What is the best music made on really cheap equipment?

I looked for a similar thread but couldn't find much.

like the best GENRE that is *typically* made on it, or the best albums of all time that were made on the cheap, with cheap equipment?

There is an album by the band Thousands called 'The Sound of Everything' that I love, recorded with a digital recorder in various outdoor places, two guitars/voices, easy to balance and get good results.

ITT: late 80s, early digital dancehall

I do love how Krallice occasionally does things like having the vocalist record his vocals in his car. it actually worked surprisingly well, sonically speaking, though the rest of the album wasn't even remotely produced on the cheap.

also, there are a ton of great rap albums recorded from jail. like that recent Drakeo the ruler one which actually used the GTL phone system, and then there was that C-Murder one which he recorded vocals for on his attorney's portable tape recorder. both are great , and not impacted by the obvious grainy vocal quality.

so I've found good cheap vocal production, need to think more on instrumentation also done cheaply.

maybe most of the best music ever made has not been recorded

this revolutionary album will not be recorded

Guided by Voices would be an easy example

the early Mountain Goats boombox stuff

Wouldn't any sort of pre-digital, pre-magnetic tape recording be "cheaper" than any recording that uses those media? There's a lot of technological ingenuity behind the scenes of a person recording an album on their phone, for instance.

There are a number of guitarists who delight in recording using shit guitars. Jim James from My Morning Jacket comes to mind--I think he played at least some of the Waterfall on something he found at a thrift shop.

Einstürzende Neubauten built half their equipment out of salvaged junkyard pieces.

1920s-30s country blues

“Work That Motha Fucka” is a RZ-1 sampler with less than a second of sampling time + internal sounds only IIRC.

https://folkways-media.si.edu/images/album_covers/SF700/SFW40090.jpg

Nuno Canavarro's 'Plux Quba' is the one that comes immediately to mind, as usual.

Just an Ensoniq Mirage (workstation keyboard with an 8-bit sampler), a cheap FM synth module, a melodica and an 8-track tape recorder.

Might be my favorite album ever made.

"Chime" is the first single from the British electronic group Orbital. It was originally recorded on cassette tape and allegedly cost less than £1 to produce.

Alvin Curran's Solo Works deserve an honorable mention, even though he made extensive use of an EMS Synthi

To be remembered: multi track studios were a luxury back then and most of my work was prepared on multiple reels of ¼ inch tape which (without noise reduction) I mixed down with hit or miss synchronies – usually from 3 Revox tape recorders to one 2-track master machine. The hoodwink ease of digital recording and editing was dreamworlds away.

I guess those semi-portable lathe cutters they used on old folk and blues records were probably pretty expensive at the time!

"Nebraska" is a candidate for best/cheapest.

The first Boston album was recorded mostly in Tom Scholz's basement, reportedly for a fraction of the cost of the first Ramones album.

But re: Boston, I don’t think Scholz had super cheap gear. He had some dough — he wasn’t independently wealthy or anything, but he was an engineer at Polaroid, and could afford decent recording gear (though to be sure, he also used equipment that he invented and/or built himself). The low cost of recording Boston was likely due as much to the relatively inexpensive gear (relative to a top ‘70s pro studio) as it was due to not having to pay for studio time, producers, engineers, etc.

Nebraska is one where post-production becomes a question - it was recorded to a 4-track cassette, mixed down via Echoplex IIRC, but then the mastering of the album required a ton of work at high end studios.

they might be giants

Yeah, I don’t remember exactly how many rounds of mastering Nebraska went through, but there were a bunch, and that’s not cheap (especially with top-flight pros like Bob Ludwig). At one point everyone was so discouraged that they seriously considered only releasing it on cassette.

xp

Suicide

Michelle Shocked’s The Texas Campfire Tapes.

The Boston one is kind of an asterisk, because yeah, Sholz had top-notch equipment, but at least some of it he *did* design and build himself as a means to more cheaply make a home recording sound like a polished studio record.

