Henry Grimes

loucollins

I have recorded since 1998 to my computer, generally using ProTools but also Garageband. For various reasons, I am not in a position where I can record to computer easily right now. I do have a 4-track cassette recorder, though, and I dusted it off, found the AC adapter for it after a somewhat panicky search, and set it up.

Once I realized that I was going to have to use tape–and cassette tape, to boot–I went through a lot of fond memories of my old 4-track machine. I got it the summer after my freshman year of college, and for the rest of my college days it was my most preferred pursuit. I would record just for the sake of recording, and there are hours upon hours of instrumental pieces I have that I made this way. I’d start recording one track, improvising, and then just lay one on top of the other. Lots of people do this, and Keith Jarrett’s great record, Spirits, was done this way, for the same purpose. Yesterday, for the first time, really, in at least 15 years, I did that, and while I’m sad to think about how long it had been since I had, it makes me feel good about the future.

I have an idea in my head to use collages such as this as tonic material in other, song-oriented recordings. I’ve toyed with this idea for a while in my head but had not to this point done anything about it. I recall the method by which My Life in the Bush of Ghosts–the David Byrne and Brian Eno record, not the brilliant Amos Tutuola novel–was produced. Various recordings were put to tape from found sources and then played into recordings of music as part of that music. What I’m doing is a little different insofar as I’m not using radio broadcasts or other musician’s recordings, but making my own in a separate context, to be used later in as-yet-unrecorded work. At a point in a song that is in the key of D–I don’t want to use computers on this to modify the tonality–I can play this into the recording as a drone (or whatever), and add a musical element to the piece.

Tape is less convenient than digital, and whatever one can say about the sound quality of the two media at their best, i.e., using a high quality reel-to-reel tape, 4-track cassette doesn’t come close to the audio fidelity of digital. I’m looking at this as a good thing: it’s a consideration I don’t need to consider. The process described above, too, would be much easier using digital audio. Some things, however, are not best when they are easiest. Tape slows a person down, but I’m finding that this makes for a more comfortable process. There’s also a tactile feeling I get when working with tape. It’s just a feeling, to be sure. Machines are machines. That said, and bearing in mind that it might simply be nostalgia, when I work with tape I feel like I’m working with something physical. Functionally it stimulates the part of my brain that is more craftsman than analyst, and this helps me musically.