Reel to Real
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 6:41AM 
I have been interested in getting an old reel to reel tape recorder and seeing what creative doors it could open for my musical journey. I really like the idea of circling back to technology that has become obsolete and forgotten. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it has something to do with a romantic draw to what is old. Maybe it has to do with a desire to throw hooks into the past that can keep the present connected to what preceded it and those provide depth and perspective. Maybe I just miss some of the things that where around when I was younger.
The development of magnetic tape and its ability to record sound changed everything for our culture. There was a time when music was only performed live and when the string stopped vibrating and the mouth was closed the music was gone, done, over. With electronic recordings we were given the option to have music playing while we washed the dishes, while we laid in bed trying to go to sleep. I suppose popes and kings had these options but not the rest of us. I wonder what it was like when in early times without radio,without TV and without sound recordings. Were there more people making their own music and entertainment? Was music more pure somehow? Were peoples lives more potent, more "real" somehow? It makes me wonder if we have dulled our senses by always having some form of entertainment filling up our otherwise more empty spaces.
Last night we had a band rehearsal and worked on just one song. The song is called "Broken Dreams" We played the song over and over with different tempos and different arrangements looking for what sounded the best and also to just see where the song wanted to go. It felt like hard work to me. Making music,making sound, creating a story, a puzzle, going off on a journey. All of these were happening last night and there is no recording of what we played except for in our brains and our hearts.
Reader Comments (2)
The ability to record audio predated magnetic tape but it really was tape that proved to be the first medium on which very high fidelity recordings could be made. I have a reel-to-reel recorder that I picked it up at a garage sale for $13 almost 10 years ago - it was a high-end TEAC model that sold new for over $1k in the late 1970's. The audio quality is amazing. It allowed me to "fly" tracks into my computer that my band recorded over a dozen years earlier. I was also able to make a CD of my great grand father playing music recorded in the 1950's. The stability and payabiliy of tape is far superior to CD-Rs. A lot of people would be shocked if hey could hear a true analogue recording. Digital music out performs vinyl and reel-to-reel on many levels but analogue does a far better job of fooling your brain into thinking you're actually hearing the event occur, rather than a clean reproduction - and that's through all the hiss, pops and crackles.
This piece reminds me of two things; 1) My grandmother's player piano, and 2) my college days when I used reel to reel machines often in studio production work. I agree with your comment about our filling space in our lives with noisy entertainments. Author Dick Staub talks about this in his book "Culturally Savvy Christian" - he claims we're largely an entertainment oriented society which, when one entertainment bores us, we go looking for more. When I was little we sang songs in the kitchen, and in the car, and we played grandmother's player piano, often singing along with the music while two of us children pumped the pedals. And when it was time to be quiet, after we children had run ourselves out, we enjoyed the stillness of just being together. I miss reel to reel, multi-track tape machines, and the stillness as well. Thank you for permitting me to comment.