Notes And Fun Facts

Notes and musings are posted at the top of this page, fun facts are posted under the notes

Restoring The Classics...

What it takes to get 20-plus-year-old master tracks running in the 21st century.

Posted May 1, 2014

Why has it taken soooooo very long?

Everything was recorded on a Tascam Porta One — a four-track cassette machine about two-thirds the size of a briefcase. Four tracks meant one for drums, one for bass and two for guitars, with nothing left for voices. So we recorded the music, mixed it down to stereo on a second cassette, used that cassette’s remaining two tracks for vocals, then bounced the whole thing to a two-track mother tape. Every dub costs you signal loss and noise gain. By the time anyone heard the finished thing, the music was three generations down and the voices were two. Going back to the original separate tracks was the only way to get real quality out of it — and that’s where the trouble starts.

Problem number one. Everything was recorded wet.

Effects, compression and reverb are baked into the tracks. Normally you’d apply those during mixdown through effects loops, but with only four tracks at a time we had no such luxury. So we guessed at how much to apply and what it would sound like three generations later. We guessed well. The catch is that those settings were designed for the generational tape degradation of the signal — and going back to the clean originals, they’re all wrong. Digital doesn’t behave like its analogue counterpart either.

Problem number two. The vocals have too much echo.

Because the echo was meant to get diluted in the generation-to-generation downgrade, it was now much too pronounced. Removing it digitally wrecks the sound (in our opinion). So it took a series of noise gating and micro edits, and a second gated echo layered on to smooth out the inconsistencies, so the decay sounds natural again.

Problem number three. Tape speed and warble.

Decks don’t run at exactly the same speed as each other, or even with themselves. Close, but no banana. Every tape has moments where the speed shifts a hair — inaudible on its own, fatal for sync.

This means the four-track music masters and the two-track vocal masters play at slightly different rates, compound that with the fact that the music masters and vocal masters also have warble in unique places from each other, means going back to first-generation tracks for all the stems has a very irritating set of timing irregularities: the music warbles and drifts from the voices, then the voices warble and it drifts further.

Digital pitch and speed correction handles small adjustments fine, but large ones produce choppy artifacts, and even still the warbles sound slightly weird as they are not happening at the same time between voice and music. So first it is a general speed correction along with matching the pitch, then for the warbled section, micro splice and adjust, then nudging the remainder one way or the other to properly sync. Repeatedly, for every stem, until the whole thing locks. Oi!!!

Problem number four. Signal degradation.

Tape bottoms out with age — the signal weakens in patches, the sound muffles and the hiss rises. We used Maxell chrome, probably the best consumer cassette ever made, and after 25 years in less than ideal storage the damage has been minimal. Hooray Maxell. However, boosting and EQing those spots also boosts every flaw around them, so it had to be targeted. But where the sound vanished completely we cloned a matching passage from elsewhere in the track — one vocal fix had to be pitch-shifted because the choruses were in different keys.

Problem number five. The drums.

They came from a Roland TR-505, a cheap little machine that gave us exactly the amateurish sound we wanted. The EQ was set to work in the final mix, the analogue gear that produced it no longer exists, and the digital equivalent leaves them lifeless. Just MIDI them, you say. Except the TR-505 is the one model (at the time of this restoration) from that era nobody ever turned into a soundfont — the models on either side of the line, yes, that one, no.

A stranger whose hobby was making soundfonts happened to have the samples and built us one. So we MIDI mapped the original recorded track after it was corrected for speed and warble, placing every beat by hand to keep the sync. Then we got a neat little plugin for our DAW that let the soundfont be triggered by the MIDI. Huzzah!

Problem number six. Some things simply don’t translate.

A few effects were applied live during mixdown by grabbing a control dial and moving it at random. There is no digital equivalent of that truly random outcome. One guitar solo in particular (Excuse Me While I Go To The John) was done in this fashion with more than one layered effects, (each just as randomly mucked about with exclusive to each other) took 146 separate cuts, pastes and blends to reproduce thirty-five seconds of sound that we originally did in thirty-five seconds real time. FUCK.

Problem number seven. There’s no studio, no money, no life.

Second shift, no room for a home setup, no cash for one. Mixing happens a few hours every couple of weeks, when it won’t disturb anyone in the building. The equipment is sub-par and the acoustics are atrocious, so what sounds good in that environment doesn’t necessarily sound good anywhere else — so it’s burn a CD or stick, listen in the car, take notes, play it at friends’ houses on different systems, then adjust it all until they sound right on as many systems as possible.

That’s most of it. There are plenty of smaller problems, but you get the idea.

Fun Facts

How long does it take to write a Bastards song?

Most of the Plastic Bastards songs took longer to record the song than it did to write the song!

What are some of the methods used to write a Bastards song?

Some songs were written with dice! One die had the chords; the other die determined if it was a sharp, flat or natural. And since the die was only 6 sided (A, B, C, D, E, F) whenever the same chord would come up twice in a row, it was automatically considered a G chord!

Bla Bla Bla, Yak Yak Yak

This song was written with dice and was also specifically written to fill the blank space at the end of the cassette tape on side 2 of their release album. It took about a half hour to write both music and lyrics, and was considered by most fans to be one of the better songs on the album! (go figure)

Do The Twitch

This was the second song the Bastards recorded, it was also their first original song.

There is only one rhythm guitar on this song, the secondary rhythm guitar was created by flipping the master tape backwards and and ping-ponging the rhythm guitar to another track while applying a strong delay effect and changing some of the tone through equalization, them flipping the tape forward again.

Either Way, It's Fine With Me

This is the first song the Plastic Bastards ever recorded.

It is also their first cover tune. A remake of the same name by the artist Randee of the Redwoods.

The lead guitar on this song was played by Will and Ned, on the same guitar at the same time using finger, and a knife and fork!

Using the knife and fork was inspired by the experimental performance artist Laurie Anderson.

Excuse Me While I Go To The John

The music for this song was written with dice!

This song was also written on a bet with the manager of The Plastic Bastards. The bet was that The Bastards couldn't write a song from the first words out of the mouth of the next person who spoke. ... Well, Will Wonkers thought that would be a great breakpoint in the debate to take a bathroom break. So he got up and announced "Excuse me while I go to the john", Will, and Ned both stopped and then smiled at each other, looked at their manager, Mr. Kincaid, smiled at him. Ned picked up a pen, Will went to the john, and by the time the last flush was heard, the lyrics were half written!

When recording this song, it was decided that the Bastards wanted to make this the worst possible song it could be. So when recording each track, they laid them down all slightly out of sync with each other. That is to say, that when recording each part (drums, 2 guitars, bass, acoustic, leas and both vocals) they used a slight delay, for each track. Each one having it's own varying delay time. And the lead guitar was played by Will, and as he was playing, Ned slowly detuned the strings as the lead progressed. Then when the 2 track stereo master was made, the right and left were also laid down slightly our of sync with each other.

We Shot The New Kids On The Block

This song first aired on Chicago radio station 'The Loop' after an encounter with Steve Dahl at the famous night club 'The Avalon'. After hearing Dahl express his discontent with The New Kids On The Block, and knowing that he was to drop in at The Avalon, and being big fans of Mr. Dahl's humorous band Teenage Radiation, The Bastards thought it would be nice to present Mr. Dahl with a copy of the song.

But when Will and Ned arrived at the club, Mr. Dahl was surrounded by adoring fans in an almost mob like fashion. Mr. Dahl looked like he just wanted to enjoy his night out, but was gracious to his fans anyway. So not wanting to bother him further, The Bastards went up to him and asked: "Do you hate the new kids on the block?" Where Mr. Dahl replied: "Yes!" The Bastards then handed him the tape and said: "Then this is for you! Enjoy your evening". And they left him alone.

The next day, much to their surprise, Steve Dahl played the song on the radio!

Subsequently, the song was submitted to Doctor Demento by The Plastic Bastards agent. The Dr. Demento broadcast of the song was a shortened version to accommodate for family listening. A verse talking about reaching down their throats and ripping their scrotums out was not family fare at the time. Something that took our stupid asses three and a half decades to figure out. Seriously, we had no clue. We were stumped by the obvious, which is kind of on brand for us actually...