Lo Fi DIY
You know that horrible feeling when you're just about to climb into bed, you may or may not be really quite stoned, and a sudden realisation hits upon you whereby you realise that nagging sensation that's swarmed about your head, like flies around a rotten corpse, isn't just the longing for a Kit Kat brought on by the prolonged inhalation of marijuana, by instead the realisation that your coursework, due for tomorrow morning, hasn't even been put into your head yet, let alone realised in any format that can be presented to an expecting and oft disappointed tutor.

This is worsened somewhat by the knowledge that you can't possibly make use of the studios in college, as it's now half 11 at night and you don't have the requisite transport to take you there, but that matters not as you'd only find a locked door, moodily manned by the surliest of security guards who would, in a language unbeknown to your ears, swear quite rudely and make some very threatening gestures indeed.

"So how..." you might eventually think, once your weed addled brain has managed to engage the necessary cogs in order to formulate mildly coherent thought "...am I to create a masterpiece worthy of my BTEC National Diploma in Popular Music yes, really, it exists!, before the immovable deadline at 9am tomorrow morn?". You know another missed deadline would seriously impede your chances of passing this course, and this turn of events would bring eternal shame upon your rapidly balding head.

So you plunge waist deep into a dusty cupboard that had long since been given over to a million new species of insect and, with bated breath, you dig about near the back until the gigantic stereo you'd once stolen from your mum, but soon consigned to the cobwebs and creatures of the crap cupboard, places itself in your grasp and you heave it toward yourself, dragging every single other item with it. Having freed yourself from the quagmire and flung the unknown and unnecessary back from whence they came, you set about setting up the curious recording studio that'll enable you to maintain the pretence of effort on your low grade college course.

Eventually, sat on the floor of your bedroom, surrounded by dust, bizarre and slightly surprised looking multi-legged creatures and a multitude of long since forgotten belongings, you light another spliff and survey your ingenuity with smug satisfaction. Not yet knowing just how much the personal computer will one day change your life, you've created an archaic and low quality multi track recording studio. Before you lies a cheap keyboard that connects directly to the aforementioned cassette player via a hastily constructed cable that is, in effect, two cables clumsily spliced together. "But why dig about in the cupboard for a gigantic early '80s twin tape player when you have a slightly less robust, but definitely more modern '90s "Back to back" tape player, with ace speakers and everything just there by your knee?" people may have asked if they'd been there to witness this kerfuffle. Well, I'll tell you if you can be bothered to continue reading what has become an inordinately lengthy piece that you'll soon come to realise has very little value and a mildly disappointing pay off: you see, this particular ghetto blaster, as once they were known, had a curious cross fader, which meant I could record not only from one tape to another, but I could also incorporate the jack input in the front, to form my mega multi track music studio. In this manner, by recording on a tape, then swapping it and recording a combination of that tape and a piece of poorly played keyboardery onto a new tape, which was then swapped and used to overdub yet another track, until the quality had faded so much that I had to wire a better set of speakers to the contraption, just to hear anything at all, I was able to triumphantly create a piece that could feasibly be passed off as coursework.

Then I overslept, missed my bus and, subsequently, my deadline, both by several hours.

Arseholes.
( Moey, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 17:23, Reply)