Digitizing my Cassette Tapes.
Archiving analog into the digital world.
I started collecting cassette tapes as a teenager around 1976. I was also brand new to learning how to play the guitar. I knew about cassette tape recorders, and how you could record yourself, play it back and hear what you sounded like - or listen to music on pre-recorded tapes. I knew that I had to have my own tape recorder. Something inside me saw my future.
I got a Sears portable cassette tape recorder for Christmas that year. For a 13-year-old kid learning how to play the guitar, this was the holy grail tool that would one day help make me become a better musician and teacher of music. I remember recording myself talking for the first time on a blank cassette that came with the tape recorder. I had never heard my voice before. “Is that what I sound like?” Then, I recorded myself playing my guitar. I think I played an “Eagles” song. I played the tape back and heard myself playing the guitar. Then, for some reason, I decided to pick up my guitar and play along with what I had just recorded. It was like a bomb went off inside my head! I had just accidentally discovered a way to become a better guitar player.
Over the next few years, I would make money from my paper route; and I would buy more and more cassettes. Then the boombox craze hit, and I just had to have a stereo boombox tape recorder. My first boombox was a Panasonic. It was awesome. Now, I could record everything in stereo! I brought my boombox to band rehearsals and my friends house. We recorded ourselves talking, laughing and singing songs. It was like this whole new world - like a secret that nobody else knew about.
As I grew older, my jobs paid me better money. In the early 1980’s, I invested several hundred dollars into my giant stereo system. I started to collect multiple cassette tape decks and stack them together. I hooked all of them up to a small mixing board and learned the art of “ping-ponging”. I could now record entire songs with a small Boss drum machine, my bass guitar, a Casio keyboard, all of the guitars and layered vocals all mixed down to one tape. To me, this was pure magic.
I eventually purchased a Tascam Porta One MiniStudio 4-track recorded, and it absolutely changed everything. I no longer needed multiple cassette decks to mix multiple tapes with generations of noise, down to one tape. All of this could now be done on one cassette tape.
I recorded everything. I made mix tapes of my favorite songs - which amazed all of my friends because these tapes sounded like the radio, except there were no commercials or disc-jockeys to talk over the music. I made these tapes and brought them with us when we all went camping in northern Wisconsin in the 1980’s. I brought two boomboxes: One to play the mix tapes and the other to record everyone candidly talking around our campsite. Most everyone who was there didn’t even know they were being recorded. These recordings were priceless to all of us. I remember during those cold, endless winters - my friends and I would sit in my apartment and listen to these tapes from the summer before, and we would reminisce about everything we missed about the warm weather.
Every band I have ever been in since the late 1970’s, is recorded on these cassette tapes. Can you imagine that? I have always been the self-proclaimed archivist of the band. Quite honestly, I recorded rehearsals and gigs out of necessity, so I wouldn’t forget how to play the songs - and if anyone in the band asked me about how a song or a part of the song was played, I just played the tape back for them.
It was very important for me to have proof of things that happened, and the things that were said and done. Maybe this comes from me being an exceptionally shy kid and not really having much of a voice prior to me learning how to lay the guitar. I really didn’t know how to argue my point with anyone, but if I had an audio recording, I would have the proof to argue my point.
Here it is, forty-five some odd years later and I have accumulated just under 600 cassette tapes. Yes, that is a lot of tapes. My entire life has been a quest to try to find a way to archive every single one of these tapes so that they can be listened to and shared long after I am gone. They are really my only legacy, other than my writings here on Substack.
Well, the magic of Substack has now afforded me a way that I can digitize all of these tapes - just as they are with minimal editing. A good friend of mine from many years ago, sent a brand new TEAC dual cassette tape deck to me a few months ago. It was the last piece I needed to complete the arsenal of recording tools to finally begin the archiving of my life.
I play the tape, and the analog audio goes to a digital recording software on my monster computer given to me by my good friend Scott. I am also using his analog/digital converter mixer to do the processing of digitizing the tapes to mp3 format. Yes this is labor intensive - as every cassette tape must be played back and listened to in real time. But here’s the thing - I grew up doing this. I actually know this analog world better than the digital world. Once I have the mp3 completed, Substack allows me to upload it as an audio file, sort of like a podcast. I can add a story and pictures to each audio track, that might include information about the audio track, who is on it, which band is on the tape, song’s we played, where we played, etc. All of this information is archived in a library that makes things so much easier for me to keep organized. So far, I have uploaded around 85 tapes.
In case you’re wondering about the people from my past having issues with themselves being recorded on these old tapes, what they did or what they said - or anything that might be incriminating - well, so far, everyone I have been able to contact, has been real cool about it. In all honesty, most of them don’t even remember the recordings. I own the actual tangible audio property. I should point out that those who I have spoken or texted with about these tapes, have offered little or no feedback - or have been at the very least, scarcely interested in hearing the old recordings at all - or quite honestly, they have been completely indifferent altogether. And that’s all fine with me. It’s not really about them. It’s about my personal project. I think of it as an online audio scrapbook of my life.
I’m not out to make money on the material itself. I would however, like to make a little money for my efforts in the process of the arduous task of archiving the nearly 600 cassette tapes for everyone to listen to - if they want to. So far, I have only received only one paid subscriber.
If you would like to check out my latest Substack, go to -
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One last thing - I am seriously considering providing a service for friends and associates here in Orlando/Central Florida. I am considering offering a service where I will digitize your old cassette tapes and convert them to mp3, then email the audio tracks to you, or maybe even provide a thumb drive with the converted audio, for an extra cost.
I haven’t thought it all the way through yet. I would of course have to charge a fee of some kind.
Do you have old cassette tapes that you would like to have digitized? Leave a comment below on what you think about this idea and how much you’d be willing to pay for this service. Or you can contact me at guitarlessonsorlando@gmail.com.
Thanks, Dave