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CCT333 Assignment 1 Myron Zhao 995403870 January 25, 2010

Back in 1997…ish, I remember getting a portable cassette tape recorder. My piano teacher at the time recommended it, so that I can record her playing the new song that I would have to learn each week. It was also used to record myself playing the same song after I have mastered it. She records songs; I learn them; the system was flawless. A few months later, I began to use the tape recorder for other purposes, such as recording hilarious sounds, noises, and dialogue from TV shows. From there on, I started sitting quietly next to the stereo or television to record songs from the radio and from music videos. Although I would still manage to sneak in a few burping noises here and there in between songs. In school, where as all my friends had Walkmens, I had a tape recorder, was I the outcast? Nope, far from it. Why? Consider the advantage: the tape recorder was slightly bulkier and lacked radio playback, but makes up for it with an external microphone and speaker. In other words, I was able to dictate what I wanted to listen to by recording anything I wanted. Pretty soon all my Walkmen buddies wanted me to make them mixtapes of songs for their listening pleasure. This system worked for awhile, up until CD players gained popularity. Fast forward to five years later, I did exactly the same thing I was doing before, except with a different medium. Instead of cassettes, I would use blank CDs; instead of recording from ambient noises, I would burn MP3 files. This was also the year I quit taking piano lessons and pursued other recording interests: hip hop and music production. Currently, I have started to burn movies on to blank DVDs. Although there is a few people who might think that all this is quite illegal, consider this: VCRs were meant to record viewer’s favourite shows to video tapes. Then why not copy my favourite movie to a DVD? Or burn my favourite songs to a CD?

To this day, voice recorders are still being sold in most electronic stores. Some of them use mini cassettes, while most of them are now digital and use flash storage devices. Although my days of recording random funny noises are over, I still have my tape recorder somewhere in my closet. Maybe one day I will find it and play back some of my old mixtapes for old time sake.