Really rough vocals

I finally got around to putting rough vocals on "Anything..". But, with my track record, I won't be able to edit this and keep it as it is. The tape is showing its age, and there's a lot of junk there (the vocals being the biggest culprit)
Anything

The Orchestra - real and faking it

I watched the Manila Symphony Orchestra last night perform Mozart's Symphony #39 and Beethoven's Symphony #3 (Eroica). Man oh man. Pure music. Time to quit pretending to play.

No effects required

.... Ok, that won't work. There was a time when all I listened to was classical music, and I used to smuggle a lot of CDs (which work as nice coasters today, vintage digital, never thought we'd get to that) as you can't usually find these in the Philippines (or usually mis-classified under "easy listening" alongside Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra).

So I wrote this tune, twenty years ago, and was track#10 in our 1996 album. It's pop, with elements of the orchestra sprinkled in. One record reviewer thought we had a real cello (it was an Emu Proteus)
Afterschool, "Anything But Love"

I'll recreate this today. I still have an Emu Proteus. but I'll use a new toy, the Korg Kross, which seems to have some nice orchestral sounds.

New !

Rough and Quick with Ms Domingo

A cassette has "60 minutes" of recording time - really 30 minutes each direction. The portastudio records in one direction, at double speed, giving 15 minutes of recording. So I'm going to maximize my one cassette.

"Miss Domingo" was track #8 in our 1996 album, inspired by the band Toto's penchant for making songs about girl's names. Here's the original recording :

Ms Domingo

Here's a rough and dirty and quick demo (approx 1 hour)
https://soundcloud.com/rommel-carrera/ms-domingo

Compared to the first four-track demo, the only cheat I did here was to program a drum machine, using an "analog modelling" drum machine this time.
Track 1 - drums, electric piano, organ
Track 2 - background vocals , guitar
Track 3 - lead vocals. guitar
Track 4 - bass
Gear used :
The drum machine is a Korg ER1, a wonderful sounding machine that doesn't pretend to be real drums

The organ is a Voce MicroBii, a "clonewheel" (copy of a Hammond B3) I bought from Seoul last year

The electric piano is from the Yamaha AN1x, another "virtual analog" machine

The AN1x, middle tier keyboard on the left

And the guitar is a Fender Thinline Telecaster 

1st Blood on the 4 Tracks : Sleeping With The Lights On; Plus a Ten Peso Tour

I got excited about putting the Tascam through its paces, that I went ahead and recorded a demo of one of my band's old songs. I did forget to do two things :
     1. Clean the tape heads
     2. Get new blank cassette tapes. This might be a challenge anyway (who else still use them?). I used an old tape, and it shows on the recording -- there is a lot of sound degradation.

"Sleeping With The Lights On" is the title track of our 1996 album. Here's the recorded version http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=357691
(which I now realize is at a break-neck fast tempo)
And here's the 4-track tape demo, which I completed in about two hours
https://soundcloud.com/rommel-carrera/sleeping-4track-demo
Track 1 - sequenced drums, piano, synths, organ, and crunch guitar (played live)
Track 2 - lead vocals
Track 3 - backing vocals and clean guitar
Track 4 - bass

It seems strange dedicating one track to bass, but it seems to be the best way to do four-track. The Beatles did it in both Revolver and Sgt Peppers.

And a little tour of the gears used:
The drums sounds, piano and organ came from an Emu Proteus keyboard (actually an XK1 synth with the techno card replaced by Piano, Organ and Proteus cards). The yellow mustard color helps immensely :

A "techno" synth turned into a roots rock keyboard

The sequencer is an Emu XL7

The guitar is an Epiphone Casino, the Beatles guitar during their most creative period (1966-1969)

And the bass is a hohner headless (shown here with the Steinberger Spirit)

sorry, we both lost our heads!