TMBG had to have worked super-cheap.

The "Nebraska" story remains pretty amusing:

https://tascam.com/us/support/news/481

"Over the course of our recording, I started to find out a few other interesting details about how they'd recorded these tunes. It turns out they'd mixed everything through an old Gibson Echoplex - the ones with an endless tape loop for slapback - and that machine had since gone to meet its maker.

"It seems also that during the recording process, Mike had never really figured out what that little round knob next to the transport controls was for, and had left it at around the two o'clock position. So they'd ended up recording everything with the varispeed set fast. Then he thought well, maybe it shouldn't be in that position, so he turned it back to twelve o'clock for mixdown.

"Then there was the mixdown deck. Turns out they mixed down to the only other deck they had around that had a line input, which was an old Panasonic boom box with a history of its own. You see, Bruce had a canoe he liked to take out on this little branch of the river that flowed near his house, and the previous summer during one of those trips the boom box had fallen overboard and sunk in the mud. Later that day when the tide went out, he retrieved it, brought it back to the house, hosed off the mud and left it on the porch for dead. About a week later, he was sitting on the porch reading the Sunday paper, and the boom box all of a sudden comes back to life.

"So now it's the following January, and forgetting about all that, this was the machine they used for their mixdown deck. I should add that neither Bruce nor Mike were all that familiar with the concept of head cleaning or alignment, so the heads on the boom box, the PortaStudio and the Echoplex never did get a cleaning.

"Now, from January when they mixed those demos through around April, Bruce had walked around with the only copy of these mixes in the front pocket of his jeans jacket the whole time. And here was the tape he was holding up in the studio and saying, 'there's just something about the atmosphere on this tape. Can't we just master off this?'

"Well of course you could just about hear the moans coming from all the engineers in the room. We were all trained to get the best sound possible on the best equipment, and here was our artist asking us to go against pretty much everything we knew. And I said 'yes Bruce, we could. I'm not sure you'll like it, but we could.' I could've said no, that the sound wasn't good enough to master off of, but that's not what it's all about. We work for the artist, and we're there to help them achieve their vision, even if it goes against all the rules of engineering. I guess that's probably part of why I'm still working for Bruce after all these years.

"So I gave that cassette to an assistant and told him to copy it onto a good piece of tape. Then we went around to four or five different mastering facilities, but no one could get it onto a lacquer - there was so much phasing and other odd sonic characteristics, the needle kept jumping out of the grooves. We went to Bob Ludwig, Steve Marcussen at Precision, Sterling Sound, CBS. Finally we ended up at Atlantic in New York, and Dennis King tried one time and also couldn't get it onto disk. So we had him try a different technique, putting it onto disk at a much lower level, and that seemed to work. In the end we ended up having Bob Ludwig use his EQ and his mastering facility, but with Dennis' mastering parameters. And that's the master we ended up using.

"The album sounds the way it does because of all those factors - the multiple tapes, the dirty heads, the varispeed - it's all part of the overall atmosphere, and part of what Bruce liked about the songs. At the end of the day, he was able to get his ideas down on tape, in his own environment, thanks to a PortaStudio and a pair of 57's, and that was the equipment he needed to get the sound he was looking for."

I've never really understood the Echoplex part - the tape loop on those is under a minute and it only has a single mono input, the Tascam 244 would have stereo outs, mixing directly from the 4-track to a stereo boombox makes sense but I can't visualize where the Echoplex is in that chain.

I wanna say maybe the Echoplex is between the vocal mic (which would pick up some stray guitar) and the Tascam…?

Danielle Dax recorded her first (amazing-sounding) LP on a 4-track in 1982, but yeah that Nebraska story is tough to beat

eric's trip

"Now, from January when they mixed those demos through around April, Bruce had walked around with the only copy of these mixes in the front pocket of his jeans jacket the whole time. And here was the tape he was holding up in the studio and saying, 'there's just something about the atmosphere on this tape. Can't we just master off this?'

