House Fire: The TVD First Date

“My interest in vinyl started pretty late. I have always been a huge fan of music and have always explored new artists but I never really cared about the medium with which I listened to the music through. To me it seemed like it was all going to end up on my iPod anyway, so it didn’t really matter; however, when I started learning more about the music I was listening to at the time, artists like DJ Shadow and Four Tet, I realized that the unique sound these producers had came directly from the use of vinyl in their music.”

“As a musician trying to make music on the computer, the practicality of vinyl was something you couldn’t beat. I didn’t have enough money to buy nice studio gear, but I had enough to start a small collection of vinyl records to begin sampling from.

Since then I’ve started looking for records based on their use to me as a producer. The more obscure an album is, the better. Often times all I was looking for was a small portion of music where there might be an instrument alone that I could rip off the recording and manipulate on my computer.

A lot of children’s music became extremely useful—often times these recordings would go through each instrument and explain its function in the orchestra or in a band. These little blips where the instrument was alone would provide tons of opportunities to construct loops and melodies. The sounds from these records were really unique as well because they were from the fifties and sixties so they had a certain ambience that didn’t sound like anything else to me.

Beyond their use in production, there is something to be said for the way a lot of older jazz and rock recordings sound on vinyl. Albums like Charles Mingus’ “Ah-Um” and Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain” were mixed and recorded with the intent of being printed to vinyl. Listening to these recordings the way they were intended to be listened to is a really unique experience that you cant replicate on an MP3.”
—Nick Chuba, Guitar