From The Archives - My "Spooky" With Vocal Cover

 Now that I have reestablished a presence on YouTube--who am I kidding? I have nowhere near the views on my videos that I had before. At the time I uploaded some of my cover videos in 2009 and the early 2010s, some of them were actual firsts. I had the first correct "Barney Miller" theme bass cover. The first bass cover for "Skin Tight" by The Ohio Players. I had a really innovative cover for Paul McCartney's "Heart of the Country" that came up first in Google searches. I had many others as well. All gone. And even though I have re-uploaded all those videos they have gone nowhere and are pretty much dead. Other YouTubers have taken my place in search engines with their covers of the same songs. So even though I may have a presence on YouTube once again you'll need a microscope to find my material.

Regardless, it's more important to me to have my videos up on YouTube than to have the views. At least with them being on that site they're "out there" even if virtually impossible to find. And of course there's always that element of 'you never know what's going to happen." It may be discovered some day.

But anyway, this post is going to be about one of the videos I recently uploaded there. One of my all-time favorite songs is "Spooky" by Dennis Yost & The Classics IV. Even before I had real musical instruments--not counting the Casio PT-10--I made a pretty bad version of the song multi-tracked with cheap mics onto even cheaper cassette tapes. Yes, it was my rubber band and coffee can days. Extremely lo-fi. And as bad as it was I still plan to upload it to YouTube someday and link to it here.

As time went on and my lot of gear improved over the years, I decided to redo "Spooky" and this time with a vocal even. Too bad for me I didn't keep logs of when I did my recordings so I only have my hazy memory to go by. One thing is for sure: I got my first electric guitar in 1996 which came about 4 years after my very first guitar, a Harmony folk-style acoustic guitar. It had a noticeably smaller body than a dreadnought. Looked kind of like a classical with steel strings. 

So the first electric guitar came in 1996 and it was an Epiphone Les Paul Special II purchased from Guitar Center. But I only purchased the guitar. What's an electric guitar without an amp, you say? Well, to me it was a lot. I had a 4 track Tascam analog tape machine at that time and I knew I could record directly into it sans an amp. To be perfectly honest I neither had nor wanted an amp at that time. A lot of that had to do with my own naivete in terms of what an amp could do for my sound, though. 

But I was able to get clean tones and distorted ones as well. It was just a matter of adjusting the volume on the guitar and the input volume on the Tascam. So I thought I had everything I needed. 

When I got my electric guitar I not only used it for guitar parts on my recordings but also for the bass parts. I would tune down the lowest 2 or 3 strings and it would sound sufficiently bassy. I'm not sure if that's what I did on my version of "Spooky" because I am not clear on the recording date. I didn't get my first electric bass until December 1998 so if this recording was made before then, I used my guitar for bass. Anyway, there are 3 guitar parts and the 1 bass part. The other instruments you hear are my drums (coffee & candy cans) and a tambourine and some seed pods.

To me the best part of the song is the electric guitar solo with delay. I learned the sax solo and played it on guitar. All these years later I still really like that solo. And I didn't use a pedal for that delay effect. I had to do it the way they did it in professional studios back in the day. I don't recall my exact method but the gist of it was to have a 2nd copy of the solo recorded a little quieter and lagging a small bit behind the first. Done with tape of course. I didn't sit there and play the solo a second time and record it. It was just the magic of tape.

Also, I recorded this song before the internet became a ubiquitous thing. So I couldn't go online and look up tabs for songs and get the right or close-to-right chords. I had to figure it all out myself. And I know some of those chords I played were indeed wrong because when I first did see the chords for this song they were very different from the simple ones I played. So those guys who were putting the chords and tabs out there on Harmony Central were truly pioneers and I learned a lot from them.

Finally, I decided to add a vocal to my recording. I know it's a bad one. Out of tune and pitchy. And in my natural speaking voice. It sucks. But I love the reverb on it! 

My Tascam recorder had no built-in effects. Absolutely nothing. Once I purchased my first guitar effects pedal, a Korg ToneWorks 411fx, I finally had effects! But I didn't know how to use the blasted thing because it came with no manual. You see, I bought the floor model which was the only one available at Guitar Center and those models never come with their boxes or manuals or anything else. But I am grateful to the young guy who sold that one to me. I don't know what he is doing nowadays but I hope he is happy and well. 

At this point I can't even tell you how I got the reverb on the vocal. Did I plug a microphone or something into the Korg ToneWorks and sing my heart away? Or was the reverb added to the dry vocal recording later? I'm not sure but the reverb was beautiful. I couldn't always tune in that reverb however. Not having the manual I couldn't always find it. I would mindlessly turn the rotary knobs until it appeared. I know it had other sounds and things but I only cared for the reverb. 

And that's the story of that recording. Funny thing is, I no longer have that guitar or that bass (if I used a bass, that is) or that effects pedal. I don't regret not having the 2 instruments but I sure wish I had that pedal still. I think I know a little more about using it now. And they're going for over $100 on eBay these days.

