Minidisc thoughts

[ermina]

the portable minidisc was my first “field recorder”. (or second? I can’t recall if it came after or before i found that micro-cassette dictaphone). Anyways, i used to record with this MD walkman™ using earbuds in the mic-in, walking around unnoticed in public settings. I may qualify this as the sonic equivalent of shooting from the hip with a plastic-y, not really lightproof camera.
I recently used some of those old recordings in a piece (probably not very noticeable as such in that track but conceptually at the very heart of it).

I’d love to put a track on a minidisc compilation.

[cour13r5]

i’d be down to contribute to an ambient comp, tho my preference would be for a digital download and/or MD option, as i don’t have access to a MD player anymore, and any “discretionary” funds of mine will be going toward other types of gear for the foreseeable future (& i’d like to end up with a copy of what i’m contributing to!).

if anyone’s passionate enough and has the extra time/energy to organize this, legit pick a theme and set a submission date. if it’s on a calendar, it exists.

[Gahlord]

I’d be into it, Also, I know that I sell cassettes to people who don’t even have players, they just want to support my work or enjoy buying it as a thing to own, an object, I mention this because I think people would buy minidiscs for the same reason, the audience wouldn’t likely all have minidisc players some would just buy because they want the object.

[Voltmeister]

This thread brings back memories and made me dig up this photo I sent my former bandmate a while ago. We used to do metal with the typical guitars-bass-drums-vocals lineup. But we had a Roland MC505 to provide a crazy amount of synths, beats and sound effects to go with that. Bringing the MC505 to our weekly rehearsal was difficult, as we all came by bicycle and had to bring our guitars/snare/cymbals/etc.

So a portable MD recorder became our 4th band member in the rehearsal room. We wrote songs/pieces with the MC505 in Cubase at home. We’d then bounce each song as a stereo track with click track on the L channel and synths, beats and sound effects on the R channel. My band mate was superfast at setting the markers. This way we could try out new ideas every week. Songs evolved and many ideas became songs this way. It was a fun and practical workflow. Later we switched to bouncing MP3’s and drag-n-dropping them over usb to a player. Which was easier, yet I always found the early MP3 players plasticky and less of an ‘instrument’ compared to the MD player.

[soggybag]

I loved mini disc. The format was really great. I recorded lots of modular noodling to minidisc “back in the day”. I still have a box full of discs and accessories.

Not too mention minidisc was awesome for recording. The sound quality could not be beat.

Sadly it can’t compete with the convenience of digital.

[glia]

bouncing audio between norns > md > and daw right now

such a great format

in my current space i cant easily place my cassette deck on the floor (i like to make music there) + all my portable cassette players have died

minidisc does the trick perfectly when i need to sample or record quick and move across the room

[soggybag]

This thread inspired me to find my mini discs.

[acajide]

What’s on those if you don’t mind me asking?

Ah I missed your post above. You should somehow archive them and share I’m sure you have some good material on there.

[soggybag]

There’s a lot of just music. Then there’s maybe 15 to 20 discs of synth recordings.

I had built a pretty good sized frac rack system, mostly Blacet, some Paia, and Wiard, and home made modules. I’d have the minidisc connected to my mixer and if something sounded good I’d hit record for a few minutes.

I’m trying to charge my minidisc and the battery won’t seem to charge. It could the recharagable battery is bad, there was also some corrosion on the connections in the disc player. I tried to clean this off but it didn’t seem to help. The disc seems to work from the power supply.

[eesn]

that is a scandalous number of minidiscs to still have around. 120-ish or so?

[soggybag]

Yeah, they were all in a box way in the back of a closet the back of which extends beneath the stairs. I had to clear about 6’ of stuff, then crawl under the stairs and there was a box labeled “minidisc”. I had to shuffle a few things around before I could extract it.

I had Sony CD Minidisc console. It was great, you could put it on fast mode and copy a CD to minidisc in a few minutes.

