Howell Family Scrapbook Music Page
Our recording hobby began in
the early 1990's as a way to experience the fun of performing in a
group without actually having one. Multitrack recorders became
affordable and established an easy way for me to be the entire band and
the girls to become a 20 voice choir. We started with a 4-track
Tascam cassette deck and quickly ran out of capacity. With only
four tracks, stereo recording was not practical, and the mixes soon
became unmanageable. Bounced tracks were permanent and final
mix-downs often were the product of chance. The most elaborate
setup we had was a Fostex 8-track 1/4" reel to reel outfit weighing in
at about 80lbs. Excellent quality but bulky and finicky and
difficult to operate. Next was a technology improvement that
permitted eight discrete tracks on a standard cassette tape. We
produced several albums using the Tascam 8-track, which seems extremely
limited compared to today's technology. At about this same time,
I started dabbling with computer based recording which produced some
rather mixed results. The audio quality was good and the number
of tracks technically unlimited, however in reality the performance
depended greatly on the horsepower of the computer being used.
The software was called Cakewalk would run just fine on home
sized computers, however in order to rival the tape based multitrackers
of the day, a very expensive, professional computer was required.
In
the late 1990's digital recording devices that had been used for
several years in the recording industry, became affordable for the home
market. Our first entry into the technology was a Fostex VF-16, a
16-bit, 16 track machine that vastly improved the mixing capabilities
as well as usable onboard effects like delay, chorus and reverb.
About the same time I acquired a copy of "Cool Edit 2000", a
software program that permitted mastering a final mix on the computer
in preparation for burning CD's. Mastering is a process that is
used during the production of an album to fix any glitches in a track
as well as modifying the level and or tone to improve the final result.
Technology continued to evolve and become more affordable as the
music industry mass market demanded more products. Our next
upgrade was to a Tascam 2488, a 24bit (finer music fidelity), 24 track
digital recorder. And after our 2011 flood loss, a newer
technology replacement, Tascam DP-24. During this time, laptop
computers have finally become powerful enough to keep up with the most
demanding computer based recording and I am beginning to dabble with
that as well. The links below will take you to our "Family
Scrapbook" progress so far: