My recording career did not begin in a professional studio. It began in high school, with a pile of cassette decks, cables, homemade oscillators, Casio keyboards, and cheap microphones strewn across a table in my upstairs bedroom/loft.
For remote sessions, I recorded my friends with a boom box in the park. In order to expand my sounds, I sometimes borrowed 4-track cassette recorders, basses, steel guitars, Mattel Synsonics Drums, Maestro Echoplexes, and Roland synthesizers from friends. I tracked, overdubbed, edited, and released a number of cassette albums on my Pink Noise Cassettes label. There were many other people like myself making records on minimal equipment simply because they wished to express themselves. Many, like me, were making music that was not commercial in any sense. But others I traded tapes with would occasionally be working with traditional song structures and more recognizable genres. Sure, their releases didn't sound as polished as major label LPs done in expensive studios, but if the songs were good and the artist was putting themselves out there, the music could find and build an audience. Songwriters and home recordists like East River Pipe [Tape Op#1], R. Stevie Moore [#84], Linda Smith, Daniel Johnston, and Chris Hickey [#81] let the limitations of their recording setups determine, or even dictate, the sound of their music. Hell, Neutral Milk Hotel's records [Tape Op#11] were produced by Robert Schneider [#2, #155] on 4- and 8-track and sound nothing like most pop music – let alone indie rock – yet the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has sold over 400,000 copies. Was that hindered by not sounding "professional"? I'd say the album only benefitted from sounding unique, authentic, and striking.
