Greatest Hits
So, I've finally successfully created the first archive. The first one of anything is always the hardest, takes the longest and has the steepest learning curve. It actually took several attempts to get it right, partly due to the terrible instructions included with the cassette converter, but I've managed to iron out all the issues now.
I have picked SoundCloud as the storage medium for this project party because it's the only one that will allow me to do what I need - such as upload the tracks individually and create a playlist out of them to share together as one album. SoundCloud is also the only audio source that can be easily embedded in a Hive post as far as I know.
Developers, please consider giving us a native audio upload function (IPFS?) or at least more embed options for the likes of Anchor with a nice clean playback widget.
Tools
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This is a pretty simple process. I've opted for the USB solution rather than the audio out to computer option. I read somewhere that this device can suffer interference from large electronic devices like a computer or monitor, so I powered it with 2 x AA batteries and placed it in a separate room while it works.
There is a manual mode, which involves me actually listening to the music and physically pressing a button to stop and start the recording at the end of each song. This is probably more accurate than the auto mode which I selected. In auto, the device auto-detects the gaps between the songs. This is sometimes not accurate and falsely triggers if you have silent periods within a song. Genres like classical music can usually trigger a lot of false gaps since you can get periods of silence exceeding 2 seconds within a song. There's very little chance of that in Afrobeat due to the continuous rhythms that pulsate throughout every song.
I am using an 8GB Kingston USB drive for this project. It's solid and very reliable with absolutely no moving parts.
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The cassette
The cassette is an album called "Greatest Hits" by "Fela Ransome-Kuti & The Africa 70". Fela Ransome-Kuti, or simply "Fela", was a legendary Nigerian musician and political activist. He is credited as being the father of the Afrobeat genre of music which is a very jazzy, sometimes funky, musical genre often accompanied by politically charged lyrics. This is not to be confused with "Afrobeats" which is a modern pop genre.
This was one of the first cassettes I every purchased with my own money way back in the day. God knows, I must have listened to it nearly a thousand times. I wonder what the lifespan of a tape is in playback terms. There's got to be some kind of limit before wear and tear sets in, or the tape starts to lose magnetism.
There's definitely an age limit, which is why I have embarked on this preservation project in the first place.
https://soundcloud.com/user7414865/fela-kuti-greatest-hits
🎵 Side A
- Lady
- Black Man's Cry
- Don't Gag Me
- Ye Ye De Smell
🎵 Side B
- Kalakuta Show
- Gentleman
- Chop 'N' Quench
- Unknown Soldier
After uploading this I discovered something that I either didn't know before, or had forgotten about. It's the fact that SoundCloud isn't completely free. After 180 minutes of free time, I'd have to pay for the service. I may end up doing that, but I doubt I would. I may make a switch to YouTube if I can't find a proper alternative since YouTube also embeds on Hive, but it will require more work on my part, and I'd have to deal with copyright strikes
Peace & Love,
Adé