From the Archives: Papa Was A Rolling What?? (1989)

This here is the 2nd song from that recording session long ago with my brother. This is the song that I described in the previous post as being inspired by that classic track, "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" by The Temptations. That song was ahead of its time no doubt and there was nothing else like it. I first heard it on my sister's boombox one day while at home for lunch from school. It was unbelievable. I didn't hear the entire song so I had not idea who it was or what it was called. And there was no Google back then to try to look up lyrics with.

The little that I heard of that song struck a chord with me. Some time after when I finally heard it again and was able to record it from the radio I played it incessantly. This happened to be the single, 6-minute version which was all I knew for many years. When I finally discovered the full-length, 12-minute album version I was floored all over again. But that was many years later. When I made this recording with my brother all I knew was the single version.

As I wrote in the previous post I tried doing a drum beat similar to the one in that song. For the edited single version all you ever hear is hi-hat and bass drum. There's a little bit more on the unedited album version. But I copied from the single.

Similarly, my recording features only repetitive 3 notes from my bass instrument as does the line from 'Papa.' The notes are not the same however. Again, I didn't have musical know-how back then so I couldn't match my playing note-for-note with the actual song. But I didn't care because what I did end up playing sounded good to me.

Another thing I did with my bass instrument was to strike one of the rubber bands on it and then repeatedly and quickly bend the tin while the string rang. That kind of gave it a wah-wah sound that the guitar on 'Papa' had. You have to listen for that very carefully though. I did it many times throughout the recording.

My brother added the strumming sounds from the homemade guitar and the keyboard sounds from the Casio PT-1 which only worked intermittently throughout the recording due to the way I had hired power from a dry cell to it.

Like I did on the first recording we made I changed the tempo a little on this one near the end. Why? I'm not sure but probably because it would get really boring playing the same beat at the same tempo for over 3 minutes. That can feel like an eternity. (Once for one of my much more recent recordings I added fingersnaps for 3 minutes and it felt like forever! My hands were even hurting!!)

So that's the story behind these two songs from my first ever recording session (with my brother). After this I pretty much did everything else on my own, though I do have some later recordings which my aunt played on and a friend from college and I worked on together.

After these initial recordings I continued to experiment with sounds and look for ways to get better sonic recordings. I'm a big bass guy and getting a nice bass sound has always been important to me. Even then. Those little voice microphones were not sufficient in this. When I discovered that I could use a speaker as a microphone I found a much better way to record my bass rubber-band instrument. And the great thing was that I could just attach the speaker on the other side of the tin underneath the rubber bands and for the most part it would stay there. This thing served as a pickup of sorts.

Eventually I started using the other side of the tin--the Chinese Checkers side--with rubber bands as well, although these were of the more common, thinner type for electric guitar sounds. I used a tiny Radio Shack amp around that time which I have written about in the past.

It will be fun and interesting to go back and think about all these recordings and how they were done. I might unlock some memories that I never thought I'd revisit.

Just one final thing: I tried using some software to lessen tape hiss and other extracurricular sounds from these old recordings but I didn't like how they sounded after being processed. I tried several different settings and they all seemed to take something away from the recordings and in some cases made the sound harsher. So hope you don't mind as all the hiss has been left in. This truly gives the most authentic representation of what the recordings really sound like.

From the Archives: My First Recording Session with Special Guest, Part 1 (1989)

So my last post was about my very first song recording. This post will be about a couple of song recordings I did before that one with the assistance of my brother.

When I discovered the ability to record music via the overdub function of my sister's dual cassette boombox, I thought it would be cool to get some help recording. I quickly realized that the more overdubs you did the worse the overall recording sounded, not to mention the cheap cassettes and microphones I was using. So if I could get someone to record with me that would eliminate the need for twice as many tracks and thus preserve at least some quality.

I used to make deals or bets with my brother and they usually involved him having to record with me if he lost or as a result of some other exchange. In fact, to this day he still owes me several hours of recording even 30 years after the fact. But I came to enjoy recording on my own even if there was a sacrifice in sound quality.

