From the Past: 80's 4 track demos

Hello peoples of the Jamendo world;

The early 80's (pre MIDI) were an interesting time to make music. The medium of recording was tape. I was fortunate to have 4 tracks of reasonable quarter inch quality. I also had a semi-pro 6 channel mixer, some guitar pedals, a spring reverb and one mic (SM-57). The means of realizing more than 4 tracks was called bouncing. Unfortunately every downmix and bounce resulted in more tape hiss and more distortion to the signal. This is why most of my tunes are 6 tracks or less. Playing 2 keyboards in sync with the drum machine on each pass whilst standing on one foot (in an homage to Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull), often results in mistakes that survive to this day. No undo or computer editing here, children.

I do regret some distortion and compression pumping crept in the during the transfer from cassette to CD. The CD-R was made in the era when only pro studios could do it and blanks cost $30 each! So thanks, Rod, for your efforts.

Did I really think there was a market for this type of music? No.

Could I play keys? Let's be fair. Not really!

But, when I was much, much younger I played accordion (it was a cultural thing). So I faked it. I was between bands and needed a musical outlet. These were for fun. Please note: most of the tunes have been edited for time (the originals went on and on and on and on and on, ad nauseum... actually maybe they still do?!?). At the time I never thought anyone would hear these tunes and so please excuse the lack of quality production. Perhaps, for the sake of humanity, they should have stayed in the vault? Oh well, too late now;)

The instruments used were a Casio M-10 minikeyboard, Moog Rogue, Roland SH-3A, Boss Doctor Rhythm, Hayman 4040 bass, and a '63 Fender P-Bass.

Thanx to 'Rocketman' for the suggestion/reminder... best enjoyed on headphones and thanx to 'Muz' for the review... but for heavens sake DO NOT encourage me to sing!

don feb 20 '08 and oct 11 '08

p.s. à cmptp69

Bien que je sois canadien, je parle peu français.

Ainsi si mes mots sont incorrects, mes excuses !

Merci. Vous êtes très aimable comparant ma musique à Kraftwerk.