Friday, April 07, 2006

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.

2 comments:

Quarter-Pint's Mom said...

That book was hard to find! But it was a nice surprise to find that it included a disc in the back.

As resident pianist, I think you should consider un-murky keyboards.

Anonymous said...

You're not going to burn the place down in a few years, are you?