"Well of course you could just about hear the moans coming from all the engineers in the room. We were all trained to get the best sound possible on the best equipment, and here was our artist asking us to go against pretty much everything we knew. And I said 'yes Bruce, we could. I'm not sure you'll like it, but we could.' I could've said no, that the sound wasn't good enough to master off of, but that's not what it's all about. We work for the artist, and we're there to help them achieve their vision, even if it goes against all the rules of engineering. I guess that's probably part of why I'm still working for Bruce after all these years.

imo this is a potential pitfall of working with "professionals"

lots of pros of working with pros, i get that. lots of cons with working with cons, probably, too.

but imo sometimes pros don't "get it"

This was posted a couple of weeks ago, Nebraska features highly. https://mixdownmag.com.au/features/the-10-best-recordings-on-the-iconic-tascam-portastudio/

Early Daniel Johnston tapes are about as low budget as it gets, though the quality shines through.

eric's trip

One of the guys from Eric's Trip posted this in a 4-track group I'm in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd9SRFRP6Oc

xxp

Recording and mixing Raw Power was a suitably shambolic affair, with at least one member of the band by that point lucky to be alive. Unlike the first two Stooges albums, it was self-produced, resulting in a clueless Iggy mixing the whole band on one channel, the lead guitar on another and his vocals on a third of the 24-track desk. Handing the tapes to Bowie to sort out was the ultimate hospital pass. “He said ‘See what you can do with this’,” Bowie later recalled. “I said, ‘Jim, there’s nothing to mix’.”

Don’t know if it’s “cheap equipment” but I like the story of MIA punching out half her debut album on Justine Frischmann’s Akai MPC.

I read someone suggesting that the Raw Power story is not correct; apparently there's some footage of Iggy in the mixing room isolating bass or drum tracks? Still, it seems like it should be true, judging by the limitations of his 1997 remix.

Besides, the Stooges were recorded in excellent studios, regardless of how "poorly" they used the equipment...

The Raw Power doc from 10 years ago shows them working with individual tracks - the Bowie story about being asked to mix tape with three tracks (vocals, lead guitar, rhythm/bass/drums) is a question mark. He and Iggy were probably both fucked up at the time so who knows what Iggy brought over at the time.

Nuno Canavarro's 'Plux Quba' is the one that comes immediately to mind, as usual.

Just an Ensoniq Mirage (workstation keyboard with an 8-bit sampler), a cheap FM synth module, a melodica and an 8-track tape recorder.

Might be my favorite album ever made.

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse)

Great answer

Don’t know if it’s “cheap equipment” but I like the story of MIA punching out half her debut album on Justine Frischmann’s Akai MPC.

― assert (matttkkkk)

I remember reading that she used a Roland MC-505.

right you are! https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9602-the-connection-is-made-elastica-goes-mia/

and by extension I guess that compilation At Home with the Groovebox qualifies even more

ha, I was literally just looking at that in my files

early Pussy Galore surely qualifies here

also those early Daniel Johnston tapes

I still have my MC-505!

There was an interesting interview in Tape Op about Sufjan Stevens's Michigan album, which he recorded entirely himself at home with a couple of Shure microphones. In the interview, he said that in his novicery that he didn't fundamentally understand what sample rates were, and he recorded the entire album at 32 kHz because the resultant audio files were the smallest and so he thought it was the best way to do it

yeah but this thread is about the best music recorded cheaply

― papal hotwife (milo z)

the op doesn't specify "recorded"

i'm actually surprised to hear that about Michigan, a record i loved at first but got very sick of quickly. I've never heard Illinoise but happen to know at least some of it was recorded at The Buddy Project in Astoria QNZ

ah yes Michigan is also recorded cheap:

The album was recorded and produced entirely by Stevens, using relatively cheap equipment for a market release. All of the tracks were recorded using 2 Shure SM57s and an AKG C1000, running through a Roland VS880EX,[6] at a sampling rate of 32 kHz (lower than the rates typically used in recording). Michigan was produced in Pro Tools,[6] which Stevens has also used for his following albums.[7]

Many popular indie folk from the 00’s was recorded cheap… I think iron and wine also recorded most of his popular albums on very lo fi equipment.

