July 2007
Monday, July 30
Carey and I realized a piece. It began on a recent Friday afternoon as a direction-less groove, with acoustic guitar and drum set, minimal micing, total disregard for leakage (or "spill" per our UK friends).
On first playback, we fed the guitar track into the H8000, a rhythmic hard-panned delay, and as the guitar track also contained some drumset, the effect added a nice rhythm loop vibe.
We added more acoustic guitar tracks, bass guitar, and some sparse keyboards. Later, I edited everything into something resembling a cohesive arrangement, and fixed a few blunders. Then, I recorded shaker, cymbals, and brushed snare drum cadence.
A couple of days afterward, Carey had some lyrics and a couple of arrangement changes. With a clear direction and tempo decisions (the original tempos were numerous and varied), we decided to re-record everything.
After successfully recording the new instrument tracks, we booked Laura Vance to sing. The vocal session went well - Laura is very good, and has a lovely voice. While determining a multi-vocal part for the bridge, we avoided the use of third harmonies, which imparted a certain character that was not our intended direction.
As with the first version, I overdubbed shaker and cymbals, but no brushed snare. Also added some air from the Virus. Because the core rhythms were from a non-commitally mic'd drum set, I augmented kick and snare hits with Digi's Xpand plugin.
We'll probably hire a real keyboard player at a later date.
Digidesign's estimated maximum track count with a single hard drive, recording at 88.2 khz sampling rate, is around twenty-two. This session got up to thirty-three. Might not be too good for the drive.
Titled "Reality", here it is...as usual, in 128kbps compressed splendor.
Friday, July 27
Finished a piece of music this afternoon. Centered around a rhythmic piano part, with various colors and some textures. All electronic, and I recorded MIDI simultaneously, so there were many MIDI tracks. I didn't use Logic at all, however - remained in Pro Tools. All synths recorded through the console.
I left the synth preset reverbs active on nearly all the sounds, and used no additional effects at mix time. No note quantization, although the Virus effects were sync'd to MIDI beat clock. I did move a few note events around just a bit, due to erratic performance.
The title is either Primrose Path or Slippery Slope.
In data-compressed, 128kbps Em Pee Three splendor.
Monday, July 16
X-04, 1981. Video clips here, here, and here.
Large ups to Tim Wilson for posting a window into our distant past.
X-04 was Tim and Mike's brainchild. A great concept that held promise, and ultimately died an undignified death.
We used video backdrops when that was still a fresh idea; MTV had signed on the air only weeks before. Tim had a black and white video camera, and we incorporated footage of his elderly, somewhat nosy next-door-neighbor, along with other abstract/free-association material. At one show, we used changing slides of Kirlean photography.
Lots of potential, and a shame it never really flourished. Causes of demise include (in my opinion) lack of musical cohesion, arrangements, song structure (excepting Mr. Retardo), and bizarre ego issues (mostly mine).
I first heard Killing Joke's "What's THIS for...!" the summer after X-04's demise, 1982. It hit me like a train that if I'd been hip to that music long before then, my approach to X-04 would have been profoundly different. As it was, I was too entrenched in an adolescent fantasy of ECM-influenced jazz drumming, and was still in the Cloverbottom mindset.
Oh well. As my old man used to say, live and learn, die and forget it all.
Wednesday, July 12
Here's a serious nostalgia resource for people living in Nashville in the early eighties: Nashville 80s rock dot net. I emailed the site's owner, and he turned out to be Allen Sullivant, brother of Scott Sullivant of Practical Stylists.
He's archived a rather amazing amount of stuff here - music, relevant links, and scanned flyers and fanzines of the day.
There's an issue of The Nashville Intelligence Report from '83, in which I wrote a review of a Shockabilly show at Cantrell's. I was ebullient, verbose, half-crazed...young. My nom de plume was "Trigger", reflecting my newfound enthusiasms for triggering a drum machine from an analog synth.
To see it, you have to scroll down to "Fanzines". It's 1983, Issue #14. Helpful hint: if you have a high-res monitor, don't try to read it on-screen, but download it so you can open it and blow it up bigger.
Friday, July 6
The bank in Montgomery, Alabama decided they would air the "Scuba" spot after all. They figured the potentially embarassing story about the minister (Baptist, by the way) who was found dead, had sufficiently lost momentum by now.
But this afternoon, the word came from the agency: the client hates the water sfx, since there isn't actually any water in the shot. That is what we here in Nashville thought made the spot humorous. I guess we think different from the folks in Montgomery, Alabama. Praise god.
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