The Old Canoe, original music video, 2001

My first somewhat serious attempt at a music video. It was shot at my home studio 2 years after I made the switch from digital to tape. It was part of a collaborative album called "Subterranean Recordings vol #8". Sub-t was a series of experimental albums, each with its own challenge. This particular album, there was a contest on the www.recordingwebsite.com forum for the best song lyrics (no music). The winner would be featured on this album. There were about 8 different songs with the same lyrics on a single album, all varied greately in style and production. Various members of the forum collaborated remotely or met from out of town to do their work. I thought, since we're pushing boundaries, might as well shoot some video. The audio was recorded on a TEAC 80-8 1/2" 8-track. The video was shot on a Canon Hi-8 camcorder. It accidentally turned into a music video rather than documentation. I decided to remaster the video for youtube. Unfortunately, the original Hi-8 tape had been reused so the video came from an MPEG-1 backup disk. The audio in the file was low-rez and the 1/2" tape was also reused so it was remixed from a WAV safety copy.
ALWAYS LABEL YOUR TAPES & DISKS!

Track listing:
Track #1 Scratch electric guitar: Kevin Wallis (Meridian, ID) recorded as guide but used anyway.
Track #2 Acoustic Guitar: Kevin Wallis.
Track #3 & #4 Drum stereo mix: Forgot to roll camera so it was shot later.
Track #5 Electric Bass: Not intended to be a "keeper" which is why no video was shot.
Track #6 Acoustic Guitar-lead: Chad Badham (from SLC, Utah)
Track #7 Vocals: Kevin Wallis.
Track #8 Yamaha organ: Joseph Baldassarre, recorded in one take. You see instructions given as he plays.

Things have changed a lot since then. The original video took something like 7 hours to render while this one took 20 minutes. I definitely have a nicer studio now and am not skinny anymore. But it's nice to revisit this project.

Visit my site at www.gcmstudio.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Old Canoe
• sub-t
• subterranean recordings
• www.recordingwebsite.com

[allennnnnn91]

Fun to watch. I record my music with two teac 3340s. I want to get an 80-8 but have no idea where to find a good one. Where did you learn how to calibrate them?

[wado1942]

@allennnnnn91

They're not as common as they once were but they're still out there. Most user manuals give at least the basics on calibration but there's often misnomers & misprints so you have to talk to experienced audio engineers too. The most common source of bad practices concerns bias. What's best can be somewhat tricky so you have to use your ears and not trust what tape or deck manufacturers tell you.  The purpose of bias is to minimize distortion, not other problems.

[checkabreak]

do you use noise reduction, calibration etc on the teac 80? if so what kind ? thanks again sounds great

[wado1942]

I had DBX on that unit. I think out of the dozen projects I recorded on it, I used the NR twice. There was only one project where I wished I used DBX but didn't (light folk). I made it work though.

I had it calibrated for Quantegy 456 at 250nWb/m, though I let the meters ride in the red from time to time.

[checkabreak]

great info !! i'm thinking about getting the NR DBX DX8 or maybe four DBX 150 (x) just in case, i'm about to start doing location work monday, so need to fine tune the loose ends of my rig, thanks again, and keep rocking

[wado1942]

I'd hold out for some Dolby SR if you can. It's pretty uncommon for 1/2" but sounds a lot better. Notice at 3:20, I don't even have power going to the DBX rack. Though, if you're doing live recording to analogue, some kind of NR would be nice

[wado1942]

Hey, thanks.

[checkabreak]

feeling it i just got my self a teac 80 great song by the way love everything, well the flag is a lil scary but i'm ny and we get the whole thing mix up sometimes i guess? cool track if you give some info on how u recorded with the teac 80 cool cool.. paz !

[skydogz1]

Sounds good. Good vid.

Thanx!