Memories!

[tulamide]

There once was a time, where no cell phones existed, no more than 3 programs aired on TV, Black & White TVs were still a cheaper alternative and the C64 felt like a thing from the future.

I was nearly adult at that time. And I loved making music. Used to sit in the forest, playing on an old guitar, singing along. Then I met a guy who had a "synthesizer". What? He explained it to me, showed his baby and I fell in love instantly.

I had a hard time back then, trying to escape a toxic family. I just managed to get a room in a shared flat after a suicide attempt that brought me to the hospital. That guy became my friend, we started to make music together. And the best thing: He decided that his instruments would be better stored at my place, so that I could make music, even when he's not around (I was great at musical ideas, while he was the best arranger I've ever met).

From then on, for about 2 or 3 years, I was able to make music with an Roland Alpha Juno and a TR-505. I felt like in heaven. Of course, I had no computer and no Midi sequencer, but a double tape-deck. And so I did the next best thing; recording each track in one take onto a tape, then recording the tape to a second tape, while playing along the next take. And so on. Many songs were barely audible after 5 or 6 times of dubbing, yet they were my treasures.

When I had an idea, I used to play it over and over, until I really felt it. Then I layed out the whole song structure in my head, programmed the drums and started recording. One song a day wasn't unusual. The quality of course was questionable.

And that's why I always hesitate to share my treasures. They are so clumsy, more like snapshots than a good photograph. Today I decided to share one of those cassette recordings with you, because you might be more interested in hearing the instruments than to ridicule my efforts. I'm still baffled that the sound is so warm and deep and dense. I mean, it was "just" the Alpha Juno.

To not hurt your ears too much, I selected a recording with not so many dubs, so that it is acceptible. But prepare for a lot of noise, even after running a noise reduction algorithm, when I digitalized the cassettes.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vn73270v4qhxw9e/alphajuno_tr505_01.mp3?dl=0

[k brown]

Thanks for sharing this tula' - I vote for more of this on the forum.

[Spogg]

A nice tune tulamide!
Your music always seems very accessible without being cheesy, which is a difficult balance to achieve.

It made me nostalgic for those days so long ago.

Thank you

Spogg

[adamszabo]

Thanks Tula, I enjoyed the music, the noise made it actually more nostalgic sounding

[trogluddite]

Fantastic Tula!

Even your text description was a journey back to my earliest music making. In my case, a Korg MS-10, one of those awful plasticky Yamaha "home keyboards", and I think my drum machine was a Yamaha too (one with four rubber pads to hit with sticks) - and, of course, exactly the same tape-bouncing technique! As Adam said, the burst of bare tape noise at the very beginning was so evocative - it's strange to find that sound nostalgic after all the efforts we used to make to try to get rid of it! And a great tune, too - I imagine we must have had quite similar tastes in our mid/late teens; electronic, but more complex structurally than the repetitive dancy-pop stuff - it brought bands of the era like OMD to mind.

The only sad part is it makes me remember that I don't have any of my recordings from so early

My tapes all begin with my "angry young man" period in the early to mid 90's. I forgot all about synths and was bassist/vocalist in several anarcho-punk bands. I was still doing some sound-mangling though - I modded my bass and made my own FX pedals (and kicked them to bits on stage whenever I had one of my occasional "diva moments" ).

The recording set-up at this time was an 8-track reel-to-reel tape and whatever mic's we could borrow, set up in our custom "padded cell" - the cellar of the drummer's rented terraced house, "acoustically treated" with some soggy mattresses and smelly carpet that we found in a skip (they don't call it "DIY punk" for nothing, you know!)

Here's some drum and bass (as in two-piece band, not the dance music kind) - by the last of the bands I was in: Barcode Biopsy. I'm doing the main screeching and whining, playing bass faster than my fingers really want to go, and tap-dancing on my four channel bass FX rig that I built out of the local punk club's old mixing desk (and kicked to pieces in a pub in Manchester, IIRC!). Backing screeching and washing-machine parts courtesy of the drummer. The whiny emo lyrics and chaotic arrangement are entirely my fault...

Barcode Biopsy: Apathy

[Spogg]

That’s amazing trog! I really love the complexity of the rhythms. I was reminded a bit of Dream Theater in that respect. I don’t suppose you could post the lyrics…?

Was this your band? :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m7M1K- ... index=2773

Thank you

Spogg

[marcelodantas]

@Tulamide this is really cool.
It is amazing to me how life influences music.
I did a post long ago to my Facebook regarding how things we get through in life end up in our music. I personally do not think much of my music, because I was always an electronics guy and synthetist more than anything, who managed to play the bass on a few bands, but I always had a boring, standard, quiet life. Not much to put out in composition.
One thing that I always noticed is that people who had the most intense, and often negative, experiences are the ones who have the most intense and touching music to share. They spill their hearts onto us as if they were cut open.
Being a "social engineer" for a living, and from early age, I was always able to "see" people deeper that most people did, and sometimes I would say to my girlfriend while watching a band playing: wow, this guy hurts from depression, and she would be like "Whaaat?!?!?! WTF! it is a happy song", and I though to myself: yup, it is a cry for help, longing to have that.
Sadly I have seen some of these amazing musicians, some I knew in person, part early in their life on their own decision.
I gotta tell you that I am very happy to have you here with us, sharing not only your knowledge but also your music.
Thanks a lot.

