"Falling behind" - and original song written performed by me, as a demonstration of how 4 track cassette recorders can be used as a quick way of sketching ideas that still sounds good - a bit like doing a charcoal sketch before starting your oil painting (oil painting in this case would be more carefully selected microphones and performances onto a tape machine with more tracks, or perhaps a DAW?)

The song was written & rehearsed very rapidly - the keyboard part was recorded in two sections, otherwise there are no punch-ins, and everything you hear is a first take. As a result there are a few obvious mistakes and sloppy passages!

I filled the four tracks in order from track 1 to track four. Tracks one to three were recorded using a 424 MkIII, but the MkIII developed an intermittent pop on the line out so track 4 and the mix were executed on the 464 pictured. The used was a TDK Cding 2 60 min
Type II Chrome cassette. DBX noise reduction was applied to all four tracks.

Track one consists of the drum kit, a cheap "barn find" pearl in a bedroom. My zoom H6's mid-side stereo mic capsule was used to capture a performance, then the left side of the digital stereo image was printed to cassette from the H6's line out.

Track two is the bass. I used an EGC aluminium bass with a single coil neck pickup through a Tronographic Rusty Box into a Catalinbread Adinecho oilcan delay pedal, and from there into a Joyo American Sound which is a Fender amp simulator pedal but I use it like a speaker cab emulator.

Track 3 is my vocals - I used a handheld TC electronics dynamic mic into a TL Audio fat man tube mic pre-amp with compression. From there I went into the American sound again for distortion then a Donner noise gate pedal to counteract hiss and finally a lunar echo, a bucket brigade delay pedal which applies a high pass filter to the repeats for a bit of ambience.

Track four is the keys - you're hearing a Yamha Reface CP controlled from a full size MIDI keyboard. The CP is on the Rhodes mark II setting with the on-board distortion phaser and reverb engaged. The output is being send to another Joyo amp simulator, the AC tone which simulates Vox amplifiers.

The drums and electric piano have send buss compression applied to them using the Boss Microrack RCL-10 compressor via the 464's effects return channels.

The line out of the 464 was captured as a digital file using my Zoom H6. The wave file was normalised to -1Db in Sony Soundforge, but no other effects or post production have been applied.