July 1, 1979: it was thirty years ago today that the Sony Walkman went on sale, launching mobile music for the first time.

Wait – rewind (so to speak). That honor really belongs to the portable transistor radio – and, indeed, part of the reason America already knew and loved Sony by the time 1979 rolled around, having embraced their pocketable radios as early as the 1950s. In fact, if you want to blame a device for degrading audio fidelity, you should again look not to MP3s and iPods but back to — you guessed it — the same transistor radio.

But no matter. The Walkman did popularize carrying your own music collection with you. It was not only about mobility, but mobile music collections free of airwaves, mix tapes and the experience of walking around the city or doing a workout with your own personally-assembled soundtrack. It turned everyone into DJs and made the music something that could easily bounce around inside your head rather than around your living room or a music venue. The Walkman and not the iPod might also have to carry the burden of claims that music was made antisocial – but it also made for a uniquely personal experience.

And do we ever love cassettes, with their ability to accommodate our own mixes and recordings and stack in neat cubes.

True, the link that’s making the rounds on the Web parodies the clueless 13-year-old child of the iPod age:
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman [BBC News]

This comes from a different planet than the one on which we live on CDM. In this world, snarky 13-year-olds have no idea what the metal/normal switch does, and the zinger is “Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?” Okay, you snot-nosed brat, it’s a good thing global warming will revert us all to a primitive Stone Age existence and you won’t have to suffer the fate of technological advancement. PS – your dad says never to call him Alan again. (I kid, kid, really. Just can’t resist.)

Of course, on our planet some 13-year-old is probably assembling his or her own cassette player out of spare parts and turning it into a circuit-bent DJ machine, and knows the entire history of the Sony Walkman by model number, and can tell you which factory assembled your old broken model based on the serial number. In that demented spirit, I invite readers to share your own Walkman memories, and offer up a selection of my favorite cassette-themed posts from CDM (of which, I was surprised to discover, there are quite a lot).

I won’t even try to summarize the history of the Walkman, because I have no idea what it is, and Wikipedia has beaten me to the punch.

CDM on Cassettes

The best story of all time: Eric Beug on how to make a Mellotron sampler entirely out of Walkmans, as seen at an early Handmade Music with CDM, Make Magazine, and Etsy. See MAKE:blog for the full post.

The best-ever cassette quote: from experimental DJ Artjom (DIY machines and Max patches below):

Yes, you can contact with me. But, if you would want that I played on your party on cassettes, then I refuse. I do not play on cassettes any more. In general, I don’t want play in the club, because people come there to drink and to search partner for copulate. This is bad.

The best day for cassettes: when we read RIAA numbers that showed that DVD Audio and SACD combined were still matched by cassette sales. Some new formats catch on. Some do not.

Cassette tapes (and other tape media) as a way of making lo-fi samples:

Free Tape-Recorded Samples of Roland TR-606, 808

Cassettes for uses silly and uses practical alike:

Cassette Change Purse; Choosing Cassette Decks with Pitch Control

In other words, cassettes can be entirely useless and about nostalgia only — or they can remain a useful and inspiring musical tool even for digital users, helping you get out of your rut and approach sound in a new way.

Cassette Jockeys at the 2007 Maker Faire

The work of DJ Artyom, who assembled DIY DJ gear using cassette tapes for a unique sound and mixing techniques:

Homemade Cassette Tape DJ Mixers + Max/MSP PC

An international collective shares mix tapes – the physical tapes, yes, even in the Internet age

Above: Andy Warhol shills for TDK. Video cassette tape, to be sure – but sublime nonetheless. If I had to remember my Japanese lines, I might have to close my eyes, too.

Tape collections:
The brilliant Project C-90
The Obsessive “Tape Jam”

Walkman Sequencer: Tape + Homebrew Sequencer + Nintendo Game Boy

Gijs Gieskes is a master circuit bender, and cassette is a favorite medium. Check out his Tape Seq 02, which varies cassette playback using controllable pots and synchronizes to a Game Boy. It’s an analog result that’s only possible in this way with tape as the playback technology.

Put a cassette deck inside a Windows PC (sadly, this product appears to be discontinued?)

You Tell Us

Nostalgia is one thing. But what to you have the cassette and the Sony Walkman meant for music? And is there anything these youngsters (well, anyone younger than … 20, I guess?) could learn about this technology? Is there a lesson from the Walkman?

