Once upon a time….<\/p>\n
In\u00a0the 80’s only a limited number of\u00a0possibilities were available to mix and then ‘print’ your songs\u00a0in a\u00a0professional way. In the beginning when I recorded on\u00a04 tracks (cassette) there was only the option to mix down the final mix to another cassette. But later in the 80’s I became aware of another method to mixing and printing the music and that was by using a HiFi VHS recorder using a high quality VHS tape. This required a special recorder that was able to record the music with\u00a0a high signal-ratio level. Yet the mixing process could be\u00a0quite troublesome. You had to leave some space on the tape before you actually started to record to get the best quality and there could be random drop outs, crackles and noise bursts.<\/p>\n
Through 1987 until 1989 it would be my preferred method of mixing down music. Recently I acquired a HiFi VHS recorder that enabled me to listen back to \u00a0these old mixes. I was glad to find that they actually quite well stood the test of time. although in some cases there were the above mentioned anomalies. The other surprise was that I rediscovered music that I \u00a0considered to be lost or simply forget about. For example I knew I recorded a tune called Bewildered in Fantasy<\/em>\u00a0 around 1986 and\u00a0on one of the VHS tapes I found it.<\/p>\n [soundcloud url=”https:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/214163365″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” \/]<\/p>\n This song was originally recorded on a 4-track Fostex X-15 recorder, that produced a real compressed (nice, I think) sound. The amount of music I found back on these VHS tapes\u00a0is\u00a0quite overwhelming (ca. 2 hours of music).<\/p>\n In\u00a0a later period, when I already had started working with a computer (Atari ST) and had acquired a number\u00a0of external synths I mixed down the music directly from the mixing desk to VHS tape. An example of this is the song Seagull For a Day<\/em> that most likely\u00a0was recorded in 1989.\u00a0The quality I quite astonishing for a tape that was not used for over 25 years.<\/p>\n [soundcloud url=”https:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/214633785″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” \/]<\/p>\n Around\u00a01990 the ‘VHS era’ ended when I switched to DAT tape. That enabled me to mix \u00a0(and later on master) the music to CD quality (44.1 KHz sample rate) and most of all, the recordings on tape were very\u00a0reliable. The songs on DAT tapes were automatically recognised so you could jump from track to track or search directly for a certain track. It was in the second half of the 90’s that I would start a technique called ‘bouncing’ which basically means that the music ‘stays’ in the computer: the mix or master is directly becoming an audio file and this technique I still use until today.<\/p>\n The most interesting tracks that I found on VHS tape I will\u00a0remix and master. Because of the impressive number of tracks\u00a0it will keep me busy for some\u00a0time to come and I will post regularly the results on SoundCloud.<\/p>\n For more information on VHS mixing and mastering I suggest you reading this:<\/p>\n