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.

 

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.