My brother and I had no musical training. We never learned any instruments by this point. And I was thrilled to record stuff while he wasn't really interested. But we did have some sort of deal and at least I got these 2 recordings which I have preserved for all these years.

I can't be certain of the order but I believe both of these songs were recorded as follows:

1st track: drums-me; Casio PT-1-bro
2nd track; bass-me; guitar-bro

Around that time I used to have this huge dry cell batter that I had bought for some home experiments. When I didn't have money to buy AA batteries for the Casio I found a way to wire this dry cell to the AC adapter jack on the keyboard. But it wasn't a solid connection and so you'll hear the keyboard playing intermittently on both recordings.

That little guitar wasn't easy to play either because the way I had set it up to have the strings ring as best they could would not stay in place. My brother had even said that I gave him the bad instruments to play. Truthfully though the ones I played weren't all that great or easy to play either!

I had some idea of what I wanted to play on these songs and I told my brother to play whatever he thought sounded good with what I was doing. I changed the tempo a few times on the first recording just to mix things up a bit. I'm not sure what the inspiration behind the first recording was, but the inspiration behind the second recording was "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" by The Temptations. When you hear the second recording (will be featured on my next blog post) surely you will not detect any trace of that classic song from 1972. But if you listen deep enough you'll see that my drum beat was similar to the single bass drum beat of Papa, and my 'bass' playing was also a repetitive 3-note line. And on this recording I also used something to ride like a hi-hat cymbal. So the beat was definitely lifted from that song. The bass line was different but similarly repetitive. And as far as what my brother played, well, he wasn't into the same kind of music I was so he just played whatever on the guitar and keyboard to fulfill his part of our deal.

So these were my very first recordings along with the one I did by myself from the previous post. Some time after this I would get my very own stereo system--nothing terribly expensive with a single cassette recorder and 2 microphone inputs. The 2 inputs allowed me to start recording in stereo which was in those days a dream come true for me. Not only that but I also started experimenting with using other devices instead of those voice-tuned microphones in order to get better recorded sounds, particularly in my attempt to get better bass sounds from my rubber bands!

From the Archives: My First Song (1989)

Well, here it is. My very first full-length song that I recorded on my own. I never gave this song a title for whatever reason. Maybe because at that point I wasn't frequently doing my own songs but rather doing 'covers' of songs that inspired me. That is, if you could call them covers. Regardless of the reason, this tune still remains untitled thirty years later.

First let me convey what was the inspiration behind this song. Around that time I used to listen to a lot of college radio--nothing's changed there--and some blues shows. I remember hearing a blues show that had a really cool beat and some Hammond organ. I was very interested in organs then and again nothing's changed. I used to tape a lot of songs from the radio and I'm pretty sure I recorded this one but I haven't been able to find it to this day. Another thing I did a lot back then was accidentally record over things and I suspect this is the fate this song experienced. Yet another issue during those days was tapes getting crunched and damaged in the cassette playing mechanism so this is a possibility as well. It's been thirty years and my memory has become less friendly over time.

So basically the beat in this song was inspired by the beat in that blues song. And while the song featured a full drum set, here I played a single empty candy can with one hand. It is the red one in the photo below:

I'm not sure but at the time I recorded this song the can may have been fully intact. Eventually I cut the bottom off and tried a variety of 'heads' that would give me a desire snare drum sound. Nothing every really worked of course. But it was better than nothing. It wasn't until a little later that I expanded the drums to the two coffee cans, two markers for drumsticks and that device on the left that held my 'cymbal' up. (That device was actually made from two reels from 8-track tape cartridges and a colored pencil).

Around this time my sister had purchased a dual-cassette boombox. This was something very new to me and I found it to be very cool. Not only that but it had a microphone jack. I started using this thing and it was through this that I discovered the magic of overdubbing. In case you don't know what that is, it is the ability to record something onto something that has already been recorded. That is, overlaying recordings. At first I began overlaying recordings of any kind of sound. This included voice, instrument sounds and whatever else until I finally realized I could make music with this.

