When I was a kid

Many can relate, I'm sure. Like those old "when I was a kid...!" stories. But it's like that. Kids these days have it soo easy, but thankfully, so do the rest of us!

Back in the day, I remember sitting in front of the tape deck, taking 30 seconds or more to rewind between spots as I worked out a song. ...30 seconds to get approximately to the spot. Longer for a whole song. (And uphill, both ways!) My right index finger would be more sore than my chording fingers from button pushing.

I remember keeping a fresh tape in the machine just in case That song came on the radio, and always missing the first few seconds because I wasn't close enough. So many songs I knew, except for the first verse lol!

I remember using 2 tape recorders to get "multi track" recording. An actual 4 track cost hundreds of dollars.

Nowadays, well... one can just check YouTube and get 50 people wanting to show you how to play any song, click your mouse to rewind a video (yeah, sound and sight) to the precise second, or better yet, put the target verse in a loop, or even better yet, loop it and slow it down while maintaining pitch... Hit iTunes for That song and always get the first verse!! And hey, might as well Google up the words, chords & tabs while you are at it.

Don't know how to do something? Just sign up for some place like GuitarTricks dot com...

Then slap it all on nice tracks with midi interface and your downloadable music studio...

I can honestly say I do not long for the good ol' days in many ways. :)

Hey Razbo and fellow GuitarTricks Peeps!

These days, I also go to Youtube to find out how to play stuff. But, a long, long, time ago, in a faraway and distant youth ...

I had a record player that would slow down to half-speed (16RPM). I was about 13 or so and it was 1982'ish. Man, the sound stunk - BUT - it was better than full speed. My problem transcribing is just being able to hold enough notes in my memory while I tried to find them on the guitar and THEN go back to the right part on the recording. Invariably, you always return some measures before the place you were. Transcribing is hard enough to begin with.

Then, in 1987 or so, I got a Marantz tape deck that cost me several hundred dollars - yippeee! I could go slower than half speed and return to my previous spot using the counter. Plus, it had better sound. :D But it wasn't till the computer age that the tools available are cheap, and awesome!

The first software I used was called Transkriber by Reed Kotler. It came on a floppy disk and ran on Windows 95. It could slow down while holding pitch, but didn't have strong/efficient loop control. Riffmaster 3 is another tool I've used. Loop control on it is - not good. These days, I use a program called Transcribe. So far it's the best I've found. (no I don't work for them, but it really is so good)

Yeah, I'll let the bygone days be a nice memory

Alex

I did none of these things and yet learned how to play others songs. Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that I woulda had a better/easier time doing this stuff. Admittedly, I was lazy with respect to that stuff. I mean, I was a hard core practicer back in the day so I wasn't lazy but I found the who listening over and over process tedious. Boo hoo for me...I think because I had a good sound memory, I could get by well enough. Wished I would have tried harder though. I'm sure that my cover version (in the cover band days) were not always note perfect. Ya know, I had a good ear and leaned on it as my crutch.

I think to the point of the opening post, these tools make it much easier to do this stuff. Man, I woulda loved to have all this back then. Mighta helped me with my lazy tendencies. For that matter, being here at GT and really back filling the theory that I skipped oh-so-long ago has been great.

Wow was I a big baby back in the day.

Yeah, I remember having a Sony dual cassette portable player with a 1/8 in 'sound on sound' plug so I'd record off my Yamaha keyboard with the cheesy drums and bass lines and then swap cassettes, plug a big ole adapter into a microphone and record a rhythm guitar, then swap tapes again and record some G. lead/vox, etc. got the job done! But, wow computers are so much easier!
And when I was about 13 I had this big mustard yellow cassette player that had a speed select, throw in my Van Halen and try to figure out how the hell Eddie was making that sound..I think the player came from a classroom or something, it had 'room 14' painted on the side.

When I was a kid, I bought my first rock album, Kiss Destroyer, on 8 track.

I first started taking lessons in 8th grade then my teacher had to cut town because he was on the lam.

I took lessons in a dirty old book and had to wait a week for the next lesson.

I wasn't good at memorization and that was all my lessons were. Now I hear and can conceptualize better. This is fun!

Originally Posted by: Razbo Hit iTunes for That song and always get the first verse!!

That's really is too bad for the kids and any other music enthusiast. You can't truly get the full affect of listening to Dark Side of The Moon (or whatever your cup of tea) listening to an mp3 or other lossy format. So much tone is lost compressing audio. Too bad some of these popular players don't allow playback of lossless formats like flac. Apple, MS and friends may be afraid of the whole open source things, but hopefully it will catch on.

You can't truly get the full affect of listening to Dark Side of The Moon (or whatever your cup of tea) listening to an mp3 or other lossy format.

But listening to Dark Side Of The Moon is ear-gasmic on SACD. Especially the surround mix.

Originally Posted by: ddaloiaThat's really is too bad for the kids and any other music enthusiast. You can't truly get the full affect of listening to Dark Side of The Moon (or whatever your cup of tea) listening to an mp3 or other lossy format. So much tone is lost compressing audio. Too bad some of these popular players don't allow playback of lossless formats like flac. Apple, MS and friends may be afraid of the whole open source things, but hopefully it will catch on.

..I agree, it's a shame, I still waiting for the right balance between digital and sound quality to come out. I've never heard of SACD, it wanna check that out!
I was talking to a massage therapist who told me when she used to play this one Beatles song with farm animals in it on her record player, her dog would bark every time. Then when she got the same song on CD, the dog wouldn't bark anymore when that part came on so there's definately something missing in digital that most of us don't even catch. It's the heart, soul and spirit of the music that isn't fully recognized in digital, I think.

Originally Posted by: Neal Walter..I agree, it's a shame, I still waiting for the right balance between digital and sound quality to come out. I've never heard of SACD, it wanna check that out!
I was talking to a massage therapist who told me when she used to play this one Beatles song with farm animals in it on her record player, her dog would bark every time. Then when she got the same song on CD, the dog wouldn't bark anymore when that part came on so there's definately something missing in digital that most of us don't even catch. It's the heart, soul and spirit of the music that isn't fully recognized in digital, I think.

Indeed. Also add to the list software that writes the songs for us as well.