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!