Active Band Man Chats - The Transition of Media

So, what’s today’s topic?

Me!

Huh?

Di!

What?

A!

Okay, what’s going on?

Media!

Media?

It has changed quite a bit over the last few decades, hasn’t it?

Ah, you mean music media? Well, first we need to define what ‘media’ is.

According to Wikipedia: Media refers to tools or devices used for recording, transmitting, or storing information. It is also sometimes translated as ‘medium’.

That’s a rather stiff explanation, but yeah, that’s about right. For us, the most familiar one nowadays is probably the CD.

Yeah, back in the previous century, there were tons of million-sellers!

Are you talking about the ’90s? Well, technically, that is the previous century.

That was the true golden age of CDs!

Nice pun (flat tone).

If we’re talking about primitive media...

Primitive media?

Papyrus!

Whoa, ancient much? Are we talking archaeology now? That’s going way back.

Stone tablets!

Sure, why not?

And there were also wooden and bamboo slips!

Nostalgic!—Not really!

Busted.

Of course, you are! Written media are fine, but we’re talking about music media here—we’re band members, after all.

Good point. Go ahead and start.

First up, analog.

You mean vinyl records? They’ve got that warm, rich sound, and with the resurgence of DJ culture, they’re popular again!

Yeah, that’s true. DJ culture has been around for a while, but I’ve recently started collecting vinyl myself. Over the past six months, I’ve been buying them like crazy!

The black disc abyss... terrifying.

Abyss... Indeed...

More like a black hole.

I’ve been getting sucked in—I’m always browsing auction sites lately. Vinyl records are great not just for their sound, but also for their large, visually striking album art compared to CDs.

Totally! The big obi with the quirky Japanese translations of foreign titles—just iconic!

Quirky, indeed. Japanese record companies just came up with those titles on their own, didn’t they?

Their creativity was something else.

You really like those translated titles, huh?

Like The Prince of Hell’s Roses?

Exactly! And imagine putting on makeup like this—wait, stop!

Or Surprise Kizuhiko in the Dark!

Right, and then on stage, eating bats—hey! Stop fooling around! That’s like something I’ve watched on TV!

Nostalgic.

Let’s get back on topic. And yeah, the size of vinyl records really gave you that sense of, “I own this music!” Can you relate?

Totally! It satisfies that collector’s itch. After vinyl, I guess the next step is cassette tapes?

Probably. I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but since I didn’t have a record player, the first album I bought was on cassette tape. Walkmans were revolutionary—they let you carry your music with you!

Exactly! You could record stuff, too—it was groundbreaking.

People often say this, but we all wanted to record songs from TV music shows.

“Mom, please be quiet just for a moment!”

Totally did that! Holding a boombox close to the TV speaker because we didn’t know about line-in recording.

And you’d always end up with family members’ voices recorded in the background!

So relatable!

And then you’d lend those recordings to friends, complete with your mom’s voice!

That really happened!

Back then, there was no such thing as DVRs for TV shows. Oh, and cassette tapes came in different types, didn’t they?

Yeah, there were types like normal and metal tapes.

I thought metal tapes were for metal or hard rock, so I never bought them.

I’ve never thought that!

They were pricey, though.

They were.

I mostly went with high-position tapes.

Same here. Isn’t that such a Japanese thing, though? Picking the middle option?

Normal tapes were cheap, but I assumed the sound quality wasn’t great.

I get what you mean.

Oh, and don’t forget labeling the cassette with track names!

Lettering!

In sync!

Classic.

Nostalgic. Will younger people even understand this?

English song titles looked cool, but...

For Japanese titles...

Soshite Boku wa Tohou ni Kureru (And Then I Was At a Loss).

Yoshiyuki Ohsawa!

I always ran out of letters like ‘I’ or ‘E’ first.

Totally. ‘S’ and ‘T’ ran out quickly, too.

So many bands with ‘The [Something]’s’!
I remember transferring long parts from ‘A’ as a makeshift ‘I’.

I wonder if people can relate?

And when the tape got tangled, you’d fix it with a pencil!

Nostalgic! A hexagonal pencil.

Tombow, right?

The brand doesn’t matter!

One with an eraser tip.

Still doesn’t matter!

Moving on, I also used tapes for MTRs (Multi-Track Recorders)!

Cassette MTRs!

With four tracks, bouncing recordings back and forth.

Think people will get it?

Adjusting tape speed, too!

Probably not.

Layering tracks for a song was so thrilling!

It was. I had one but wasn’t super into it—just used it casually. Mine was from Yamaha.

Mine too! Picking Yamaha feels very Japanese, doesn’t it?

