Cakewalk 3.1 on a 386 with an old casio keyboard with midi.

I had two cassette decks and a tandy mixer & reverb unit. I bounced from one cassette to the other every time I added a track. Soon got fed up though and went to a Tascam 4-track.

My first Cakewalk software was a trial version (Cakewalk Apprentice?) that came with my SoundBlaster AWE32

The year was 1984.

My audio gear consisted of:
1 Panasonic tape player (mono)
1 Stereo tapedeck/receiver with a "mic mix" input
1 Radio Shack microphone

My musical instruments consisted of:
1 acoustic guitar missing a D string
1 pair of chopsticks
1 vinyl armchair to beat on
1 kerosene heater with a phone book on top to sound like a snare

I did the old ping-pong method to track as many as 7 tracks before it degraded into a pile of hiss & rumble. And I was happier than I've ever been since!

The good old days indeed.

Hey John,

You might be right. Although, I do remember how it was back then Dr.T's stuff was all text interfaces, etc. But I'm used to that kind of stuff. I do a lot of PC tweaking too, so DOS and text-based interfaces are still familiar. I think it might be fun to see if the stuff would actually work. I won't find out soon though because I just have too many other projects going at the moment.

Thanks for the warning though!

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of Cakewalk, Sound Forge 6, 7/8 and SONAR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Power books.
** Get Sonar 6 Power The Comprehensive Guide - Today! **
http://www.garrigus.com/

Publisher of DigiFreq. Win a free Smart Loops Sample Loops Collection and learn cool music technology tips and techniques by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... over 20,000 readers can't be wrong! Go to:
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

The year was 1987...House music was gathering pace...and this, along with Commodore 64 game music, persuaded me to give it a go....

First equipment was a Commodore 64 running Microrhythm (then I upgraded to Microrhythm+!). Anyone remember them? Both were one track drum sequencers with pretty poor sound quality but I rather like the sounds still (you can get it to run on a C64 emulator)...and a very bottom of the range Bontempi organ that had cool "chord" buttons...

Learnt basic skills of making music by using this equipment to play endless cover versions of "Blue Monday" by New Order....and programmed a version on the C64 in basic which I was rather proud of...

www.myspace.com/rikinrunstop
www.myspace.com/runstop

Got my first tape recorder when I was a kid in the 60's -- this cool Lloyds reel-to-reel baby. It had no capstan so the tension from the takeup reel kept the tape on the head. It may have been a piece of junk, but I had lots of fun with it.

I bought a few more cheap consumer recorders over the years until about 20 years later when I got my first cheap 4-track, the Fostex X-15. My friends and I recorded some pretty good songs on it, and it's still sitting in my gear closet. When you only have four tracks to work with, you really have to think through your arrangements and production techniques. It's a lot different from working with today's technology.

A Fostex X-26 four track, a Yamaha QY-10 sequencer, a 486 PC (66MHz?) with 4Mb RAM and 400 Mb hard disk running Passport Tracks on Win 3.11, a Casio HT6000 synth (phase distortion thing), a Fender HM Strat, a little Fender amp (25 watt Sidekick Reverb), an Epiphone acoustic, a Zoom 9002 guitar multieffect and a cheap dynamic mic.

Everything except the four track and the computer (they took a high end laptop and left the old desktop) were stolen from my house six years ago. I still miss the Strat.