ILM doesn’t seem to love them anymore but Animal Collective’s Sung Tongs was also done on an 8 track.

I still love those Sufjan records deeply, come at me you fucks
also my hearing tops out at 14kHz these days so that’s nicely in my range

I’m with you. I still love several songs on Michigan and Seven Swans.

me fucking your mom

(because i guess map is out hiking or some shit)

Irl lols

me fucking your mom

The only way to capture the magic correctly is micing it with a $10k binaural head

https://www-vintageking.com.imgeng.in/media/catalog/product/cache/c8660c81d7196df55c33284290821786/n/e/neumann-ku-100-binaural-dummy-head_29980_1.jpg

stonks

I don't think Sung Tongs was recorded on an 8-track. *checks Wikipedia*. It began on an 8-track and was finished on a computer. Rusty (who mixed the album) once told me that the entire album was recorded with a pair of AKG 414s and no other microphones. Although that approach could be considered streamlined, I wouldn't call 414s "really cheap equipment"

Also I brought up Michigan because it's a lush sounding album with an interesting anecdote! I personally reserve my unbridled enthusiasm for others of Stevens's albums

 2 Shure SM57s and an AKG C1000

I dispute the idea that using mics that are inexpensive is "lo fi", Michigan sounds great even if the bitrate was weird

cheap microphones have never been better, also Shure 57s are the workhorse of the music world, every live show you've ever seen in your life and a lot of the records...heck Bono uses them to track vocals on some U2 records

you could make a great sounding record with these mics and a shitty sounding record with expensive Neumanns. considering all the factors: the acoustics of the room, tones you are getting from the instruments, how well the musicians are playing, the mixing, mastering etc the microphones or equipment used is the by far the least important part

even a 200-300 USB recording interface can deliver great sound and conversion

I don’t think Scholz had super cheap gear. He had some dough — he wasn’t independently wealthy or anything, but he was an engineer at Polaroid

He’d spent most of his childhood in a blue-collar Toledo neighborhood, until his father hit it big in prefab homes. Then the Scholzes moved into the world of prep schools and private golf clubs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070912153241/http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/boston_legal/

right you are! https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9602-the-connection-is-made-elastica-goes-mia/

― assert (matttkkkk), Saturday, February 26, 2022 5:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ROFL at the suggestion that, when you think about it, Elastica were basically hip hop producers.

fwiw i did not think this thread was for music made on pretty nice instruments but captured inexpensively, so would not expect an album like Michigan with flurries of woodwinds, etc to qualify. xp to ums

I also read it as meaning the instrumentation was really cheap.

Me,too

Also that '$250' Cowboy Junkies album was done with a Calrec Soundfield mic aiui, which could go for $10K.

Shure 57s are the workhorse of the music world, every live show you've ever seen in your life and a lot of the records...heck Bono uses them to track vocals on some U2 records

I cannot confirm, but I was told this was Björk's preferred studio microphone as well

The Sufjan anecdote was presented by me as an interesting tidbit that I recalled from an issue of Tape Op, and felt it was particularly interesting bit of "lo fi trivia" given that the Michigan record was lush and chamber-music-y, in contrast to albums that are more obviously the product of "cheap" recording procedures. I apologize at the implication that the album is either "the best music" or that it was made on "really cheap equipment"

fgti that intention was perfectly clear and the anecdote genuinely surprised me, the pushback from me is more generally against the kind of "indie" lore (echoed in other posts) that misled me as a teenager to believe records like, say, 'Black Foliage' were done on a cassette Portastudio rather than a bunch of reel recorders with fancy outboard gear, or that TapeOp was going to be a magazine about how to use your cassette Portastudio. Going on your post re: Sung Tongs i think we are on the same page-ish.

