From the Archvies: Better Bass & Stereo Recording

The 4th track I have uploaded to YouTube is one inspired by a 1967 song by The American Breed titled "Bend Me Shape Me." It's particularly influenced by the verse part of the song. The instruments used in it are the Casio PT-1, rubber band bass, can drums and some seed pods as shakers. I never titled this recording either but for the sake of the uploads and these blog posts I'm calling this one "Bending Shaping".

You'll notice a few things different about this recording vs. the previous three. First, the bass is a lot more definitive and powerful. Second, the recording is in stereo.

I mentioned needing to find a way to get a better bass sound from my rubber band checkers tin instrument. Well, what I did was take a speaker that I had from somewhere and attached a 1/8" phono plug to it. I had no proper tools at the time so every connection ever made was shoddy and dodgy and led to intermittent and crackly operation. I still have this speaker in a box in the garage and I need to pull it out to take photos. But this is what I used. I would take the speaker and attached it to the back of the tin via the rubber bands and it would stay in place. The phono plug end would go directly into the mic jacks on whatever device I was using to record. I say 'whatever' because by this point I had purchased a small home stereo system complete with AM/FM radio, a single cassette deck and a record player. Perhaps more importantly, this system had two jacks for left and right microphones which leads to my next point.

The ability to record in stereo was very important to me after noticing so many of those hard-panned stereo recordings of the 1960s. I loved that the songs were mixed with bass and drums on one speaker while guitars and keyboards were on the other. Or sometimes bass guitar was on one side and drums were on the other. At other times many of the vocals were isolated on one side so I could choose to listen only to the instruments. I thought that was fantastic. So I wanted to do the same. This particular recording of mine was in stereo with the bass instrument and drums on the right and the keyboard and seed pods on the left.

Sometime around 8th and 9th grade I purchased the aforementioned stereo system. Probably closer to 9th grade. As mentioned, this system had a single cassette deck so I was not able to do overdubs on it. I still had to use my sister's boombox. So what I would do is record a couple tracks using her boombox and then play those back with a mic right at one of the speakers and play something live into the other mic and record all that into my new system. Of course, I would make sure that whatever I was playing live was some physical distance away from what was playing on her boombox in order to avoid microphone bleed. I wanted as much stereo separation as possible. But I was also limited by how long my mic cables were and how loud I could play anything there.

I'm pretty sure that "Bending Shaping" was a 3 track recording. I believe the first track was the drums, second was bass and third was the Casio PT-1 and seed pods simultaneously. The Casio had the ability to record anything you played on its keys. I would put it on the record mode and then play it back via the memory play button. One thing I discovered on my own--this wasn't even in the manual--if I pressed one of the small colored buttons before the memory play button, what I had recorded would play back 4 whole times. I don't remember which button caused this but it was a great discovery to me. It allowed me to have the keyboard play by itself while I played something live at the same time. Thus, in essence I could record overdubbed tracks playing back from the boombox, the Casio playing by itself and anything I wanted to play live all at the same time. However, that would require some nearly precise timing and sync on the part of the overdubbed tracks and the Casio; needless to say I didn't do that very often.

From this point on, many if not most of my archive recordings will feature the new bass sound and a stereo soundscape. I continued to dabble in mono recordings, however due to the fact that my sister's boombox offered portability which meant I could record anywhere. My new system with the stereo mic inputs stayed in its designated place most of the time and I moved it only when I intended to do serious recording. And there was an anomaly with this new stereo system--the cassette player seemed to operate at a slightly higher speed than normal so anything I recorded on it and played back somewhere else sounded slower. That would make for terrible pitch matching depending on the order things were recorded.

So that's the story behind this particular recording and some of the 'advancements' made during that time. Those were highly experimental days.

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 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!

Recordings From The Archive 1989-2019

We will soon be entering the final quarter of the year and once again the plan is to be as musically active as possible in order to prevent yet another rather inactive year. So to give you some very basic and generalized updates on my plans, I am planning to do a Halloween themed song and work on some Christmas music as well. Would still love to get a whole album of Christmas/holiday/seasonal music out there this year. I might have to be more reasonable and settle for a release that's a mix of original tunes and well-loved public domain ones. In fact, I am planning on recording a cover of that old standard, Jingle Bells.

Other than that I will create as the ideas and creative juices flow. On a more determined note, I have decided to start releasing the low-quality, analog recordings I made many, many years ago with my homemade instruments.

