world must move on. This was at the transition period where audio moved rapidly towards digital recording methods. A lot of the smaller project studios of that time used digital tape. The home recordists still used cassettes. The hard drive and zip drive recorders were popular for a short time before DAWs came out and you could do all your recording and mixing on the computer.
I remember we recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone. I didn't have money for a stand to hold the mic after buying the 4 track, so I got creative and balanced the microphone ever so carefully on a coat stand and wrapped the cable around the hooks and then back around the microphone to hold it in place. Somewhere I heard you could make a pop filter to get rid of pffft sounds that a I'd sometimes get when recording a singer out of some panty hose and an old wire hanger, and guess what, it worked! I also read in a magazine that for a better sounding recordings you have to use reverb. I saved up a bunch of money and bought a nano verb. The room reverbs and other effects really expanded the types of sounds I could get.
I think Rob may have also recorded some of the tracks on his cassette 4 track. I don't remember what he had other than it was a dark grey. It might have been a different version of a Tascam. I had a couple of friends that had the older Teac machines and those never played right on the more modern 4 tracks. I also didn’t realize until a later point that you should not use tapes over 60 minutes in length in a 4 track. The longer ones use very thin tape that stretches. You can definitely hear the tape stretch and warble in some of these recordings. I also remember not always having the money to buy proper cassette tapes. I would swing by Down in the Valley and look in their promo bin and grab the cassette singles. Then I'd put tape over the holes on the tape and record over the music that was on there. A couple of times i felt bad about recording over someone else's music. I felt better when it was generic bad radio rock, then I didn't feel so guilty.
This was also the era of CDs and CDrs were just becoming available and affordable for home consumers. The songs were all imported into the computer and digitized so I could make CDs to listen to and give to friends. I'm guessing from listening to these recording that some were early MP3 format. Not the greatest sounding, but certainly reminds me of that era.
I met Rob playing soccer in Jr. High. He had a cat that he found at one of the soccer tournaments we played in. He named it dog. I think even wrote a song about it. At that time he went to Osseo and I went to Maple Grove. Rob was really the connecting thread that introduced me to several different groups of friends. I remember playing guitar in his garage and Kevin came over. I later ended up playing with Kevin in several hardcore bands and he went on to become a touring musician for a time. I'm pretty sure Kevin played the rhythm guitar part in the song ‘Golden’. Rob also introduced me to Katie and Karolina who he was friends with. I had gone through some rough times after my dad died and remember hanging out with Rob, Katie, & Karolina as really helping to bring me out of my sadness. Holly also sang on a couple of songs we recorded. I think she was friends with Katie and that how we were introduced. Matty played guitar and sang on falafel song. Matty also went to high school with us, played guitar, and went to shows with us.