Maybe. But analog recording with tapes had its charm, even though digital is way more convenient now. The natural compression tapes were so good.

Digital distorts or errors out if the output is too high, but with tapes, there’s a nice, natural compression.

Right, right. And reverse playback too, maybe? Even nowadays, there are people who intentionally stick to analog recording for this kind of nuance. Though, the tape we’re talking about here is a bit different, isn’t it?

After experiencing things like cassette tape multitrack recorders, this is what Kizuhiko is currently using for demo recordings!
Zoom / R8 Multitrack Recorder

I have one of those too.

It’s super convenient with a built-in rhythm machine and effects, right?

Totally.

Although cassette tapes have fallen out of use, this gave me an opportunity to look into something that I’ve been curious about for years.

Oh? What’s that?

Why were tapes with odd durations like 46 minutes or 54 minutes so common?

Ah, yeah.

According to Kizuhiko’s research! Many LP records had a side length of 23-27 minutes!

Ah, I see!

Impressive! After all the times cassette tapes have served us well, next up is CDs! For our generation, CDs are the most familiar medium, aren’t they?

Yep. These days, there are young people who don’t even own a device to play CDs, but you can still get players.
Tascam / CD-200 Professional CD Player

Rack-mounted! Nowadays, maybe having a CDJ at home would be a bold move.
Pioneer DJ / CDJ-350 DJ Multi-Player (2-Unit Set)

Not a bad idea. Or maybe this might feel more familiar to young people these days?

Possibly. But hey, ‘young people’?

CDs… Compact Discs, huh? They really did get compact. There were even CD Walkmans. They were so sensitive to vibration and skipped a lot, making them hard to carry around though.

Oh, yeah. You had to carefully keep them level in your bag. But compared to records and tapes, CDs made it so much easier to skip to a specific track.

Exactly. The concept of Side A and Side B disappeared too. And the digital sound didn’t degrade, which was great.

Although apparently CDs themselves do deteriorate. They were sometimes criticized for lacking the warmth of records, but I feel like the music of the ’80s—when CDs came out—suited them. In hindsight, of course.

You mean that ‘coldness’ of digital sound.

Or you could call it clarity.

Listening to records, I can kind of understand the critique. But ultimately, it’s still compressed sound...

There are pros and cons. So, next is MiniDiscs?

MDs! That’s nostalgic.

They were groundbreaking too.

Yeah. Back in the day, we’d rent CDs and dub them onto tapes, but with MDs, you could change the track order and skip to the start of any track quickly.

And since it was digital-to-digital, the sound quality was... pretty good, I think.

Wasn’t there a mode switch? It extended the recording time, right? Like four times as much?

Oh yeah, long play, I think it was called.

Come to think of it, there were MD multitrack recorders too, weren’t there?

Oh yeah, but those used a format called MD DATA.

Huh? A different format?

I thought it would work just like cassette multitracks, where you could just pop in a blank MD, but nope, didn’t work...

Really?

Then after that, it was the iPod era, right?

Yep.

Before that, there was DAT too.

Oh yeah! I only ever saw it in recording studios, though... Then time passed, and we started listening on iPhones and iTunes.

These days, there are so many songs you can listen to on YouTube, and now... it’s the era of subscription streaming!

Exactly. I guess now it’s more about file formats? With the evolution of media, the way we listen to music has changed too. Well, I haven’t ventured into subscriptions myself... I’m still all about CDs, and even going back to vinyl—kind of like returning to my roots?

Very you, though.

That said, in the end, I still rip the CDs I buy to my computer and listen to them on my iPod or Walkman.

Speaking of returning to roots, check out this product!
ION Audio / Superior LP All-in-One Bluetooth Record Player

Now that’s retro... huh? An all-in-one player?

It’s amazing! “This all-in-one music player has a turntable, cassette tape player, CD player, radio tuner, USB music file playback, Bluetooth receiver, external input jacks, and high-quality built-in speakers. It handles records, cassette tapes, Bluetooth playback, and more all in one device.”

Even a radio!?

Yeah! By the way, Sound House also sells replacement needles for record players, so don’t worry!
→ List of Record Styli

That’s a solid lineup.

And if you look at the Recording Media category...
→ List of Recording Media

It’s mostly SD cards and USB flash drives now.

But wait, I spotted one cassette tape!
Reloop / Tape 2 Portable Recorder in Cassette Tape Design

Huh? A portable recorder... designed like a cassette tape? Not the same thing!

Not at all... It uses an SD card inside...

I guess people want the retro look with modern internals.

So, after exploring all this, it’s clear that while media formats evolve, music is always by our side! Because everything is?

For love!