Ah, my Fostex 4-track cassette-recorder! Brings back memories!
Ever since I learned about the existence of these sort of machines I had to get one.
As a kid I had experimented with multitrack recording. I would record something on the cassettedeck in my parents living-room, then replay it loud and play or sing along to it and record that on my clunky boombox. Then repeat and repeat, until the noise started to drown out the music. But it was a start.
The multi-track cassette-recorder promised to be a studio in a box and in 1989 I finally saved up for the Fostex X-26 and an Alesis SR16 drummachine and set about recording tape after tape of crappy songs and aimless noodling.
Fast forward to 2007. The Fostex has been retired for 7 years already but I am still recording every now and then; in my computer. I have been in bands and performed live but not anymore. It's kinda convenient to do everything by myself at home and occasionally throw some of it into the black hole called the internet.
That year I find the RPM Challenge, which challenges you to record an album in one month, just for the hell of it. I have participated several years now. Apart from that I don't really do much with my music anymore. I made some music for theater and film, which I would like to do more, but I mostly downloaded VST plug-ins and continued the aimless noodling.
The world of music has changed a lot since 1989. Supposedly even relatively succesfull bands that tour a lot can't really make a living but everybody and their grandmother is a producer now.
I love the tools I have now and I'm not really nostalgic for cassette-recorders. They sounded awfull! I like the convenience of recording on a laptop; cutting and pasting and recording several takes without the tape falling apart. And you can add drums recorded in Abbey Road and all kinds of other virtual instruments you couldn't use otherwise! I will probably always continue recording things; it's a bit of an addiction.
But will anyone be listening?
I wonder what the coming decades will bring in music and technology. Will people pay for music ever again? How can new music compete when all recorded music from the last hundred years or so is readily available? Are popsongs a 20th-century thing? Maybe people want relaxing 20-minute instrumental background music that sounds good on headphones now? Let me know what you think!
I put my 2017 RPM Record on Bandcamp to try out how that works. Unsurprisingly I haven't sold anything yet.
