Nightmare - Old song I have fixed up re-produced/remixed

[Lee]

Here's a tune I wrote when I was about 20 years old. I recorded it a couple of years later as part of an Album that actually got released with indie lable "Headline" (defunct now).
The whole thing was recorded on an old Akai 12 track tape machine (like a giant portastudio) at a friend's house in 1996. I used an SM58 on everything, Marshall Valvestate amp, bass went straight into the desk and drums were done on an Alesis SR16 drum machine and keys on a Korg M1.

A few years ago, he brought the machine over to transfer some multi-track recordings to digital. So while we were at it, I took the opportunity to transfer the tapes for this album aswell. I've replaced the drums with BFD3 and used Cubase & various plug-ins to clean everything up and improve the sound as best I could. I'm no professional producer, but I'm really happy with this result. From the original, the difference is night & day!

 

[klasaine]

Sounds good to me!
I have a buddy who had one those Akai decks (1214 or something).
Didnt they use proprietary 1/2 tape? Big cassettes?
They also had a smpte track available.

 

[Lee]

Yes a 1214! They used their own cassettes that were a bit like betamax video cassettes, but they were made by Akai specially for this machine. I think the tape was 1".

 

[dastga]

 

[Lee]

Cheers man! Well, on fresh ears, I think the kick drum is way too loud. I'll post again now that I've tamed it a bit and also managed to clean some harshness & hiss off the vocal track. The audio quality of the guitar and vocals was so bad, it's amazing what modern software can fix! Would still have been a lot better if I had just sang it again, but then it wouldn't be that young kid.
51 year old me still trying to get this tune right!
Anyway, thanks for listening, glad you like it!