Pre-DAW Home Studios

thegummy

Anyone know of any videos showing home studios from the 80s and 90s? Either without a computer involved at all or, if there is one, just as a midi sequencer?

I saw a clip of bjork's old one come up on YouTube and would love to see some more.

Preferably YouTube but if there are documentary films with significant footage I'd try to get them too.

I remember many years ago I saw a documentary about bjork where she was walking along the beach playing with some kind of portable sequencer and found it inspiring. I also saw an open university type film showing a woman sampling the crowd at an arsenal match and mix it in with her violin playing. As soon as I saw that I knew I wanted to make music with computers and I was an early adopter of the DAW but never thought it would get to where it is now.

If anyone knows the name of either of those programmes I'd appreciate it or any footage of 80s and 90s home studios.

Cheers!

johnnybcool

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recreating-80s-home-studio-experience

thegummy

Nice one, cheers, that was an enjoyable wee read.

Did you listen to the song? Unbelievably bad lol

Modellista

thegummy said:

Nice one, cheers, that was an enjoyable wee read.

Did you listen to the song? Unbelievably bad lol

Agree that was a good read. Makes you appreciate the tech that we just take for granted these days. 

Yep the song had some dodgy bits, the vocals especially, but I liked the concept and he arrangement. They should have got a proper singer in. 

roberty

https://youtu.be/eZTdEhGDd0s

Jalapeno

That was a hefty setup - most of us had a midi keyboard, possibly a Boss Dr Rhythm, and 4 track cassette recorder at best !

cpcompany

There’s a few vids knocking about of Squarepusher in his home studio in the 90s

Keefy

thegummy said:

...

I remember many years ago I saw a documentary about bjork where she was walking along the beach playing with some kind of portable sequencer and found it inspiring. 
...

I believe that would have been a Yamaha QY10 or QY20.

thegummy

Keefy said:

thegummy said:

...

I remember many years ago I saw a documentary about bjork where she was walking along the beach playing with some kind of portable sequencer and found it inspiring. 
...

I believe that would have been a Yamaha QY10 or QY20.

Know what the tv programme was called?

Keefy

thegummy said:

Keefy said:

thegummy said:

...

I remember many years ago I saw a documentary about bjork where she was walking along the beach playing with some kind of portable sequencer and found it inspiring. 
...

I believe that would have been a Yamaha QY10 or QY20.

Know what the tv programme was called?

No, I just remember reading an article in a magazine - probably Making Music.

octatonic

I wish I had pictures of my studio at that point.

I had a 24 channel Behringer 8 bus console, a pair of ADAT's and Logic 2.0.
Also a bunch of synths.

My studio partner had a Yamaha O2R digital console and some DA88's in his room and no computer.

thegummy

octatonic said:

I wish I had pictures of my studio at that point.

I had a 24 channel Behringer 8 bus console, a pair of ADAT's and Logic 2.0.
Also a bunch of synths.

My studio partner had a Yamaha O2R digital console and some DA88's in his room and no computer.

Shame you don't have pics.

My first "studio" when I first started writing and recording music when I was about 10 was a kids Casio keyboard (with rhythm presets), one of those nylon stringed beginner guitars and a cassette boombox with built in mic.

But here is a pic of my first proper studio I got when I was 18 - a Roland XV module for the sounds sequenced by Cubase on the PC (can't remember the version, it did have audio tracks but think it was one of the first versions to have that capability, it was more of a midi sequencer with audio added on. A small midi keyboard for playing in.

At the time it was the standard to have a PCI sound card and use a small mixer to connect the inputs and outputs but the box I had which you can see atop the Roland was the M-Audio Omni which was essentially a mixer built specifically to be attached to a sound card and also had aux-ins and level knobs etc. for external synths to be added. It basically was the model of what went on to become modern audio interfaces which look similar but have the sound card part built in and connect via USB etc.

Lodious

I started with a Fostex 280 4 track, then a DMT-8 digital multitracker (I think it was like £1500?). 

I don't miss those days at all. I'd get nostalgic about the sound of dial up modems and Mini Metro's before late 80's home recording. I was just shit. Bouncing three awful quality tracks murdered by Dolby C noise reduction onto one track before realising you hadn't cleaned the pinch wheel / demagnetised the heads / set the right tape formulation so the quality was even worse than you were expecting. 