Why have I decided to do this now after all these years? Well, in case you don't know, Daniel Johnston died last week at the age of 58. Also in case you don't know, Johnston was considered an outsider musician who started recording his own original music on cassettes at home and distributing them to his co-workers and such. He started doing this around the age of 18 or 19 and eventually ended up with a recording contract, not so much due to his immense talent but more as a result of Kurt Cobain wearing a t-shirt that featured Johnston's album artwork. Cobain, Eddie Vedder and others have claimed to be influenced by Johnston's music.

The reason I will be releasing my old recordings is not because I think it will be a ticket to getting a recording contract with some label. Absolutely not. I don't want to oversimplify what Johnston did. It wasn't all just handing out cassettes, though he did that with anyone he met. But he also performed live, something I don't do and am not willing to do on a solo basis. He attracted attention with what he did. And there was no YouTube during his days of doing this. But all his recordings are out there now, as low-quality and bad as some of them may be. And that's what I want to do. Just get my recordings out there because otherwise they will live only in my experience and what is that point of that? Many of my recordings are just as low-quality and bad (if not worse) than his. I didn't start singing in my recordings till my late teens and even then they are scant and few. I never really wanted to be a singer at that time. At least not until I acquired a real guitar and started learning it.

The instrumental recordings aren't all that great either--off-tempo, off-key, noisy. But that's what you get when you're working with low-quality microphones, cassette tapes and homemade instruments. And it's not about the quality or the recordings. It's the history of my recording experience and the progression and growth I have made over the last 30 years.

Yes, my first recordings were made thirty years ago and I think this would be a great time to start releasing them. And the great thing is that I have digitized many of what I consider to be the more important recordings and have saved a good deal of the equipment I used to make them.

This is part of my history. I know many will not be interested in this. There has to be an intense curiosity in order to sit through the extremely low-fi sound and very limited musical ability on display. But for anyone who can appreciate someone discovering recording sounds in stereo vs. recording in mono and trying to make the most of what he has this may be a journey to explore.

I revisit these recordings from time to time. Very few others have heard any of them. For the most part and understandably so, no one was particularly impressed with anything they heard from my archives. I think it's the same thing that happens when I make a new recording nowadays. People are overlooking the fact that I did everything on my own and just expect to hear something that sounds radio-ready. They're only looking at the final product and not all the work that went into it. And it's even worse nowadays because people can produce music on computers without even knowing how to play a single musical instrument. And no, computers ARE NOT musical instruments. They're only tools. So these guys don't care if you don't recognize all the work that went into making a recording. All they want is you to appreciate the final product because they're not musicians.Yet I am both a musician and a producer.

I was a bit embarrassed by these recordings for a long, long time. They felt like the really bad pictures a kid draws with crayons when he's growing up. And you don't really want to show anyone those pictures if you even have them still. I kept my recordings and it's not necessarily for any other reason than that I tend to keep everything. Yes, I have hoarding tendencies. But I am glad I kept these.

Unfortunately, I have accidentally recorded over things in the past. The beauty of the cassette is that it has always been the most readily available media for recording something, anything. Its size, its price, its ubiquitousness were all pros when it came to the advocacy of this item. Yet the very fact that it could easily be rerecorded over and get erased were its downfall. And once those sounds were gone they were gone for good.

I'm glad I digitized many of these recordings when I did. Most of the original tapes I used were really cheap, low-quality ones. I didn't use the Sony, Maxell, Memorex or TDK brands. No. It was Certron for the most part and other forgettable names. And the sounds on most of them may be very shaky if not gone completely by now.

So I'll be uploading these recordings to YouTube on my Exit World channel. I considered Soundcloud but they give a fixed number of total minutes to upload your content. Once you reach that limit you have to pay in order to upload more. And I'm not about to pay for that service. So YouTube it is as there are no limits there. Once I upload there I will link to here as I write a post about each upload as long as my memory serves me well. This will definitely help me to become more active here as well.

I realize these uploads may not get any views. I'm prepared for that. It's not really about getting views. If I get them, great! If not, it was always about me putting them out there for me. Daniel Johnston didn't care about how good or bad he sounded. He didn't care about how lo-fi his recordings were. He wasn't worried about getting embarrassed. He just did what he was meant to do and didn't suppress it. And that's what I need to do. Hey, maybe if the people aren't listening to the good music I create perhaps they'll listen to the bad!