I've recently been fiddling with my WM-SXF44 Sports Walkman and seeing that my Fender 25 Rumble has an aux input.
I've experimented with my main noise equipment along with the Walkman's radio function and it seems to work well.
What's your guy's tips and tricks on tape manipulation? I know some dudes used razors against the tape, but that's kind of where my knowledge ends.
Loops. Lots of loops.
I have a walkman with the door broken off and I've wrapped a tape loop around the rollers inside. You can then run your finger around the play head and cause disturbances in the loop that way. Or if you have extra slack in the loop it can sound like it's struggling. I've heard of guys putting cassettes in freezers before but not sure for how long and what it actually does. Some of the lo-fi ambient beat guys on youtube have some good tips. AMULETS especially. Different style of music but same methods apply to noise etc.
https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic
Also try getting your hands on something that has playback speed control because those are always fun to play around with.
Good topic and I hope more people chime in.
Hainbach has some pretty good videos
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg8dbAM-RNj9wBRVMuHzSIcPyM4GMLov4&si=-I1WZMb14WMIKhKV
I've been looking at Hainbach and it seems he only really uses tape loops to get certain frequences (low fidelity, bassy, ect), and i can't really think of much to apply it to noise.
That amulet dude really goes all in and has some really interesting stuff. I can actually think of applying what he does to noise. Having a modded walkman does seem to be a bit mandatory to do stuff like this.
Quote from: HateSermon on January 22, 2025, 05:32:25 PMI have a walkman with the door broken off and I've wrapped a tape loop around the rollers inside. You can then run your finger around the play head and cause disturbances in the loop that way. Or if you have extra slack in the loop it can sound like it's struggling. I've heard of guys putting cassettes in freezers before but not sure for how long and what it actually does. Some of the lo-fi ambient beat guys on youtube have some good tips. AMULETS especially. Different style of music but same methods apply to noise etc.
https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic
Also try getting your hands on something that has playback speed control because those are always fun to play around with.
Good topic and I hope more people chime in.
kind of hoping i would get more posts like this. it's a lot better and gives me more ideas than a one sentence reply or only "check out this video"
Many multi-track tape recorders have options for manipulating pitch and speed. I've found that useful in some instances, especially manipulating the pitch on pre-recorded material to create interesting modulations. You can also make drone loops where you can add/remove tones or sounds and/or place them higher or lower in the mix on the go using the volume controls. That way the tape recorder can become an instrument that can be "played". Here some bleedthrough between tracks can give some interesting effects. I've seen videos where people use reel to reel tape players to make long tape loops having the tape go around all kinds of objects, including objects that make the tape gradually selfdestruct - I've never tried anything like that, but it looks like fun and might give interesting textures. Personally, I mainly use my old Tascam to give stuff more grit by overloading its inputs and outputs or simply by recording on tape. So I'm not really doing that much tape manipulation, just using the 4-track for recording either as a pre-amp or as a recording device.
Walkmans with removed doors. Cassettes broken in half used as docks for long tape loops around whatever. Manually or electronically messing with the flow of tape when recording or playing back stuff. In general switching between different cassette players or recorders tend to yield interesting results due to misaligned heads etc. Using broken or low quality recycled tapes for weird effects like flanger, broken static etc. Making getto ass tape loops in all the wrong ways ie. too loose or fucked up in other ways. Whatever to get it to sound not the way a factory made loop cassette would sound. For more harsh or wet stuff just overloading microphone pre amps on a deck with for example line level signal etc. Fiddling about with different bias settings and gain levels. I have one deck that breaks sound up in the most wonderful way when panning record level to the right and feeding signal to only the left channel with maximum gain due to bleeding or something.
But most of all my mental health being manipulated and slowly deteriorated by all tape gear constantly breaking down.
Am I going to get an internet spanking if i start rambling about all the tape related shit I build and have for sale?
Quote from: elem386 on February 17, 2025, 07:24:08 AMAm I going to get an internet spanking if i start rambling about all the tape related shit I build and have for sale?
No, I think this should be encouraged, if anything!
Quote from: elem386 on February 17, 2025, 07:24:08 AMAm I going to get an internet spanking if i start rambling about all the tape related shit I build and have for sale?
nah dude its cool
sounds semi interesting if anything, mostly gonna look at how you build your stuff.
pull out a loop of tape so you bypass the pinch roller and yank it out of the player e.g.