[trogluddite]

Was this your band?

Bloody hell - yes it is! I had no idea that any of it was up online at all!

The recording that I posted was intended for a 12" LP that we were due to release through a little indie label from Bradford - half a dozen arranged tracks with vocals, a few improvised instrumental jams, and a weird 8-bit PC "tracker" tune that we put together from samples taken from the other tracks. The picture is the original LP cover artwork, too - we deliberately aimed for something that wasn't sterotypically punk.

However, the drummer moved to Brighton just before the record was due to be pressed, and I wasn't able to follow him. So the band become defunct after only a couple of years of playing gigs, and the recordings, AFAIK, were never released in any format.

The YouTube videos are posted on the channel of Tadpole Records. That name isn't familiar to me, but they are/were from Brighton, which is where the drummer moved to, and it was a friend of his from down there who lent us the recording equipment.

What's interesting is that the recordings there are an odd jumble. "Diversity" is one of the LP tracks, along with the one that I posted here. The others are all improvised jams from completely unrelated recording sessions. I also found this YouTube post of the whole LP, but with the B-side first, followed again by some unrelated jam recordings - that was posted only last year; and the name of the poster means nothing to me at all.

I still have all of the master tapes; and AFAIK, other than the drummer's copy of our cassette archives, there were extremely few people who would have had these recordings - the non-LP stuff can only have come from the drummer or a close friend of his, as I'm pretty sure that I never shared them with anyone.

It's very strange to listen to them. I rarely listen to any old band recordings, and the LP tracks are a different version to what I'm used to - the original analogue mixdowns from tape, rather than "digitially remastered" versions that I did a few years later (8-track minidisk, not PC audio). The non-LP stuff I simply haven't listened to at all for 20 years or more - digitising my tape archive is one of those jobs that I always put off until another day, and it's a very long time since I even had a machine I could play them on.

And somewhere out there are some people, possibly including my old bandmate, who've been posting this stuff online as recently as last year. It's very strange to think of the album that was killed at birth having this new found exposure decades later. I'm rather gobsmacked, to be honest.

Thanks for looking them up Spogg, and to tulamide for the initial inspiration - after seeing nothing online years ago, it simply wouldn't have occurred to me to ever bother looking again.

Memories indeed!

I don’t suppose you could post the lyrics…?

I'll do some rummaging. I did digitise at least some of them only a few years ago, and that song is likely to have been one of them. In fact it ties in quite well with what @marcelodantas was just saying - the reason for me digging them out was for evidence of my mental state earlier in life to present at my autism assessment. The psychologist who diagnosed me found them remarkably useful, and I was also astonished at how clearly I had understood my autistic traits and their consequences decades before it was even suggested as a potential diagnosis.

[pshannon]

Thanks for sharing your story and music guys. The music means more when there is a story behind it. I found music as a release too. I played, organ, synths, electric guitar and drums. It was release for me as well. I didn't get into punk metal, I loved the headbanging more of the popular heavy metal groups back in the 80's. There were only a few punk metal I could tolerate like Suicidal tendencies.
That was sad to hear Tula made an attempt on your life. If you succeeded, you would not have made a difference to other people today. I am glad you failed and you are here with people today that you can share your knowledge and experiences.
Tula, listening to your music, it kind of makes you feel like walking through a forest as you described.
Unfortunately, I can't find any of my old stuff with ease. I still have a load of tapes buried in various boxes located in my basement unmarked. I don't keep in good contact with any of my old band members/musicians I used to jam with to see if they had anything.

"Was this your band?"
trog, Wow you have your own records? cool!

I forgot to mention: Keyboards/piano - improv like - mood setting music. I love cocktail style. Guitar - always rock/hard rock style. Drums all types, but I don't have enough energy to keep up with the Trog style music. I would have a heart attack and need an oxygen mask after the first song. lol

[marcelodantas]

And talking about sharing music, here's a couple tunes I put online recently.

"Look at the Stars" is just me playing with some voice sample I found. It is more or less a "droning" tune.
"Waterfall" is a small melody that stuck to my head while showering, and then my son Ian put a chord progression on. Please go easy on it as he's only 9, even though for some reason he fell far from my tree and got perfect pitch and perfect tempo. Probably because me getting him into the studio since he was very young.

You can hear them here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-767094819

Cheers,
Marcelo.