#music, #The XCerts

She Said and old cassettes.

21 Comments
She Said is a consideration in the list of old and new songs above.

A fair few cassettes from the 1970s are all I have of the past recordings of songs written and played back then. They are fragile to say the least. What needs to happen is to get one of those cassette to MP3 converters and get them onto the new Apple set up.

I have already either chewed up songs whilst they are playing. Not good! Or…a tape has broken at the very start of loading to play. Not so bad. And so a repair kit has got to be sought too. It got me thinking of future storage of songs, media visual recordings, etc.

Will CDs suffer the same fate of contamination further down the line too. I read once, when on the Flickr photography site, about a ‘fungus type’ that eats into CDs. I have none of our old songs on CD at all. But it has made me think of all artefacts and their need for preservation. Books bought in old antique or charity/thrift shops can have an aroma of damp and brown spotting. But still be readable. Not the same with recordings though is it.

These CDs belong to Dave Pepper (the XCerts guitarist from back in the original line up) who lives in Spain now. He has made copies of CDs from the MOTIV app files I sent him. So many ways to capture currently.

I captured a really poor sounding version of a song we (Gray Summers/Dave Pepper) wrote back in 1978 when in the XCerts. It is called ‘She Said’ (audio below). With the new Apple recording/desktop technology coming today and the monitor tomorrow (Yay!) can an enhancement be made on it? Or any of the old songs? We are intending to re-record songs anyways. Albeit different band personnel. I’m the only original XCert. My brother is joining on guitar now. And my old drummer buddy from our Team 23 band days is in for the new journey too.

Frail Autumn. The New Trio.

Usually I would just consider, if possible, a simple cassette upload exchange to the new system. Somewhere to store those old songs for safety.

But the thing that really hit my senses the other day, is that my younger brother Kev (Zero Summers) was the drummer on these old songs on cassette. He died when 21 years old. So..I would love to get a really improved recording of those songs in memory of his hard work, individuality and skilled contributions to the XCerts’ sound. We were a three piece band. His drumming cemented the whole sound.

Kev on the left.

On Facebook recently I saw adverts for conversion tools for those old ripped, faded and stain spoiled photographs. They can manipulate photographed faces, etc to provide a clear image of a person from decades upon decades ago. Maybe there is an audio equivalent possibility too.

Dave sang the original verses. I needed to sing this one two notes lower! And, yes, I can now play the Bass pattern and sing it at the same time. 😊

Okay. I wasn’t going to, but I will include the She Said song. Even if it is a poor sounding copy. I know a better version exists on one of the cassettes. But not chancing finding it yet! It kind of holistically cements this blog together.

SHE SAID:

Dave on guitar and vocals…

Found this link below about fungus and CDs…..

https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-021-00609-x

And maybe this system Logic Pro, which is an intentional purchase once the Apple has been set up, can enhance and brighten up the past recordings for prosperity. Fingers crossed. Link below.

https://www.apple.com/uk/logic-pro/

21 thoughts on “She Said and old cassettes.”

    1. Cheers Shep. Technology moves so fast too. My brother’s Mac can’t accept my intended future Logic Pro files due to his not having enough space capability on his older model. Everything lasts for a blink of an eye nowadays it seems. Hopefully I can find the alternative She Said that I know exists on one of the cassettes and work on that one to brighten it up. It has a rip off of The Beatles ‘I feel fine’ guitar riff tagged over the end. We put it over the end just for fun. That’s how I know it exists. It shows itself a little in this version. I do like this song and am keen to update and re-record it. But as said, a lower key is essential. All the best Shep. Thank you.

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  3. what a cool bass line. it sets the atmosphere for the track perfectly. quality? you know me, it’s lo-fi or nothing at all. so in an overproduced, bloated musical world, I think that’s cool, too. you can digitize cassettes at home for as little as $30 usd and way up to $500 or more. that includes software and hardware. (pain in the butt sold separately.)

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    1. Thanks cookie. I have seen little plug in cassette players that go into laptops and convert the tapes. Once the Apple set up is up and running, I’ll see if it can accept something like them. Got the Mac M2 pro, keypad and mouse this morning. Monitor arrives tomorrow. So hopefully will begin to learn how it works a bit this week.

      Thanks for the cool bass line comment. Very humbled. That Bass line is my usual type of style when I drop out of the Satisfied type song vibe. More evident in the Team 23 running soul bass line vibe. As a three piece band we were basic raw. We’d add a guitar overlay or a bit of keyboards on recordings every so often. But live it was just the 3 of us. This version of She Said is pretty much a four track recording with two guitar parts involved.

