Breathing new life into your old demos......

Last week I decided to take my old Yamaha MT100 II 4 track cassette recorder out of my closet to listen to some of my old demos I had recorded on it many.....ahem! years ago.  In the summer of 1990 it was one of the best 4 tracks you could by, with double speed recording, dbx noise reduction, separate track outputs, 4 track simultaneous recording, and twin 9 band graphic eq's for tweaking your mix. Today of course, it would be regarded by most people as an old relic, relegated to the scrap heap of music technology past and certainly not worth holding on to anymore, let alone any serious demo work. I had a great time recording my demos with that old 4-track, and as I listened back to some of my songs I realized that I actually had a few gems in there that I didn't want to lose to the ravages of time, as analog tape has a definite shelf life, even when it's stored properly. I also had a few requests for old songs from friends and family who wanted a copy on CD. So how can you bring your old analog recordings into the new century? With a simple one-eighth inch stereo mini to RCA stereo cable you can salvage your own masterpieces for future enjoyment, and maybe even continue to add to what is already there by recording additional tracks if you'd like in your digital recording software of choice. Here's a quick tutorial of what I did.

Clean your tape heads: 
It was never any fun doing it back in the 90's either, but it will make a big difference in the sound quality and will help to keep your tape in good condition. A few drops of isopropyl alcohol (70% or better) on a Q-tip will clean off any tape residue on your 4-tracks tape heads and will ensure the best playback quality for your old demo tapes. Make sure to clean the rubber tape roller too. While your at it, use a cassette demagnetizer  to demagnetize the tape heads if you have one available.

Repack your tape:
By fast forwarding your tape to the end and rewinding it to the beginning, you will take any slack out of your tape and prevent any tape breakage from occurring.

Remix your old demo- the fun part!
I set the playback levels on my first song and ran it through several times while listening back through a pair of Yamaha RM5 headphones. If you have nearfield monitors this will give you the best reference for mixing, but this was all I had available and I really just wanted to save some of my old songs for future reference and potential re-recording in GarageBand. The tracks were originally recorded with effects so all I needed to do was set proper levels, pan, and output levels and set the proper recording levels into a stereo track in GarageBand. I connected my audio cable described above from the stereo output into the line input on my MacBook Pro.

Mix down to your digital recording software:
I created a stereo track in GarageBand, qued up the tape to a few seconds before the count in of the song, then fired off the recording on my laptop. This made sure I didn't cut off the beginning of the song, and it was easy to edit out the hiss, clicks, etc that was at the beginning of the recording. After you finish recording, listen back to make sure you have the mix the way you like it and your overall level is not too low or too high.

Master your recording and convert to MP3:
The nice thing about using digital recording software is you can edit your tracks easier, add  compression or a dash of room reverb to your mix and then master it to an mp3 file or burn it to a CD. I converted my song into a standard mp3 file and imported it into iTunes. Make sure you listen to the finished track to be sure nothing got messed up in the conversion process. Using a lower file resolution can sometimes play havoc with your song, giving it a "squished" sound. I used 128 kbs for my settings and it sounded as good as the original mix coming off the 4-track, with the benefit of stereo compression and no additional tape hiss when bouncing to digital.

Final thoughts:
This was a fun project, and I plan on going through my entire demo collection to save all of my favorite demos from eventual destruction. The techniques presented here will work for any analog recordings that you may want to transfer to digital, whether you use a PC, Mac, Linux-whatever. If you want a free digital recording software program you can download Audacity, which will allow you to do pretty much everything you need to do for converting your songs to digital format. Go here to get your copy:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

All you need is some time, the proper cables and you can resque your old 4-track demos too!

JR-