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!