tape loops the easy/lazy way.

Last week for the radio show, I took Portishead’s advice and recorded an album on a 4-track cassette.

Well, not really. I didn’t even read that article until about fifteen minutes before airtime. However, I did do something interesting with my 4-track that I’m sure somebody else has done before, but was new to me.

My favorite local electronics surplus store (appropriately named Electronic Surplus, Inc.) has been selling these 30-second endless outgoing answering machine tapes for a while now (they’re fifty cents online, but onsite they’re a quarter? That may be a remnant of last summer’s moving sale, though, and once the box in the storefront is empty the in-store price could go back up). I’ve been picking up a handful every time I go, with the intention of maybe building something like a Melloman. I finally decided to just try a few in the ol’ 4-track and see how it goes.

It was kinda cool. Since the 4-track runs at double the speed of a standard cassette, my loops were 15 seconds rather than 30. The tapes do have a 1″ leader splicing the ends together, so there is a brief jump as it loops, but it didn’t necessarily take away from the experience. I basically left the 4-track (a Yamaha MT50) in record, and activated each channel as needed to record, using the blank splice as a mental start/stop signal.

Some example clips will be forthcoming. I’ve been busier than usual lately, so I haven’t had a chance to dump the tapes onto a computer yet. I’ll probably do something where I play each track individually, and then play all four at once.

I’ll definitely be doing this sort of thing again.

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