Now I suppose you think you can press play and it will work, well sorry, guess again. Now you have to click the little io button on each track and under MIDI Hardware output select your MIDI device, if you don’t know which one to pick just try one until it works.

Now you should be able to press play and hear the midi file. If it doesn’t work at all their could be a problem with the way MIDI is set up on your computer, check and see if you get sound with Tabit. If sound works in Tabit works then go to Tools > Options and click the play tab, then see what’s selected under MIDI Output Device and select this in Reaper. If sound doesn’t work in Tabit then their’s probably something wrong with the way MIDI is set up on your computer, but really it doesn’t matter for this article, just read on below.

Now that you’ve done all that you need to undo it to continue the tutorial using samples in place of the MIDI instruments. So click the io button again and choose <no output> for each track and continue on from the last tutorial.

Alright so you’ve downloaded, installed, and opened Reaper. Now what you want to do is close the little window that pops up and go to File > New Project; if you want you can listen to the sample song first, it’s pretty catchy.
Also before I forget, if you downloaded Reaper 3.0+ yours will probably look different than mine unless you downloaded one from version 2. All you have to do is go to Options > Themes > Default_2.0. You can use the black theme if you want but I got used to the other one, so the black theme looks weird to me.

Now your screen should be blank and their should be no audio tracks up. Now go to Insert > Media File… or just hit your insert key (Not literally of course! Put down that hammer.)

Now go find where you put Sonador – Bangs.mid and open it.

Reaper will ask you if you want to import the file on separate tracks, this should already be checked, so go ahead and click OK.

Now use the scroll bar at the bottom to adjust your screen so you can see all the tracks and your screen should look like this:

I’d recommend renaming the tracks so you can tell which one is which, do this by double clicking the text TabIt MIDI – Track 1 – Sonador – Bangs on the upper left or bottom mixing console. Remember Track 1 is Guitar, Track 2 is Bass, and Track 3 is Drums.

Now if you push play you won’t hear jack shit, why? Because you have to tell Reaper what you want to use to play your MIDI file first. I made a page on how to do this, but for this tutorial I’m going to use samples because I think they sound better, but if you’re curious and want to know how to get MIDI to play through Reaper you can check it out by clicking here.

Next click the fx button on the guitar track and in the filter list box at the bottom begin typing reasam. This should bring up ReaSamplOmatic5000, you can select it and click OK if you want to add it to the fx list and figure out how it works yourself, but I’ve already made some files with all the settings you need. You can download a zip file of them here. Make sure when you unzip them you use ‘extract here’ and put the extracted FXChains folder in C:\Program Files\REAPER\ or it wont work.

So now click cancel to close the Add FX window and select FX > Add FX Chain… and browse to C:\Program Files\REAPER\ then select Guitar.RfxChain.

Now your screen should look like the one below. If you didn’t extract the zip file in the REAPER folder like above you’ll probably get some error message about not finding E.wav, but you can fix this by clicking browse and opening E.wav from wherever you extracted the zip file.

Now do the same for the rest of the tracks, and hopefully you extracted the zip file to C:\Program Files\REAPER\ because the drums will be a bitch to sort out (Sorry to the non-windows users who have to do this, I wish Reaper was better at handling it . Both bass and guitar use E.wav and below is a chart of which files go to the drums).

Alright now press play and you should be able to here this:

bangs-midi.mp3

In Part 3 we’ll record over the guitar and bass parts with real instruments so that they sound better.

When you open Tabit your screen will look like the photo below, if it doesn’t then quit playing solitaire and open up Tabit

Using Tabit is pretty simple and it’s pointless for me to explain it in detail here since you can find anything you want to know in the help menu. What I will tell you though is that you use the key pad to type in the notes and if you wanna add more tracks just go to ‘Song’ and select ‘Add Track’ from there you can add another guitar, bass, drums, piano, banjo, etc track. Just play around with it and you’ll have it figured out in no time.

Now the reason I said Tabit can pretty much be used solely as your rough draft recording is because you just create the tracks you want and Tabit will play it back exactly as if you had recorded it…well almost. Tabit uses MIDI to play back the notes so it sounds kinda shitty, especially the guitar, it sounds more like a piano, but the bass and drums almost sound real. Even so, this is pretty much what a rough draft recording is anyway. With Tabit you can refine your ideas until it sounds like you want it to, then when you’re done you can go to File > Export MIDI and import it into your multitrack recording software and recorded better sounding guitars.