Above: You know a technology makes an impact when it has its own graffiti. The cult of the cassette, as captured (CC) hugovk.

The middle child of audio technology, neither as hip as vinyl or as modern as the MP3, the cassette lives on in a massive online shrine called the C-90 Project. Odds are, if you’ve ever seen a blank cassette, it’s stored in here or soon will be. We saw its colorful compact novelties back in 2005. Now, the site has grown and added features, including bi-lingual discussions in both English and Russian, plus organization by format (compact cassette, the standard size, as well as microcassette and minicassette) and brand. If you want to add to this collection, they welcome participants. History will thank you.

A couple of the odder selections here. Weirdly, I remember seeing both back in their day. (Hey, I guess TDK decided to add some Latino flair to their tape line.)

Project C-90. An Ultimate Audiotape Guide. (indeed … it’s even bigger than you think)

Continuing in the spirit of cassette tapes, here are two more cassette items.

Cassettes that Hold Your Change

Completely useless, but somewhat amusing: Designboom’s Cassette Wallet recycles old cassette shells into zippered money holders. If you’re looking to get your retro chic on, they’re $43. Or, if you find some lame tapes as you’re rooting throw your collection for the Cassette Jockey Competition at Maker Faire, you can try to figure out how to recycle it into something like this and sell it for $43. Via the Spanish-language JP-Geek, Sweden’s English-language Fosfor, and a site you already know about.

Cassettes for Analog Resampling

In the domain of the musically functional, Roland from Munich wonders if cassette players with pitch control could be the perfect addition to a digital studio.

Just saw your post about cassette players and wanted to ask if you know of any old commercially-available players that allow you to set the playback speed manually (maybe some professional model?).

Could really use that for sampling since I am not a big fan of the digital algorithms available.

I’d love to hear some reader thoughts on this.

I know of many cassette players that have pitch control. Most that I’ve seen that have a readily-accessible manual adjustment are portable players. The higher-end portable Marantz and Sony recorders I’ve seen all have pitch control. I’ve also seen them on some handheld recorders, like a US$60 Sony recorder I used for voice lessons in college. Sure enough, Sony still makes a complete line of what they call “standard cassette recorders” (as opposed to microcassette or flash memory-powered):

Sony Portable Electronics

… though it looks like they may have discontinued some of the nicer ones they used to make. Quality there is not the best, but most of the rack-mounted tape decks I’ve seen have only two speeds; i.e., 1 7/8 ips standard and 3 3/4 ips high speed. You can use these to achieve pitch changes, though, which I’ve also done on pro Tascam decks: record at high-speed and play back at standard to lower pitch. But it’s not really variable, because that control is usually designed for finer calibration. (In studios, what most people usually do is go out to a reel-to-reel, though that’s not space-practical in a home studio.)

Does this sound better than digitally changing the speed? Yes, it does — even on a cheap portable Sony, the added noise is still outweighed by a more accurate pitch shift when it comes to radical changes. There’s just not enough data in a standard-resolution audio files to effect big speed changes. Not to mention, there’s something satisfying about the ritual of working with tape, and you might want some of the coloration of tone your recorder provides.

I suspect your options are really wide open here, so let’s ask the readers: got a cassette recorder that’s handy for pitch changes?

And for the record (erm, tape?), yes, I do know some people who still listen to cassettes, without any pretentions of retro chic.

No laptops. No CD players. No turntables. The Cassette Jockey World Championships will be cassette tape only. And the rules are tough: store-bought, commercial cassette tapes only. (Dig that Paula Abdul out of your closet — you know you want to.) Sounds dull? Think again: how you play those tapes is entirely up to you, and from what we’ve seen insane circuit benders and mad scientists of circuitry do to tape machines, that could get real interesting.

Mark Gunderson, aka Trademark G, is organizing the event at day one of the Maker Faire outside San Francisco, Saturday, May 19. You’ll need a ticket to the Maker Faire — but if you have even a slight shot at access to the Bay Area that weekend, I’d suggest you do that, anyway. (I’ll be there, lurking about, trying not to burn out sensors because I confused +5V and +9V.)

It’s an open call — and if you think you’ve got what it takes to judge, you should get in touch, as well.

Art of the Cassette Tape

Whether you’re going to the Maker Faire or not, I’ve also rounded up cassette tape creations from CDM stories past, just to get your tape juices flowing.

