TASCAM 564 to BR-800 to DP32sd to Audacity and Reaper A Musicians Journey

[JP Illes]

I just finished my first project on the DP32sd and thanks to all the great people on this site that have helped to keep me sane during the process... A especial shout out to Dr. Phil... I don’t know what so many of us would do without his sage advice..... I started messing around with multi-track recording, probably a couple of decades ago with the TASCAM minidisc 564... Let me back up, I have been playing at the guitar since I was 12 years old.. The operative phrase is “playing at the guitar”. I didn’t get serious about my instrument until about 15 or 20 years ago.. It was at that time I purchased the 564.. I made a few recordings and then the thing went into the closet.. Fast forward about 10 years and by this time I hade been a church musician, played bass in a jazz trio and started my passion for the Blues... This is when I bought my BR-800. I used it to help create backing tracks that I loaded onto my RC-300 so that I could be a one man band. I’ve been playing at open air markets along the Front Range of Colorado for the better part of the last ten years. I started using Audacity to edit my backing tracks so that I could break the songs down into Intro, Verse, Chorus, and Outro... and then load them onto the RC-300.. It worked pretty well... With my partner in crime, Joe, on the harmonica, we started to develop a bit of a following.. The two of us could make a lot of noise.. I retired from my day job as a structural engineer about a year and a half ago. Joe and I had great plans for the future, and then the pandemic hit... We found ourselves home bound ever since.. It was at this point in time that I decided that I would try and take my playing and recording to the next level... After all I wasn’t going anywhere, and I had all the time in the world... This is when I thought I would redo my small home studio.. I really am not a fan of DAW’s, so I decided to retire the BR-800 and move back into the TASCAM world, and thus the DP32sd, I also thought that I might upgrade from Audacity to Reaper... Well here I am, hoping that I can get out and start playing live again, and possibly creating an album of our tunes that we can sell at our gigs... Thanks again everyone for helping me along the way...

 

[-mjk-]

@JP Illes links, or it never happened! lol Please post links to Soundcloud, etc.. in the Song Mixes: Tracks for review and critique | TASCAM Forums

 

[JP Illes]

One of my early mixes is linked in “Song Mixes: Tracks for review and critiqued” It’s, “Two New Covers by JP”, “Eye Sight to the Blind.” I will try and post my latest mix and master here later today.. The second tune there was was the “T-Bone Shuffle” recorded earlier this year on my BR-800.. I’ve only owned the DP32sd about a month now..

 

[-mjk-]

Yes, I mean the latest tune.

 

[JP Illes]

I’ve only done one recording on the DP32 so far... Still learning the machine, and how I will handle my workflow... Working on my second now, “My Babe” by Little Walter...

 

[-mjk-]

Ahhh, ok! Now I got it! Sorry for the confusion. Looking forward to the next one!

 

[JP Illes]

My 15th Remix...

https://soundcloud.com/jp-illes/eye-sight-to-the-blind

 

[JSchmo_Bass]

Great stuff JP. Really like these two tunes.

You sure can take that Bass for a walk. You playing those intertwined guitar lines too? Fantastic.

I love the clean and present sound here.

My only mix comments: I find the mix much more balanced on Eyesight than T-bone (which has nice warm Bass but the kick is getting overwhelmed and overall drum kit seems far “back” in the apparent 3-D sound field.)

 

[JP Illes]

JSchmo, Still getting my head around the drums... I'm a guitar and bass player, not a drummer so I use "EZDrummer 2" to program my drum sounds.. On these two tracks I just used the whole kit on a stereo track straight from the song that I programed in EXDrummer... Doing that appears to hold the drums to far back in the mix. I believe the answer is to download seperate drum sounds and then upload each one to its own track on the DP32, then I can apply compression to the kick and snare, apply more EQ and maybe pan the drums out a bit... I'll try and do better next time..

 

[JSchmo_Bass]

Well sir that is a darn good composition, very tight and organic sounding. I think I might try this approach myself.

 

[-mjk-]

JSchmo, Still getting my head around the drums... I'm a guitar and bass player, not a drummer so I use "EZDrummer 2" to program my drum sounds.. On these two tracks I just used the whole kit on a stereo track straight from the song that I programed in EXDrummer... Doing that appears to hold the drums to far back in the mix. I believe the answer is to download seperate drum sounds and then upload each one to its own track on the DP32, then I can apply compression to the kick and snare, apply more EQ and maybe pan the drums out a bit... I'll try and do better next time..

On 24 track analog tape sessions, my standard drum track layout was, K, S, Toms L, Tom R (all the toms subbed to a stereo pair, not individually tracked, but individually miced) HH, OVHD L and OVHD R, for a total of 7 tracks. The overhead mics were U67s and way up high, like 14' (just over 4m). These days, using a Roland DR-880 I find that I'm using 8 drum tracks because I break the ride cymbal out of the "overheads" mix. Because I'm not micing actual cymbals in a big room, the dynamics are totally different and the ride can wreak havoc on the overheads sound.

If your drum machine allows individual adjustment of levels, EQ and FX, and you take the time to work with it you can use a 2 track drum submix because, after all, the whole mix comes down to 2 tracks anyway. Since I like to mix on a console, I'll use a stereo drum track for reference for overdubbing and at the end, I'll re-record the drums broken out as described above. It's too much of a hassle to work inside the machine for the kind of mix I want on the drums and it's just so much easier to work with it on the console. The DP machines are consoles and having those individual tracks allows you to give each track just what you need. The main issue is flexibility. You may get the perfect sounding drum mix going in the machine, but when mixing the tune with all the tracks you might need to tweak just the kick, or add more reverb to just the snare and that would have to be done in the drum machine if you haven't recorded individual tracks.

Overall @JP Illes I like what you've done. Nice playing man!

 

[JP Illes]

Well here is the latest and greatest, mix number 21 of my version of Sonny Boy Williamson II tune, Eye Sight To The Blind. This time I down loaded the individual drum tracks from my EZDrummer file. I imporeted the drum tracks to Reaper where I added compression, EQ and mixed it down to a Stereo track and then exported it back to my DP32sd, which I used for final mixing and mastering.

https://soundcloud.com/jp-illes/eye-sight-to-the-blind