Weekend Two: Enter Sourpuss

So the weekend after I recorded Nadja, I recorded Sourpuss, who are really great. Even if I am related to Rene. This is Magnolia.

Both these sessions were recorded on to an Alesis HD24, which has been a huge step up from my 1/4" Fostex 8 track. The time to go from "everything off" to "ready to roll" is now a few seconds, instead of the few minutes it took to load and locate tracks on tape. It really makes sitting down for a few minutes to mix a track no longer seem like a hassle.

I've been busy recording my own stuff on to the new set up as well. Having access to 16 tracks of recording, which is only limited by my 16 channel board, is such a huge lift from the old recorder. Bouncing down of mixing to 2 track and then back in was always disappointing, I found. With 16 tracks I can do just about anything I might want to have in a recording of my own music.

Doing something productive...

On November 5th I loaded my car with gear, instruments, and of course the fine duo known as Nadja and spent a day making some test recordings up at Roseville Studios. The results are heavy, man, heavy. Here's a taste, a mere excerpt, from the track Mutagen.

Hot Update

"Dude, it's totally mid-August. Did you see July?" Bits and pieces. But I did record this by the Happy Tiger Association:"Dub Be Good To Me" LL drums, HD keys, JD bass, LL and HD vocals. Took an afternoon, sounds pretty good, too bad we didn't write it.

Summertime

A June afternoon in a basement studio can yield this sort of tune. The JBJs with "Feasby Track One" Rough mix, with guide guitar tracks.

I've Got Mono!

Monoaural music reproduction, that is. For the last few weeks I've been turned on to the joys of mono recordings and mono playback, thanks in part to finally cleaning up and hooking up a mono tube hi-fi that I've had kicking around for years:


I have it running into a single Weber PA speaker from the 70's which sounds pretty damn good to my ears. Since so much of the classic rocksteady, ska, and reggae recordings were done in mono, you really don't get a proper feel for the mix playing back through a stereo set-up. Even cooler is tracking down mono rock tracks, since that was the studio standard until the late 60's (one anecdote being that the Beatles put their attention and effort into the mono mix of their songs, not really caring how the stereo mix was handled). The reissue of The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society has two complete versions of the album, one a stereo and one a mono mix. The mono mix has more punch, more directness, more presence.

One amp. One speaker. Cool.

51 Seconds Of Music

Here's a start to finish song from my studio, recorded to the eight track with overdubs and a final mix. Miracle Beard with "Platinum City."

New Toy

For the last while I've been questing to get the dub bass sound, which is super deep, muted, and health-threatening. From scouring various sites, the prescription for dub bass is: a) finger or thumb playing over the neck pickup or high end of the fret board, b) flatwound strings, and c) no treble tone. The extra secret ingredient (which admitedly was not around during the glory days of the 70's) is the DOD FX25 Envelope Filter effect pedal pictured here.



I bought one off eBay last week and tried it out last night. The pedal is basically an auto-wah, so when using it with guitar it sounds like a wah-wah being worked at various rates. The sensitivity adjusts how hard you have to play for the effect to kick in, and the range is the money setting. At various points you can get all treble, all bass, throaty wah, freakout, or a combination of everything. Not bad.

Plugging in a bass was a whole different thang. I'm guessing that the circuit isn't designed for the lower frequencies of bass, so the wah-wah effect is minimal. However what it does do is drop the tone and octave of the bass notes through the damn floor. Single notes plucked with the most gentle of fingers were producing tones that vibrated bits and pieces all over the studio. At minimal volume it was more feeling than hearing. I can't wait to try it out at a proper volume through a nice big 15" speaker. Awesome power means awesome responsibility.

Finally, some progress.

Right, so here's a one-take performance by Lesley LaRocque on drums and vocals, HD on keys, and me on guitar. I like to call it "I'm Real". Think what a little bit of practice could sound like! Recorded live to minidisc on March 6, 2006.

Music y'all

OK, here's the first recording to be posted. It's Miracle Beard with their number one smash hit, "I Got The Shakes". AGP, Beau, and Jonny D. Recorded live to minidisc on September 17, 2005.

Reggae Nerdism

In doing some more research on the who, where, and how of classic 1970's reggae recordings, I was looking for more information on a recording engineer named Sid Bucknor. Sid was very in demand at the time in Kingston to capture the sound, and worked regularly out of Dynamic Sounds and Channel One before moving to the UK. One source claims that he played a part in 70% of the albums from '67 to '75, which is a hell of a lot of records.

In trying to find info on Sid, I came across Roots Archives which is an amazing undertaking: 3,901 reggae albums indexed by artist, producer, studio, backing band, labels, recording staff, etc. etc. And the winner for most prolific studio is: Channel One with 936 (!!!) albums. Good lord.

Inspirations

In the last 7 days I've been reading "Young, Gifted and Black: The Story of Trojan Records" The book is 30% history of the company (who started it, who bought it, where the offices were located, how it declined, who owns it now), 20% history of the music and musicians of the time, and 50% discography of almost every Trojan and Trojan sub-label release. It comes with a CD and I also picked up Kung-Fu!: Reggae Vs. The Martial Arts, which is a 2004 Trojan release. So I've been listening to, and reading about, a lot of reggae.



There are some absolutely amazing sounds on these albums and from this style of music. I want to re-create massive bass, murky piano, slap-back shrill guitar, and clip-clop drums. And the cool thing is that the studios of late 1960's/early 1970's Kingston were not complex. With affordable current (or last 20 years) gear, I hope I can recreate the recording process and grab that sound. Of course the musicianship is impossible to re-create.

The picture is of Lee Perry's Black Ark studio.

The First Of Many

Hey Kids:

The plan for this blog is to post recordings done at my studio with a variety of fine, fine people. Look for tracks from Miracle Beard, Aidan Baker, Cox and Kuntz, 19/20, and many others.

My studio is very much in the TapeOp vein, with a love for classic analog sounds and a hatred of audio snobbery. The basic studio setup is:

* StudioMaster Mixdown 16-8-16 console
* Fostex Model 80 1/4" 8 track

More later....