Sadly my young child fed it about 6 discs one day when no one was looking.

Aside, I’m amazed the keyboard is offering me an icon for minidisc !

[acajide]

To get music on and off you still have to use their software right?

[glia]

it would such fun if you were willing to send them out to a few other artists for reinterpretation/remixing

then perhaps we could release some version of the tracks and/or return the disc to you after mangling

[soggybag]

It’ll be a little embarrassing but sure mail you disc.

[soggybag]

There might be a software method but minidisc is more like cassette. You’d more likely just connect the player to your computer and hit play.

Some discs have an optical/digital out. If you have an adapter you can connect the player to your USB.

While minidisc has a file structure I’m not aware of anything that lets you browse and manage files directly. From the player you can add marks to tracks, delete tracks, name tracks, and things like that but you can’t select a group files and copy or drag them to your desktop.

[ether]

given i started this thread, with great intentions, years ago, i should probably take the lead in getting this little md project off the ground

(i’ve been ever-delayed by three hard-to-finish records, which are now neeearrrly done)

call it something like, say, LCRPMD01?

here’s my initial pitch:

PHASE 1

• let’s pick a few broad musical boundaries, say a tempo range, perhaps a few scales and keys (more on this below)
• two types of tracks :
  • very short snippets < 5s
  • up to ~ 1m or so
• everyone sends tracks here (or to me) and I collate them
• we keep going until we have a full MDs worth (need to check, 74 mins???). you can submit multiple short snippets. no deadline per se, just keep making snippets until we have enough.
• then I (or someone) does some basic-level matching / simple mastering and makes the whole set available for download, so people can run off their own MDs
• those of us with MD recorders / dupe facilities and spare disks can create copies and post to llllllll’ers who cover shipping costs?
• someone helps with packaging? labels? postcards???

That’s phase 1 complete, and everyone has a nice, original collection of tracks in MD format. But that leads us to phase 2…

PHASE 2

This is (partly) what sparked my interest in the MD format again…

• The results of phase 1 are used as backing tracks for everyone to then use in conjunction with other equipment to produce other, complete tracks, in the 2 to 5 minute long range, to produce another derived-album (or collection of tracks).
• … taking advantage of some of the random track skipping that MD can do, or just due to the random arrangement of the completed MD
• or you can mash around with the buttons on your MD player however you want
• using whatever additional gear you want : modular, Norns, computers, whatever
• but, you have to perform it in once pass, with the MD backing tracks driving things, semi-randomly, or something

Et voilà!

So, throw in some ideas, and if there’s enough interest in something like this i’ll push it along.

[RMBLRX]

While minidisc has a file structure I’m not aware of anything that lets you browse and manage files directly. From the player you can add marks to tracks, delete tracks, name tracks, and things like that but you can’t select a group files and copy or drag them to your desktop.

I’ve personally had a hell of a time getting NetMD to work. Off the top of my head, I can’t really say whether it would allow one to transfer recordings; I imagine that, given all the stupid protections they put in place with the software to prevent piracy, it’s not likely.

I think the main purpose of NetMD, specifically, was to compete with mp3 players (with both hands tied, of course), and my only purpose in attempting to get it running has been to erase a stack of discs I was given which were unfortunately written using the software, meaning that they’re protected even from being erased by anything other than NetMD.

[soggybag]

I had never heard of NetMD.

[eesn]

I’ve personally had a hell of a time getting NetMD to work.

I got Hi-MD to work once. It was painfully slow. Maybe they thought of it as “better than tape” for the capacity of 1GB - big at the time. I “got Net-MD to work” on their solid state players - not so fond memories of SonicStage (Sony Connect). I think they either issued a firmware update later, or just a little app that would give you access to just the files - no other “features”.

[ideaofnorth]

Love this idea! One of my projects this year is to repurpose some of my 90s minidisc sketches as kind of a collaboration with my younger self. Following with interest, thanks.