FROM THE ARCHIVES - Spooky Jam

 As promised, my next blog post would be about the "Spooky" jam recording I made many years ago. Here it is on YouTube:

Just like the previous post's recording, I don't have an exact recording date for this but I can certify that it's sometime from 1996-1999 because during that time I was still using an analog 4-track machine. Sometime around 1999-2001 is when I acquired my first digital recorder which was a Boss BR-8 and recorded on Zip disks. Remember those? Anyway, it may be closer to 2001 as that is that date of the recording of my very own first original song, "Autumn." 

But as it is, "Spooky Jam" was a tape recording. I said before that this Tascam 4 track machine had absolutely no built-in effects. The sound came out dry unless you added effects to your input signal. So the reverb you may hear on this recording was my experimentation of playing the song on the Tascam into the input of the Boss BR-8. That way I was able to add reverb and, unintentionally, some compression as well. 

This recording was a much slower version of the previous "Spooky" and the instrumentation was sparse. There's an electric guitar doing various things, a bass, a harmonica here and there and my homemade drums. I still am not sure whether it's my guitar doing the bass or if it was a real bass, though I am leaning towards an actual bass. If it is a bass that would date that song at December 1998 and beyond. Again, knowing the recording date would solve the mystery.

There's only one guitar track which plays rhythm first and then some solo parts. The drum part is actually double-tracked past the mid-point of the song--one track on the left and one on the right. I really loved experimenting with panning the sounds. At first I was playing the drums like bongos and then changed to playing with sticks which at that time were just some Sharpie-type markers which no longer served as writing utensils.

I wasn't really good at improvising with guitar playing at that time. Otherwise there wouldn't have been so much dead air time on the guitar track. And the harmonica? Yeah, I couldn't play that either. The bass was a repetitive line so the drums were probably at the forefront of this recording. I should add that during the time of these early archive recordings of mine, I didn't have a metronome. So there are lots of out-of-sync sounds at any given moment. That's also why the recording fades in at the beginning and fades out at the end. I tried to preserve the best portion of the impromptu jam.

That's about it for the history on this recording. I think it sounds better with the reverb. I always felt there was something missing on my recordings even after acquiring the capability to record on 4 tracks. I used to think once I had a real piano sound that would take care of it. But it wasn't. It wasn't having real drums either. It was not having reverb and delay and compression. My music didn't come alive until I had access to the built-in effects of the Boss BR-8.

 

Next Song: Thank You (For Loving Me)

This is the first recording I made that I actually was pleased with the overall sound and balance of instrument mix. Even to this day I can listen to it and feel that the sound quality is pretty high. One of the measures for me of how good the quality of a recording is is the sound of the drums. In this song, the drums sound very good, from the snare to the bass to the toms to the cymbals. A badly recorded drum set sound can turn a great song into something pretty awful. I don't remember how many mic's I used to record the drums. Seeing how this is another one of the songs I recorded on the Boss BR-8 it is very possible that I only used 2 mics. The BR-8 has a 2 mic input capability and unless I used a mixer which would allow a greater number of mic's to be used (which I really doubt), that's all it was. It's not impossible to get a very good drum set sound with only 2 mics. I can to this day get a pretty solid recording of drums with only 2 mics as long as the drums are tuned well. I recorded this song sometime around 2002 and the drum sound still impresses me. To be honest, I'm pleased with all the instrument tracks. The vocal tracks needed some more work.

So this song was my second attempt at a gospel song. I called it "Thank You (For Loving Me)." I do believe this one was a lot better than "God of Love and Peace" in every way. It definitely showed progress on many levels. And it didn't sound country. Well, maybe still a little. But I blame that on the vocals. I don't think any of the instrumentation or guitar playing sounds country.

The guitar solo in this song is quite different from the solo in "God of Love & Peace." It's clean and loaded with reverb and delay. The electric guitar used for most if not the entire song was an Ibanez Artcore AF75 hollowbody guitar, which I no longer have. Here is a photo of it:

The instrument tracks include: a couple of electric guitar tracks; an acoustic guitar; electric bass; drums; electronic keyboard (organ sound); tambourine; and some vocal tracks.




This song placed in the top 1500 and won an honorable mention in the 12th Annual Billboard World Songwriting Contest.

There Is Nothing Like (Hillsong) Guitar Tab

Today's tab will feature the main guitar riff from the Hillsong version of "There Is Nothing Like." This is not the Hillsong United version which came out months earlier and is significantly different. This is the later version and, in my opinion, the superior version and features the excellent playing of Nigel Hendroff on lead guitar.

Here is my YouTube video of me playing along with the recording:

I threw some extra notes there. I realize that I am not playing exactly note-for-note what Nigel played. I just added some notes to fill in the empty spaces which are especially noticeable if you are not using any kind of delay.

Here is the tab of what I played:


E  :----------------|---------9-----------|------------------|
B  :----------------|-------------9----12-|--12------9-----0-|
G  :----------------|----9----------------|-----9------------|
D  :--------------9-|h11---11-------11----|-------11---------|
A  :----------------|---------------------|------------------|
E  :----------------|---------------------|------------------|

E  :------0---------|----------------|---------9-----9-11-|
B  :----7-----7-----|--7-------------|--------------------|
G  :--8---------8---|----8---8-------|----9---------------|
D  :9-------------9-|------9-------9-|h11---11------------|
A  :----------------|----------------|--------------------|
E  :----------------|----------------|--------------------|

E  :-------------------|------------------|
B  :--9-12--------9-12-|9-----------------|
G  :---------9-11------|--11-9-11---------|
D  :-------------------|------------------|
A  :-------------------|------------------|
E  :-------------------|------------------|


The last 2 and-a-half measures is the little run I did at the end of the segment. The first 5 measures is what you play over and over during the verses--I only tabbed it out one time for the sake of space but it is to be played repeatedly throughout the duration of the verses. 

Sorry the posts are coming a little less frequently. I have nearly run out of available tabs for my videos. I will have to find the time to make more tabs and/or videos but lately I'm trying to focus more on my own music. 

My Scary Halloween Video #2

So what sort of impact will this tanked economy have on Halloween and its trick-or-treaters? I'm eager to discuss the ramifications of this situation, but this topic has nothing to do with the music of Exit World so I shall proceed no further on the subject.

Here is my 2nd scary video creation for Halloween. Hope you like it. Again, the image is simple; just slowing walking down a dark and empty hallway with softly glowing lights at the end. Nothing gruesome. The atmosphere is enough. Very creepy indeed.

What do you think? The music comes from Boards of Canada and the song is called "Color of the Fire." I had it playing backwards on the video. To be honest, the song is pretty creepy in its own right playing normally. Here's how it sounds:

Interesting thing is, the voice comes from a Sesame Street clip of a little girl writing out the words "I love you." Here is that segment:

As one comment states,"In its normal form it just sounds normal and innocent, yet in Color of the Fire it sounds distorted and creepy as hell." Very true. You can take something as simple, unassuming and innocent and turn it into something sinister and frightening through sound technology. Boards of Canada did it by adding delay, distorting the original audio and adding unsettling keyboard sounds. Amazing what can be done.

So that is my 2nd scary video for Halloween. Stay tuned for my next one.