Homemade Cassette Tape DJ Mixers + Max/MSP PC
International Mixtape Project Sharing Tapes, CDs Worldwide
Warhol for TDK Tapes (Okay, video cassette tapes … maybe a VJ session should come next.)
Obsessive Cassette Tape Collection
Homebrewed Game Boy sequencer, via Walkman tape player
Put a Cassette Deck in Your Windows PC

Open Call for Cassette Jockeys

Here’s the full scoop on the “CJ” competition from Trademark G:

2007 Cassette Jockey World Championships
*** CALL FOR COMPETITORS ***

CALLING ALL: Cassette Jockies… Retro-Tech Lovers… Magnetic Media Monsters… Circuit Benders… Multi-Media DJs… Walkman Hot-Rodders… we want you at the:

2007 CASSETTE JOCKEY WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
at the Make Magazine Maker Faire!

http://makerfaire.com/cj/

In 2003 at a festival in Chicago, a group of retro-tech geniuses organized The Cassette Jockey World Championships. Like the popular DJ (Disk Jockey) competitions with record-toting DJs showing off their turntable skills, the CJ Championships showcases skills and styles in the venerable world of cassettes. Since CJs were encouraged to hot-rod their own equipment, eviscerated boomboxes, disembodied tape heads, and overclocked Walkmans were the weapons of choice… anything that used the standard cassette as its ammo.

Now, in 2007, we’re hijacking the battle and hauling it to the west coast!

Forget DJs, this is for the CJs: The Cassette Jockey Championship is where YOU can show off your skills as a world-class CJ. This is your chance to show the world what the venerable and once-mighty cassette tape is capable of. The CJ who amazes the judges with their skill, technique, and knowledge will become the 2007 CASSETTE JOCKEY CHAMPION!

The Rules

1. One (1) Cassette Jockey at a time – no teams.
2. Competitors are ENCOURAGED to create or alter their own cassette tape decks/players/recorders/etc. to compete on. However, some stock cassette equipment will be provided at the competition.
3. Standard cassette tapes ONLY – no mini-cassettes or 8-Track tapes.
4. Cassettes used MUST be published, pre-recorded, “store-bought” cassettes for source material – No dubbing of CDs/LPs/8-Tracks/MP3s to tape, home recordings, battle cassettes, or found sounds are allowed.
5. Spliced tapes/tape loops are allowed. (But remember Rule #4.)
6. Live microphone usage and live feedback are allowed.
7. Headphones are allowed (supplied by competitor).
8. Competitors may use no more than six (6) cassette devices.

Competition
Competition will be Saturday, May 19, 2007 at the Maker Faire (admission/ticket required). The competition begins at 1pm with an Elimination Round, with each competitor given three (3) minutes to compete. Each will be scored by a panel of judges based on the criteria described below. The top five (5) scoring Cassette Jockeys will progress to the Final Round at 5pm. During the Final Round, each competitor is given five (5) minutes to compete. As before, each will be scored by the judges. The highest scorer is the winner, and receives a prize package and the title of Cassette Jockey World Champion!

Judging
A panel of judges will score each competitor in each round based on the following criteria:

1. (10 Points) Content. Techniques, musical ideas, and exploitation of the cassette medium.
2. (10 Points) Form. Performance style, transitions, overall set structure.
3. (5 Points) Intangibles. Bonus score for anything else the judge deems worthy.

Entry
For an entry form and up-to-date information about the 2007 Cassette Jockey World Championships, send an email to: cjchampionships@gmail.com
Entry Fee: $20 (payable at contest; does not include entry to Maker Faire)

It all sounds … hard. If only there were a way to meditate on tapes themselves. You know, get into what it means to be the tape. Okay, take it home, Andy. (I’ll leave it to you to apply this to audio tape as well as video; I’m off to find someone’s unwanted dual-VHS deck for my next VJ gig):

Russian DJ Artyom has built his own DJ audio hardware out of wood and electronics, complete with dual cassette playback boxes. The cassettes feature pitch control (fine and coarse), pitch bands, a motor off switch, and more, and he’s custom-built mixers, cross-faders, and EQ.

Then, he hooks these boxes up to his PC and relaxes — wait, no he doesn’t. His PC is packed with custom DJ patches built in Max/MSP.

Full hardware and software details at Artyom’s site, including downloadable Max patches, in English (see also Russian content — I’m sure someone out there speaks Russian):

Self-made DJ equipment
Max/MSP DJ Stuff

Via the rich electronic music blog, Filter27: How to DJ with an old cassette tapes

See also: KDE-Head photo on flickr with specs

Updated: Doh! Tom at Music thing beat me to this in 2005. Slight CDM lag there. ;) Nonetheless, maybe somebody will have a look at those Max patches and get some new ideas.

Man, these lazy newbie DJs, embracing a new-fangled playback medium like cassettes and Max/MSP patches. They’re nowhere near as authentic as the oldskool DJs playing … erm … CDs … at weddings. ;)

Another gorgeous shot of his brilliant hardware-building work after the jump (so you don’t have to wait through glacial load times):

Mix Tape Project

You send one compilation CD-R or (for street cred) cassette, and you get one in return. It’s nice to see mixes continue to flourish in the digital age, because it remains a wonderful way to get turned onto music — and find new musicians to support.

Via (the usually drivel-filled) Daily Candy. (Thanks, Jennifer, for separating the wheat from the chaff!)

Anyone on IMP already, or know of other such services?

Previous coverage of our cassette tape fetish: Warhol shilling for TDK (video tapes, but still, I do love tapes), a truly obsessive collection of blank cassettes, and (a must for participating in IMP) a cassette deck that installs in your PC.

Warhol Japandering for Cassettes [Dailymotion video, via]

I love his trademark wooden speech as he struggles through the Japanese. Remember a world in which you could advertise for cassette tapes? Sigh. At least Japan is still hip, jamming on marimbas and analog synths in other news.

Gijs Geikes has been hard at work since we last saw his latest bizarre Walkman Tape Player / Game Boy Sequencer. A new model sync with the Little Sound Dj cartridge: plug in a Game Boy, and other goodies (like a Walkman tape player and Stylophone keyboard), and you can create wild, screaming patterns like this. (A must-listen, experimental punk/hip-hop chiptune creation.)

Gijs has schematics up, so adventurous makers, you can make your own. Or you can just go buy one of those nifty Stylphones.

SEQ05 Pictures, Sounds, Schematics [Gieskes.nl Instruments]

Updated: That link exceeded its bandwidth restrictions, but you can hear the sounds via a new link! (Thanks, Gijs!)
Related:
Gameboy Music with LSDJ: Workshops, Tips, Photos, MP3s

Cassette Jam ‘05 (via Make: Blog

See also the somewhat befuddling Project C-90 (see sam bot).

I can’t wait for the “Vintage Blu-Ray Disc Graveyard” in 2046.

In follow-up to my story Tuesday about the new Dubstation from Audio Damage (and other assorted Dub links), ever-vigilant reader Adrian Anders is here with a couple of free VST alternatives. I still think the Dubstation may be worth US$40, but there’s no reason not to check these out, too, if you’ve got a PC. I’ve used the Retro Delay on my PC laptop; it’s fantastic. Take it away, Adrian:

ConcreteFX’s Tape Delay
[Download ZIP]
This SOB packs some major punch and has such original features as bit-crushing, distortion, 2 flutter LFOs, 2 multi-mode filters, and ducking, all inside the delay loop itself. Has to be heard to be believed how devastating the feedback on this delay can get. Not for the faint of heart (or ears).
Peep the other CoFX freebees [at a KVR audio post]. Ed: HUGE list there; check it out!

E-Phonic’s Retro Delay
What’s great about this delay is that the delay can be modulated (by the pitchbend no less!) in real time without the glitches in the audio normally associated with digital delay time-modulation. Furthermore, the delay also features the oh so neat reverb module that can create dub-style reverb->delay effects that I have yet to make with any other plug-in.

PC (Win) only (time to whip out that P4 you have hidden in your closet!) Ed: So THAT’S where my tricked-out P4 tower went! -PK

Thanks, Adrian. Got a favorite effect? Let me know. By the way, after my abysmally-incomplete Dub music roundup Tuesday (so I was in a hurry, okay?), you can expect a fuller story soon. Send your nominations for favorite artists + links if you haven’t already. Cheers! eers! ers! rs! s!

[Updated] Mac Plugin: Never fear, penniless Mac users. King Dubby for AU gives you a free Mac-compatible dub plugin; apparently some compatibility issues for some users so let us know how it goes. Thanks, Symbiotic!

King Dubby