Dreamsong 1983

YouTube via JeffreyPlaide — June 21, 2010 — "Dreamsong 1983 was my very first use of creating experimental music with the use of a multi-track recorder way back in 1983. Essentially it was an unsuccessful attempt at creating an interesting pop tune with a synthesizer, but I was young, and inexperienced in the structuring of musical compositions. This was the first composition to use multi-track facilities, and it was great to use the magic of over-dubbing, sound-on-sound effects and tape echo. This was a revelation for me in 1983. The track was produced using a very primitive setup only - just an open-reel tape recorder and a stereo cassette deck for mastering. The Realistic Concertmate MG-1 portable synthesizer was used. The bassline consists of a filtered and detuned sawtooth waveform. The melody and rhythm (short noise pulse reversed and played manually) were also created by the MG-1. The vocals were pitch-altered and tape-echo applied. The voice sounds female, but is in fact a male voice pitch-modified. No digital effects were used, and no equalisation applied. No rhythm units used and no sequencing. There weren't even any mixing facilities - only the use of a small mono mixdown box. The TEAC A-3400 4-track open reel recorder created the magic behind the composition. This classic analogue mutli-track model from TEAC came with sync-function and 7.5 and 15 inches per second tape speeds. There was also a pitch control and independent inputs and outputs for each channel. This machine was an affordable means to capture musical ideas by the solo musician in an era when cassette-based portastudios were a relatively new invention. Later on, experiments with tape loops and tape-splicing provided even greater means to create sound collages and special effects. In 2010 I re-mastered the work from metal audio cassette processed with dbx noise-reduction. The mono composition was given pseudo stereo by delaying left and right tracks very slightly and hard panning left and right and equalised to increase the bass. Dreamsong 1983 is important for me, in that it is the first real original experimental composition produced by any means."