Was sure Konono no1 would be the 1st artist listed here yet somehow still no mention (I don't like their music so this is not a mention)

He’d spent most of his childhood in a blue-collar Toledo neighborhood, until his father hit it big in prefab homes. Then the Scholzes moved into the world of prep schools and private golf clubs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070912153241/http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/boston_legal/

― The sensual shock (Sund4r), Sunday, February 27, 2022 10:34 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah, didn't know that! Also, I didn't bother to look it up.

Cheaper than 4 track - I remember in an interview Spencer Clark of Skaters saying he recorded with a dictaphone and home karaoke system.

ok that's hard top

to top even

What kind of gear did Jandek use?

Jandek def used a dictaphone for the spoken word CD trilogy but that's not strictly music...

I always assumed a reel to reel but who knows

What, after all, is a cassette tape but a tiny reel to reel?

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/olcAAOSw47ViCQWR/s-l400.jpg

Kinda doubt anyone made those in microcassette format though

https://tapeop.com/interviews/70/sufjan-stevens/

here's the sufjan piece, it's mostly paywalled but it still provides a good summary of his recording practices at the time. recording everything to a cheap digital 8 track at 32Khz and then bouncing it to protools two tracks at a time via a 1/8" jack is a pretty cheap/lo-fi/amateurish method. it mostly sounds decent despite all that but the lo-fi nature of the recording does come through at times, especially the drums.

i do also doubt that sufjan had used like, top of the line instruments on those albums, considering how many he played & the emphasis on keeping costs down, but there's not really any info about that

All said and done, then wouldn’t the most important recordings made on cheap equipment/instruments would be archival recordings or field recordings like those by Alan Lomax?

Idk maybe his equipment was very hi-fi and expensive in the early 20th century.

Egg Punk is usually tracked/mixed/mastered for $0.

The best album made for $0 is probably Ween "Pure Guava."

Hey I mentioned Ween earlier! I knew that was the right choice

But to be honest I feel Ween went a bit overboard on that one.

Whoops I did ctrl+f for the album title. idk it seems about right to me :)

there some good ideas in there but almost everthing from “flies on my dick” onward sounds like something I could have made with friends in highschool on one evening. This is not a good thing.

It would make for a very impressive 10 track album all things considered

Iirc correctly “the pod” was also dirt cheap to record.

dj screw tapes feel like they could be at home in this thread

Pure Guava was mixed in a proper studio so presumably transferred to tape. I think The Pod might have just been mastered to cassette

Cleaners From Venus - under wartime condition (1984/1985)

"written and produced by Martin Newell between January and May of 1984; Lawrence Elliott co-wrote "a blue wave". ..."gear used included a twenty quid Hofner solid electric guitar, a home-made bass, a stylophone (as pioneered by Rolk Harris) a glockenspiel, various drums, an S. R. 88 drum machine, sleighbells, and a saucepen. the echo was a good old W.E.M. copicat driven by three hamsters on a treadmill powered on water/amphetamine mixture of 2-1. the whole thing was recorded in a bedroom on a Teac 144 (take your hat off when you say that name) ...it kind of proves that the technocracy are talking bullshit when they tell you that you need to buy all that expensive tackle. to the disaffected youth, to the microship underclass, to the unemployed... music-pop music belongs to you. it does not belong to the cynical manipulators of multinational corporations. take it back from them NOW. if you cannot afford to buy this record you have my (CLEANERS FROM VENUS) full permission to tape it (as if you need it) now go out and do it yourself. this is pop. yeah! yeah! yeah!"

If software counts as equipment, cracked copies of Fruity Loops were super important to first wave grime and other early 2000s electronic music.

Wasn't the early Silver Jews stuff recorded over the phone to an answering machine?

Pod was mastered to DAT by Andrew Weiss. Am sure it was same for Gauava, only 'Dont get 2 close' was recorded at a 16trk studio.

Guava

https://preview.redd.it/ht7bng258ob61.jpg?width=526&auto=webp&s=c1c3820868a48aa9e527f6609f0b9a8580660918