And oh god.....Spirit Absolute 2 monitors. Like having freshly sharpened pencils stuck in your ears while listening to Metal Machine Music.

To be fair, when computer recording first took off it was pretty horrendous...(remember tweaking IRQ's and DMA settings?). Also, it was so goddamn expensive. I bought a 8 channel MOTU midi interface which I think was like £300 in 1990. I don't think it ever worked reliably. Akai S2000 sampler was (I think) £1000 with something like 2MB memory and a 2 line LCD as the UI. I think I used it with external SCSI ZIP drives. It was huge and horrible to operate. 

I don't think I have any pictures. It's probably too painful to want to revisit. I think in a perverse way, I must have enjoyed it, but all the memories are of spending a lot of time getting different things to work with each other, and loosing any energy to create music in the process. 

Jalapeno

Lodious said:

To be fair, when computer recording first took off it was pretty horrendous...(remember tweaking IRQ's and DMA settings?). Also, it was so goddamn expensive.

I don't think I have any pictures. It's probably too painful to want to revisit. I think in a perverse way, I must have enjoyed it, but all the memories are of spending a lot of time getting different things to work with each other, and loosing any energy to create music in the process. 

Spot. On.

pintspiller

Amstrad had a stereo system with twin cassette recorders were one of the decks was a four-track. I used that with a Casio keyboard for drums.

Keefy

At its most advanced my pre-DAW recording setup was a Tascam Porta 07 4-track cassette mixing down to a MiniDisc deck, monitored via home stereo separates. Outboard kit was a truly awful half-rack Boss reverb.

 I may have photos somewhere but they will be prints, not digital, and I certainly couldn’t run to any kind of video camera!

My first DAW was a stand-alone Roland VS840, followed by the rather excellent Akai DPS16.

Now I’m on Reaper on an iMac. Nostalgia? No way!

Snap

Jalapeno said:

That was a hefty setup - most of us had a midi keyboard, possibly a Boss Dr Rhythm, and 4 track cassette recorder at best !

ha, I had one of those drum machines! It took ages to program a track!! TDK 90 HX Pro tapes & a Tascam portastudio. Thought I was Trevor Horn cos I could bounce tracks down. Great fun though. Every bit of kit was relatively expensive too and took some saving up for, so when you got something you'd make sure that every inch of capability was eaked out of whatever it was. That is a maxim I could do well to practise today tbh. I've shelled out so much on software that I have no real clue how to operate fully e.g Omnisphere 2

equalsql

In the early 90s I used to have a home studio using a Teac 80-8 half inch reel to reel synced to an Atari 1040ST via SMPTE striped on track 8 running C-Lab Notator mixing with a Studiomaster 24:8:2 mixer. The midi gear was a Kawai K5m multitimbral  synth, a Roland S550 sampler, Roland P330 electric piano module and an Akai midi drum rack. That was a fun system to record on and apart from the Teac I still have all the rest of the gear sequestered around cubby holes in my house.

At one point in the late 80s I even had an Aces 16 track 2 inch reel to reel in the house, but that was insane, it was heavier than a washing machine and the kinetic energy of that bugger on fast rewind was scary.

[edit] Here's them pics.

Snap

that would be v cool, look forward to seeing those.

Funkfingers

TASCAM TSR-8, synchronised using FSK (remember that?!) to a Roland MC-50, driving whatever MIDI modules I owned at the time. 

equalsql said:

Roland S550 sampler

I had one of those. It made some unique drum and percussion sounds. Replaced it with an S-760 once those became affordable pre-owned. The arrival of an external CD-ROM drive was the beginning of my addiction to Spectrasonics sound libraries.

They tried to make me go to ReWire. I said, no, no, no.

DiscoStu

thegummy said:

Keefy said:

thegummy said:

...

I remember many years ago I saw a documentary about bjork where she was walking along the beach playing with some kind of portable sequencer and found it inspiring. 
...

I believe that would have been a Yamaha QY10 or QY20.

Know what the tv programme was called?

It was the South Bank Show. I had it recorded on VHS back in the day.