So for example here’s a song I made in Tabit and will be using as my example in the rest of these tutorials, and if you don’t wanna export it to MIDI yourself for whatever reason (the most likely reason being you installed Tabit started reading this article forgot about it then came back to it after 30 days and now your version of Tabit is expired) you can download the MIDI file here.

Alright that’s it for now, in the next article I’ll show you how to import the MIDI file into a Multitrack Digital Audio Workstation to use as a template to record better sounding guitars/bass so your band mates wont look at you funny when you try and play back the weird sounding Tabit file.

I don’t think I’m very good at recording yet, but I know some of the stuff I’ve recorded is (recording quality wise) better than other stuff I’ve heard on myspace. An example of what I’m talking about is like this song I recorded on a boom box with Billy playing drums (kinda). Although don’t misunderstand my comment as saying songs recorded this way suck, they don’t, one of my favorite Iowa City artists, Samuel Lock Ward records in this way and I think it’s brilliant. He even has an album called Boombox by Bedside in which he recorded all the tracks on a boom box with all the wonderful tape hiss included . (I should also note that he’s also in another great band called the Miracles of God which don’t specifically record using Lo-Fi methods, though I read somewhere that their first album was recorded on a cassete 4 track, but it still sounds pretty damn good to me). Another awesome Iowa City band that records this way is CroKane, they are a two piece that plays old style blues. Because they record this way their recordings sound almost like they were recorded in the 50’s like Johnny Lee Hooker or Leadbelly, you know like when they used to have just one microphone and have it record straight into a device that cuts the record as it’s recording. So like I said, don’t think I’m knocking down this way of recording or anything, It definitely serves it’s purpose when that’s what you’re going for.

Anyway my point is many people who are recording their own songs and are trying to get sounds like on commercial records by recording this way just don’t seem to know what they are doing. Another thing is that some people who are using quality recording devices like an all in one console or a computer still don’t have very good recordings because they don’t know or understand how to mix a song properly to get good results.

This brings me back to my trip to the library and an idea I had. When I went to they library I specifically wanted a book that came with a CD with examples of how to mix a song properly, because like I said above I still don’t think I’m very good at it. Only problem was my library only had one book that came with a CD it was called The Complete Idiots Guide to Home Recording. I absolutely hate books with these kind of titles (like the dummies series) because they insinuate the person reading it is a moron. Since my library lacked any other book with a CD I checked it out. After I started reading it I was very surprised though, it is a very good book with lots of great information and examples, it just has a very stupid title. Anyway the only problem with this book (besides the stupid title) is that it uses Pro Tools Free which only runs on Windows 98/ME and you can’t download it anymore anyway (unless you look reaallly hard). So the info is good but since the software is outdated it’s somewhat useless to learn from. So I went off to search the internet for something similar, but I couldn’t find anything close to detailed articles with example sound files (I found a ton of articles on the subject but no example files, then I found some example files but no details on how the person mixing the song got those results).

So this brings me to my idea, I decided I’ll try myself to record a song detailing every aspect of it with pictures, sound, and maybe video. Like I said a few times before I’m not the most experienced when it comes to recording and mixing but maybe by doing this I’ll be able to learn what techniques work best and which don’t. Perhaps maybe I’ll even get feedback from people more experienced than me saying how they would have done this or that differently to make it sound better. Anyway I don’t wanna fall into the same trap as the Author of the book I just mentioned with outdated software. I’d like to try to find some kind of free software (preferably GNU GPL so that I know it will always be available for free even if I have to offer it on my site). I know of a GPL’ed program called Traverso that would work, but it has some latency problems so it’s out of the question for now. I also know of one called Kristal that is free but has a limitation of 16 tracks (which isn’t bad) and doesn’t support midi. Plus it’s not GPL so who knows if it will ever get outdated (the website says the current download is from 2004, so it’s already 5 years old). I know of a really nice one called Reaper but it’s not free and you’re suppose to buy it after 30 days for $60 (unless you want the commercial license which cost $225). The good thing about this one is that it doesn’t expire after 30 days, it just continues to give you a message that you should buy it and still works as a full version. Only problem is since it’s not free GPL software it’s unpredictable, you never know if the author of the program will decide that he wants to revoke this generous offer to keep it a full version even after it has expired.
I know of another program called Ardour which is free GPL software and looks really nice, only thing is it’s only available for GNU/Linux and Mac (I’ve read theirs a Windows version that was developed but won’t be released because of complicated issues).
Lastly theirs Audacity, but while it’s an excellent audio editor, is multi-platform, and free under the GNU GPL, I also think it’s a terrible multitrack DAW. The way it saves project files totally sucks, plus the fact that you can’t use the effects in real time, you have to preview them first, also makes it a poor choice.
So before I do anything I’ll need to do some research, if anyone knows of a good multi-platform GPL multitrack program leave me a comment, or send me an email at moc.xobni@emptyzedlavijneb and let me know.
Well I think that about does it, if I’m able to pull this off hopefully it will come out as a quality article that will be of good value to anyone wanting to make better sounding recordings. Perhaps if it comes out okay I’ll also make a pdf of the articles available for offline viewing.

