The Under the Dome Tape Archive Project
These pages contain digitised copies of the four-track cassette master
tapes that I recorded in the early 1990s. I digitised them at a sampling rate
of 44.1kHz (CD quality), which gives plenty of bandwidth, considering that
the original tapes and recorder probably could only handle up to around
12kHz. The word size is 24-bits, not because I think that level of resolution
is required, but because I wanted to be lazy about leaving plenty of headroom
to avoid clipping during the digitisation process. This means that file sizes
are quite large, and may take a while to download, so please be patient.
If you want to try your hand
at remixing these tracks, you will need some form of Digital Audio Workstation
software. I can recommend the free, open-source application
Audacity if you don't have one.
Simply download the WAV files 01 to 04 from each page. These constitute
the individual cassette tape tracks as recorded on my Fostex X-26 multitracker.
Load them into Audacity by using the File->Import->Audio menu option, then
selecting all four downloaded WAV files. After importing the audio files,
which may take a couple of minutes, the editor window should look like the
image on each download page.
If you want to listen to any track in isolation, then simply click on the
'Solo' button on the left hand panel of the respective channel. Similarly,
if you want to remove a specific track from the mix, then simply click on
the 'Mute' button. Stereo pan position and volume controls are available on
each track, too.
Please note that most of these tracks are a little bit sharp of concert pitch.
I'm not sure what caused this, but it may be due to the more beefy power
supply I used for the transfer, or even the motor control circuitry on
the X-26 going out of calibration over the last 30 years. This can be fixed
in Audacity by using the "Change Speed" option in the Effect menu.
I hope you have fun with these multi-track masters, and that they give you
some insight into the recording process I went through 30 years ago. Although
the copyright for all these tracks remains with me, please feel free to create
your own remixes and publish them online. I'd love to hear what you have done
with the material!
Tracks:
Long-form pieces
The Aeon's Day
Hell
The Bridge
Stand-alone tracks
Driftwood
Strange Attractor
The Waves
Initial multi-track experiments with Fostex X-26
X-26 Test 1
X-26 Test 2
E-Mail Grant