The magic of tape

Grief experiments with a Tascam Portastudio 424

For those who don’t know me personally, I lost my younger brother Pierce almost 4 years ago, in the spring of 2021. All of the music I’ve made since then has been a major part of my grieving process. Time in the studio has always been a form of self discovery or meditation for me but when Pierce passed away, it became a way to heal & remember as well as a way to learn more about everything he was tinkering with on his own studio journey. I used to exclusively make music in Ableton, eventually with the help of a few small synths but he is definitely one of the primary motivations for my diving head first into the world of hardware, recording, modular, etc the past few years. I know he’d be completely taken aback by the knowledge & experience I’ve gained in these 3+ years since he’s been gone. I’m surprised myself a lot of the time, it’s a great feeling.

Anyway, I’m not really sure what spurred the idea but I decided to dig out Pierce’s beloved Tascam Portastudio 424 recently. I’ve spent maybe a total of 1 hour with it since he passed away. It was very special to him & for a while it made me too emotional to even look at the thing so it has been collecting dust on a shelf, waiting for me to pick it up again. It might sound strange to say but that tape machine has felt like it has a little piece of Pierce’s soul in it.

Pierce & I with the Portastudio in Laurel Canyon sometime in 2020

After a bit of tinkering & some quick YouTube refreshers, I finally connected with that funny little machine after all these years. Maybe it’s just timing? Sometimes you’re just not ready for some creative endeavors. I don’t know why I’m drawn to certain ideas or paths of thinking, it just kind of happens.. I’m excited to start integrating tape into my process more & more. There are so many ways I can use the medium & it’s such a beautiful way to remember my brother.

I started to record a dreamy looping melody from my Whimsical Raps Just Friends, using my Monome / Whimsical Raps’ Crow module to play the outputs via midi notes in Ableton. I then recorded that onto tape & ran the tape recording back into my modular case, through Intellijel’s Sealegs for some extra grit, reverb, delay, feedback, etc. I’m modulating the color fader for some nice rhythmic bit-crushy noise on Sealegs with an envelope from XAOC’s Zadar (a module I am using in literally every single patch).

Here’s a little snippet of one of those recordings - I also threw in a percussion loop I made with another tape recording, pitched way down in Ableton. It’s actually a nice basis for a full track but towards the end I got bored around 2:12 & started messing around with the pitch knob just to show how it affects the sound.

It instantly reminds me of some of my favorite artists from the early to mid 70s krautrock scene in Germany - Cluster & Harmonia. I’ve played a bunch of their tracks in various mixes over the years & have always been so fascinated by their music. It’s so rewarding when you start to figure out how the music of some of your influences was made.

Thanks so much for reading & I hope everyone is feeling refreshed after a couple of weeks hibernation over the holidays.