This boombox was a Sanyo and its two most important features were the dual cassette capability which allowed you to make your own mix tapes, and the microphone jack. Mind you, without either one of these features I would have never stumbled upon what I actually did. I would not have the countless recordings that I made.

I ended up using this boombox more than even my sister did. I had great fun with it. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it only allowed mono microphone recordings. This was around the time that I started understanding what stereo was and began noticing the extreme differences on the left and right channels of many recordings from the 1960s. I was really interested in making stereo recordings but there was no way with this device and I wouldn't have the capability until sometime later. Thus, mono it was.

When I set out to record this song, I cannot confirm whether I did it all in one day or not. See, I've always been very shy about doing anything around anyone else so I always needed complete privacy when I recorded. That hasn't changed either. I still only record when absolutely no one else is around me. But I don't remember if I had the time I needed to do all four tracks which comprise this recording all in the same sitting. I'm leaning on the side that I did not and probably did only two or three tracks on the first day and the last one or two the next day or sometime soon after.

The first track I recorded was the drum track. Very unconventional for anyone and no less for me. Nowadays drums are usually the very last track I record. But for this recording 'drums' was the first. The second track was my 'bass'. This was another homemade instrument which unfortunately I don't have any photos of. After I moved into my current abode sixteen years ago I have not seen it. Fortunately it was nothing terribly complicated so I can still describe it in words and photos. One of my Christmas gifts as a child was a set of Chinese Checkers and traditional Checkers that came in a round tin that opened up and stored all the parts inside. Here are some pictures of the very same kind I had:

I used the traditional Checkers half for my bass instrument. (The other half would later be used with thinner rubber bands for guitar sounds). At that time we had some extra big & thick red rubber bands that one day I placed on this round pizza-pan-like tin and voila! I had a stringed instrument that if I put really close up to my ear sounded like the bass guitar sounds I had been hearing in a lot of my favorite songs. But there were at least two main problems with this instrument. First, as I already hinted, the volume was nearly inaudible. Second, how could I go about getting the exact notes I needed? Well, I came up with suitable-enough-for-me remedies that seemed to work but those were not to come till after my earliest recordings. For this song I had the rubber bands set to the notes I wanted, and in terms of volume I played the strings as close to the microphone as possible. (I should show some pics of the mics I used as well. They were nothing more than the generic mics that were used for voice recording onto cassettes).

The third track was a homemade guitar my dad had carved out of wood for me. This creation was probably never intended to be played or used as an instrument. But once fishing rod line and some small wood additions were added it became usable for a type of percussion sound if nothing else. I've posted photos of it before but here it is again:

So you can hear this guitar's sounds on the recording similar to how you might hear an acoustic guitar's strumming amidst a highly amplified soundscape. Or in the rhythmic way a mandolin player uses his instrument in a bluegrass band.

Finally, the fourth track is the Casio PT-1 keyboard that my brother bought for me as a gift once. After I started acquiring full-size keyboards over the years I ended up giving the Casio to my niece. Regrettably, she no longer has it nor remembers ever having it! This is what it looked like:

This was a tiny keyboard with a range of only four voices: piano, fantasy, violin, flute. The one used on this recording was flute. The part was completely improvised. Not being much of a musician at the time I didn't want to be very adventurous on the keys. But I was content with the end result.

Here's the thing about overdubbing with cheap tapes and microphones on analog equipment: each time you add another layer or overdub some of the quality of the earlier track(s) goes south. I have many of these recordings where I've seen the quality decrease substantially each time I added something new. And later when I started to do the stereo recordings the deterioration was even more noticeable due to the nature of my method.

That's the story behind this song. Certainly I wish it were of better sonic quality. But it was 1989 and I was a poor kid with no real gear for this sort of thing. Not to sound like an old person but today's kids have an immense amount of high quality gear at their disposal which are really just wasted in their hands. Such is life!

This has been the first of my many recordings. Plenty more to come!