Recording Sheet ODS Format

Recording Sheet PDF Format

Recording Sheet XLS Format

Below is a picture of what it looks like, as you can see the wire on mine got severed.
If yours is broken at a different place and you can’t use the original cord, no worries, either use the cord from an old junky pair of headphones. If you don’t have an old pair of headphones go to your local dollar store and buy a cheap pair of headphones for a dollar and use the cord from those.

The minimum amount of tools you’ll need to fix the cassette adapter are wire strippers, a phillips screwdriver, and a soldering iron + wet sponge/napkin/old cloth/etc. Plug in the soldering iron now so it gets hot enough by the time you need to use it, and make sure to keep it away from anything that’s going to burn or melt.

Alright so the next thing you wanna do is use the cutting part of you wire strippers and just cut the wire at the part where it’s damaged, if you’re using a wire from a pair of headphones you can skip this step.

Now use your screwdriver and take out all the screws, mine had four in the back and two in front. Yours might be different though, I have another one and it has five screws in the back only.

And so here’s what it looks like when opened, make sure you don’t lose any pieces when you open it. I almost lost a tiny metal bar on the floor when I first opened mine, I didn’t even hear it fall out. I also took apart a Panasonic one a long time ago and it had all kinds of pieces in it that were a pain in the ass to put back together. It was a pretty old one though and luckily these newer ones don’t seem to be as complicated.

Now in this picture I’ve pointed out the wires that you’ll need to desolder. Yours might look a little different which is ok, just make sure you remember which wire goes where, because if you switch them around the wrong way it might not work. It would be a good idea to write it down where they go, or take a picture of it. While I was doing this I actually did forget where the wires went, but luckily since I was taking pictures I was able to put it back together the right way.

I’d recommend taking the whole PC Board out if you can, just in case you accidentally touch the soldering iron to the cassette shell, because it will melt.

Next take your soldering iron and just touch the little bulb of solder that the wire is connected to and pull the wire off. It should come right off without having to keep the iron there very long. Do this for each wire, and like I said before don’t forget where each wire went. You did write it down didn’t you?

Next you need to take your cord and wire strippers and strip off the insulation from wires so that it looks like the picture below. btw sorry for the crappy quality, I had taken a better picture of this but it was one of the pictures that was eaten by my computer.

Ok, now you want to solder the wires back to where they belong. All you have to do is just hold the wire down to the little solder bulb on the PC Board and use the soldering iron to just ‘tack’ it on. It shouldn’t take much and you don’t want to heat up the board with the iron too long or the traces on the PC Board could peel off.
Do this with each wire, making sure you are soldering them in the right place, remember what I said above about writing it down or taking a picture?

After you’re done with that, just put everything back together, and hopefully you didn’t lose any little pieces.

So there you have it, how to fix a car stereo cassette adapter. The only thing is that most people are probably switching to FM transmitters now. I got a couple of them, but I think they’re junk. I bought a cheap one at first, but even though it says it’s stereo it’s only mono. Plus it only transmits to a few stations and it’s pretty staticy. So then I went and got a Belkin one that transmits to any station, but it was worse than the first one as far as static and battery life. So then I found this guide on how to make the Belkin Tunecast II transmit better, which worked pretty good but then the screen got cracked somehow so I have no idea which channel it’s transmitting to anymore. So for those like me and still have cassette decks in their cars, but want to use their iPod (or other mp3 player) instead of listening to the radio, here’s my guide on how to fix your cassette adapter if it gets broken.