Steve, Larry Basinski here...I just posted some incredible photos of Jack's speakers in 1969 at the NY State Pavilion for the "Pavilion Series" concerts that ran all summer long. I've also posted the line up. Howard Stein produced them along with the Singer Bowl series as well. Take care and keep safe. Adios Larry

Awesome, but I don't see them in your post. Where can we find those incredible photos of Jack's speakers from the NY State Pavilion for the "Pavilion Series" concerts and its line up?

I apprenticed at Deep South studio in Baton Rouge under Hal Ellis (guitarist for John Fred and the playboys) between 1973-74. We had a 3M 8 track and a scully 280 with a custom 64 channel board, couple of u47s, several of the then-new u87s and km84s, and a locker full of akg and shure dynamics. The first thing Hal did when I started was hand me a copy of the schematics for the console and told me to come back when I could explain it to him (he had a masters in EE). On the side, I carried my teac 3300 1/2 track, a tapco mixer and a bag of sm57s around to various venues recording local bands. Quickly found that location work was way different from the controlled situation in the studio... I thought it all sounded horrible, but back then, bands loved having any kind of recording of themselves. I can remember Hal and I discussing the possibility of digital recording in the future...
I started doing chamber music work in the late 1990s with a Roland vs1680.

This forum is full of old geezers.

...which is why it's probably the first point of enquiry for young geezers wanting to tap into the "wisdom of the ancients", rather than making all the newbie mistakes themselves....

The olderer and geezier, the betterer - IMO. Love you guys and your wealth of combined experience. But you know that.
I'm 38. Started recording chamber music, concertos, solo piano (jazz and classical) as a teenager. After owning a Fischer Price tape recorder as a kid and wearing it out. Built a PC in college and set it up for multitrack recording with a Sound Blaster card (Woo hoo! Knobs on the front!) in about '99 or '00. Learned about overdubbing, started getting into electronic music a bit. Then started in on choirs and more vocal music as I got more training in classical voice. After a hiatus from '05 to '10 to start a family, I've had a smattering of everything classical since then...

We are only as good as the individuals we surround ourselves with.

To me it's like that old sci-fi movie when the lead asks, "Why do you keep the old guy around"?

"Because he knows how to fix the machines".

An addendum to this is that we tend to be willing to do recording when it is complex, difficult and possibly unpleasant. A cameraman I used to work with liked to say "Anyone can do sound when it's easy.". The people on this forum tend to do the gnarlier and more logistically and diplomatically challenged jobs. Nowadays any ensemble of reasonably intelligent musicians who can read and have a little money can record themselves just fine, or good enough for their purposes. It's when they want to record a live show (with a paying audience, with video, in a difficult venue, for higher stakes and so on) then they seek help, if they really are intelligent and perceptive.

These days a 64 track recording is the new 48 track date. And, there are a fair amount of time the track count exceeded 100. I love the challenge. The higher stakes is what I live for.

*cough* I'm not as old as some of the grizzled ones here - some of whom have been doing this since I was born *cough cough*


Fooled around with electronic music and computer music a bit in college in the late '90's. Had always been fiddling with cassette recorders and such, and they had a four-track cassette recorder in the lab there.

In November of 2001, I made my first on-location recording: a girls' youth choir doing a little Christmas CD for the congregation. Four mic's live to 2-track. Sounded good, considering. Wish I still had a copy.

Shortly thereafter, I fast-tracked my way through a Music Electronics program at my local Community College. At the time, I was performing professionally with a Classical/Baroque group and there was a gentleman who showed up and recorded the concerts - he set up his Schoeps ORTF mic and his PortaDat and did his thing, and I thought that looked like an awesome way to make a living. He was always very gracious in answering my questions.

Found a book in the 66th Street Barnes & Noble by Bruce Bartlett called "On-Location Recording Techniques" and wore it out - studied the section on stereo mic techniques voraciously.

In February 2003, I bought an ADAT machine and a pair of Shure SM94's off the studio where I was interning at the time. Lugged those out with a Mackie 1202 and a CD-R recorder (I believed in backups from the start) and recorded a chamber group. Recording came out well. A few months later, I did my first paid concert recording in the same venue. Never looked back.

What an insane journey it's been since then.

...and a backup recorder to prevent dying for.

Well, one backup recorder isn't enough for me. We run three redundant recording devices.

The logic is as follows...

You have the recorder, then a backup for the recorder and then a backup to the backup. We usually have two hard disk recorders and Pro Tools running, and these are all in the same record rack.

how often or rarely did you actually have to retrieve data from a backup?

i recall one occasion in 30 years (due to a harddisk failure), back in the days of scsi disks...

Very rare. Sometimes, there are problems after the fact. Dropping the drive, water damage, operator error and such.

As rare as it may be, things still do happen.

A relative newby. Started in 1974. Worked for a company that produced slide shows using multiple slide projectors on multiple screens. Some video and film also. They had a pair of 15ips Revox A77 recorders. A splicing block, sharp razor blades and a china marker. I remember the smell of 10" pancakes of tape.
Fun times.

This is the main reason for backups: human error after the fact. Especially on my recorders that use SD cards, I'm very paranoid about that card once it is removed from the recorder--just so easy to lose. Knowing there is a 2nd card in the machine is a great comfort. Anymore we do not remove media from recorders until we are back in the shop!

Amen to that! I like the Sound Devices 744 with its internal HDD, and the Zoom F8 with dual SD cards. Backups are good!

Since over almost 20 years I recorded my and some friends' concerts

I'm only now trying to step up my game and manage (up to) 24 tracks
so I consider myself quite a noob, and could actually use some word of advice about backup.
My current setting is a Focusrite 8preX with octapre adat expansions,
I record with a macbookpro, normally on Logic.
I'm considering a JoeCo BBR1B as safeguard, but as I understand it couldn't be used in standalone without the interface be controlled by its software, which annoys me a bit.
Any advice would be welcome

thanks!

Daniele