Listening to Tape

March 3, 2011

Recently going through old stuff, I moved my collection of tapes. For a long time, as that collection just collected dust, I thought I’ll probably never go back to this collection; I just replenish it the collection with CDs instead. However, over half the tapes were old recording of compositions I wrote and produced as a teenager, so those were obviously excluded from the plan to remove and replace.

Then, one sunny afternoon, probably the first day of 2011 when I drove with the windows down, (I guess it was February 23 according to what is about to follow) I heard a piece of story on NPR about cassette tapes. I recall thinking just how the tape medium really suites certain kinds of music, so I got excited about playing some tapes in my last functioning tape deck — in my car.

I found some old Megadeth tapes I made (from CDs I owned), and took them to the car. It’s just amazing how tape sounds on hard rock music — the drums, the harsh guitars, the sizzling cymbals — it just works with tape. It’s just amazing how hard rock music sounds on tape — the drums, the harsh guitars, the sizzling cymbals — it just works with tape. It’s almost like the foggy filter on soap operas that make everyone look better than they do in real life. I also listened to some Music Instructor hits, and given my spoiled ears of highly polished digital electronic music, the tape nicely glazes the gaps in the old-school 808 and other synths going through an analog board and probably to analog tape. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the collection.