      Your lo-fi works brilliantly cookie. You have the skills to carry it off. Very cool results.

      I’ve been listening to Ian Hunter’s (Mott the Hoople) Defiance #1 and #2 albums. An 83 year old producing amazing skills still songwriting wise. It is the type of sound I would love to get at ourselves. A few extra musicians to add a bit of vibrancy to some of the songs (saxophone, harmonica, etc.) and some different added vocal styles will be a nice plan too. There is a great female vocalist on Francis Dunnery’s ‘Call me the Comeback Boy’ song on YouTube. It lifts the song.

      Cheers for that cassette info cookie. I will look into it. All the best.

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    1. I will take heed if your own experiences Sheila. Once bitten Twice shy as Ian Hunter sang. I just got his two new albums. Brilliant.

      Kev had all the original cassettes in a hippy bag he carried around with him continually. We had copies on re-recorded copies from those originals. Ours were pretty muddy and unclear sound wise. Kev died in a car accident and his hippy bag was in the car. My Dad told the guy, he knew him well, who picked up the car to just get rid of the car at the scrap yard. We never got to see those tapes again. So, it would be good to try to improve my muddy copies. Cheers Sheila. Good fortune with your move. 😊

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      1. Yes, I remember about Kev’s bag of tapes lost in the car, Gray. So sad that bag was left in the car when it got towed to the salvage yard/scrap yard. I feel somehow, your re-recordings are going to work out fine. Perhaps Kev’s spirit will aid you in this? I love pondering the mysteries that spirit can offer. Thank you for your well wishes.

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    1. Thank you Destiny. It will be nice to find a safe way to play those old ‘timeless treasures’ called cassettes. 😊 I listen through headphones when listening to media with audio. They do make clarity easy. The song sounds better on this Shure MOTIV audio app recording file than it did on the little speakers on the old cassette player. But it was the old player that chewed up a tape. Need to seek a new cassette player system now. All the best Destiny. 🙏🏽

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  6. Hey Gray, I really enjoyed She Said. The quality is much better than I expected. I did a project 10 years ago with an old cassette. My wife’s mom instead of being a pen pal, recorded cassette “letters” to her friend. Her mom died when she was 11. That friend sent us one of those cassette letters. It was a project, I worried about the tape being sticky, then getting it recorded, what digital format (I saved it to 5 formats) then the physical medium for longevity. Beware of thumb drives and SD drives, these are not physical and if they crash, it is gone. At the time I used an Mac and Audacity to make the recording and clean up the background static.

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    1. Cheers for this Danny. I have Audacity on my laptop. It came with a little battery operated cassette player I bought for a few pounds off Amazon. I want a similar system but more robust. I am now the proud owner of an Apple Mac mini M2 pro 16 Gb unified memory desktop with a separate Apple 27 inch 4K monitor which is top notch range. The M2 has 512 Gb SSD memory too. Keypad and mouse are Apple as well. Came with a bundle when buying the Mini M2 pro.

      So the SSD will be inherent but I want options to put larger recorded music files into an external 1 or 2 TB SSD hard drive. Sticky cassettes? I use your all time favourite go to pen, the biro 😉, to slot into the cassette drive holes to twist/turn check it moves the tape freely. I will also put any audio cassette captures into an Apple file and small dongle too.

      I don’t pretend to understand all this yet. Presently it all is gobbledygook. You will, I’m sure, read this technology stuff above and understand very well. So, music should be recorded as soon as I can get to grips with it. Cheers for your advice Danny. Much needed and appreciated.

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      1. I have an older Mac Mini, the same one I used forever ago. Sticky cassettes, that is exactly what I did, took a pen and slowly advanced the tape then rewound the tape the same way. Audacity got the job done, I would not ant to use it to the degree you endeavor. It allowed me to isolate the frequency with the majority of the noise, which I filtered out then boosted the vocal frequencies.

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      2. Many people say the Mac Mini is fantastic. I bought the 2023 version to house a Logic Pro home recording studio system. The band can record our songs on many individual levels. The MV 88 Shure microphones we have now work because Apple have finally made a proper USB-C connector. I will start looking to buy Logic Pro once I can pinpoint how. I’ve seen the iPad version. But not the Mac one.

        This Apple with Logic Pro system is basically being used as a recording studio. It will be the platform to record all our instruments and vocals. Also able to create many media platforms alongside too. It has a professional status, so can put out high quality recordings and visuals. I’ll probably brighten the cassettes with this system too. I have no idea of what I’m doing yet Danny. But some screen images and full information of Logic Pro are on the link at the bottom of the blog. So I can read it all, over the coming days. Thanks for all your thoughts and advice again. Brilliant.

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