Songs and Sonics

You want grunge? You want compression? You want a grimy, filthy-sounding microphone where everything that comes out the other end sounds lo-fi in a (sometimes) pleasing way?

Well, if you don’t already have this magic box, look no further than your local OfficeMax.

That’s right, a standard microcassette recorder is your gateway to a world of sonic suckiness.

Note that this is not one of those newfangled digital recorders — although I’m sure there could be uses for that, too. I’m talking about the ones which use those tiny little cassette tapes that are getting harder and harder to find every year as technology marches on.

A microcassette recorder isn’t just for college lectures or surreptitiously collecting inadmissible evidence. No sirree. It should be a required piece of gear in any home studio.

Obviously, you can use these recorders as rough idea collectors. What’s not so obvious is that they often fit perfectly into a plain old mic clip.

If you sing and play an instrument when writing songs, a microcassette recorder makes a great “vocal” mic. The built-in compression on these devices is usually so crazy that it will capably pick up the sound of your instrument, even if the mic is pointed at your mouth.

(By the way, if you put the microcassette recorder in a mic clip, be sure the mic clip isn’t pressing against the tape door area. You can get some sounds which are even more screwed up that way — you’re messing with the tape head azimuth alignment — but you could also hurt your recorder. You’ve been warned!)

If you’re serious about using a microcassette recorder as an idea catcher, do yourself a favor and invest in a bunch of microcassettes. Then, throw them in a Trivial Pursuit card box or something similar. Keep all the tapes rewound to the beginning, and pull out a random one when inspiration strikes.

But let’s get to the heart of what these gadgets excel at doing: acting as a lo-fi mic/compressor combo.

Start recording with the microcassette recorder, then run a cable out of the earphone jack to your DAW’s line input. If your microcassette recorder is like most, then voila! You’ve got a unique-sounding mic for when you’re in a grungy mood.

Try the recorder as an overhead or room mic for drums. Try it on piano and check out the squashed, Beatles-like tones. Use it on vocals for a telephone effect. Play back only the vocal tracks or some other element through your monitors, position the microcassette recorder appropriately, then record the microcassette recorder’s output as a new track. (Be careful not to send the newly recorded signal back to your monitors, or you’ll get feedback… although that might be interesting, too!)

Note that the mechanical parts of the tapes themselves can contribute an undesirable noise to this “mic”, so you might want to remove the tape and stick your finger over the safety tab mechanism when pressing the record button.

Another thing to watch out for is that, depending on the model, the microcassette recorder’s circutry might delay the incoming signal by, say, 1/10 of a second. If this is the case, your recorded microcassette mic performance might feel a bit out of the pocket compared to the tracks you’ve already recorded. So you may need to adjust your microcassette mic tracks after recording them in your DAW.

It’s also possible to use a microcassette recorder in a time-shifted sort of way. If the tape noise doesn’t bother you (and why should it? The sound is already awful), throw in a microcassette and record an entire vocal take onto it. Try it with both record speeds. The slower speed adds an extra layer of grunge by severely attenuating the high end. Which speed is best depends on the source material and how nasty you want the sound to be.

After you’ve recorded your part, play it back and record the result into your DAW. You will need to shift things around, as it’s unlikely the recordings will be synchronized (or stay synchronized). You may find this “out of time” effect appealing, depending on the song.

I used this time-shifted mic technique (with a backwards reverb) for the “radio” voices on Really Really Weird. You can hear the microcassette recorder voice the second time “Really Really Weird” is sung on this clip. I also used a lot of microcassette mic stuff (piano, drum room mic, vocals) on Hey Lancaster, a song from the upcoming Girls Aliens Food album. (Sorry, no sound clip yet!)

And if nothing else, you can use a microcassette recorder to make beatbox patterns. Tapping on the recorder could make interesting source material for a dirty-sounding loop, or something that pops up momentarily.

Did I miss any other uses?