Looking back, ever since I first picked up the guitar at 10 years old, “my music” and “recording” are activities that have been closely entwined. I was born and raised not in a family of musicians, but rather in an ordinary Japanese home. There were no microphones, multitrack recorders, or any recording equipment to speak of just laying around the house. But there was a video camera that could be used for multitracking, and it became my first tape machine. Here’s how it worked: I would film myself playing a backing track and record it on videotape. Then, as the tape was played back on the VCR, I would sit in front of the TV screen and film myself again playing along on bass, and so on. I discovered that I could make multitrack recordings as a one-man band, with just a video camera and VCR—devices that were found inside virtually every home in Japan. It’s been almost 20 years since then, and I still spend my days playing guitar and recording, just as I did back then. ーTakuro Okada <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Takuro+Okada">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.