As recently as 2019 I took that recording without the bad vocal and did a new vocal. It came out better but not without its own unique flaws. Now that I know the correct chords to play I just may do a new version or 2 of it. I'd like to do a version as close to the original as possible and perhaps a rendition featuring my own unique take on it. It's a song I never tire of. In fact, my next post will be about sort of a "Spooky" jam recording I created around the same time. Stay tuned!

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: 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!

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!

Handmade Guitar

Today I found some more of the early 'gear' I used in my beginning stages of recording music and sound. I want to share some photos of that equipment just to show the experimentation and creativity of those early days. There is a lot of stuff from my childhood days stored in my garage and I hope to get to them all this year. That is, provided they still exist. I have a large amount of drawings I used to do and I really long to find them.

My first guitar was one my father carved out of wood for me. It's a flat piece of wood with no sound box so it isn't really a playable guitar. It had fishing line on it as strings and I used it more for percussive effect than melodic. Also it's only eleven inches long so it was never really meant to be a 'just for fun' type of thing. Here are some photos of it:

I have many recordings that feature this little guitar. Back in those days my other 'instruments' included:

- a tiny Casio keyboard
- a 4 thick rubber band bass instrument
- a multiple rubber band electric guitar instrument
- coffee and candy cans for drums
- small jingle bells for a tambourine
- tree seed pods for maracas

Some of these things no longer exist. Others do and as I find my 'vintage gear' I will post it here. I do however still have most of the recordings I made from those days. But in connection with Father's Day today I wanted to show the first guitar I ever had, made by my father.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

It is Thanksgiving Day and I have been busily at work on a cover of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" as an offering for this season's holidays. But as it is Thanksgiving, I am certainly thankful for all the same basic, essential things everyone else is. And since this is a music blog, I am particularly thankful for all music gear I have and have had and the abilities I have been blessed with to make music. Music has always been an escape for me from the cold, hard realities of this world into another dimension where I am completely absorbed and untroubled.

I remember growing up and wanting to have real instruments to play. Instead, I had to make do with homemade devices that were so much better than having nothing at all. I have yet to locate some of those pieces. I know I still have them because I would not throw away such things. I'm much too sentimental to dispose of things like that.

There was a church I went to as a child that lent us an acoustic guitar for a week. A nice big dreadnought. I don't know what brand it was. I have a couple of photos of myself with that guitar in hand. At that time though, I had no idea how to play it. A few years later I would have my first electronic keyboard--a tiny, monophonic, cream-colored Casio keyboard which I used on many of my earliest recordings.

As a sophomore in high school. I had a music/piano class that allowed us to take a full-size keyboard home with us to practice on over the weekend. I think it was a 61-key model. I know they came in 76 keys and 88 keys but there's no way it was an 88. I walked that thing home under my arm for about 1.5 miles. It was heavy as heck and I couldn't feel my arm for a while after that. But my intention with that keyboard was to use it for a weekend of recordings. Never before had I access to a keyboard with such authentic piano, organ, bass, drums & vibes sounds! I would happily publish my recordings here were they not so error-laden and simple-sounding. Back in those days I was recording with very cheap microphones--the kind used for tape recorders--and very cheap cassette tapes. Any mistakes made during recording would mean having to start all over from the beginning; none of this wonderful punching in/out editing of the modern digital recording age. And during those days I didn't have all the opportunities and abilities I would have liked in order to keep re-recording to perfection.

A few years after that is when I got my first acoustic guitar and a Casio keyboard similar to the one from high school although it was much lighter in weight! That was the genesis of what has become my music gear. I am really thankful for all that stuff and the ability to make music at home. This would have been impossible to do 25-30 years ago without having to spend a small fortune. Eventually I would still love to have my own studio with state of the art equipment. But for now I'll count my blessings and be grateful for what I am able to do with what I have.

Early Percussion Instruments

Here are some photos of my early percussion instruments. These are the things I used on recordings during junior high and high school and before I ever touched a real drum set. I hadn't seen this items in years as they had been stored away in the garage after our move.

The plastic-reels-with-the-pencil-sticking-up-thing was my 'cymbal' stand. The reels were from 8-track tape cartridges. The actual symbol is not shown because I do not know where it is. It was never mine anyway. It was part of my mother's fancy crystal candy and confection dish. I used to borrow the metallic lid to use for recordings because it was the closest thing I had that sounded like a cymbal, even though it sounded nothing like a cymbal. But hey, it was round and remained suspended on the tip of the pencil. So it looked cool.

Those things are from trees that have pods that fall to the ground in the fall or spring or whenever it is. When they're dry the seeds inside are loose and they make a nice shaker sound. I used them as maracas and as snares underneath my 'snare' drum.

This was my tambourine made from little holiday jingle bells. Gave every recording an instant Christmas feel. Hence, I did not overly use it.

Here is my snare drum. Made from an old, red Fannie May (?) candy can. The bottom was cut out and I tried using cardboard, sheets of paper and plastic as the drum head. As you can tell, by the time I last used this thing I had settled on a sheet of plastic as the drum head. I also added those seed pods underneath to give the snare sound. My drum sticks were markers that no longer worked and a couple of paint brushes for that 'jazz brush' sound.

Finally, as far as my percussion instruments go, these were my toms. Just two coffee cans with plastic lids on top. The brown (or dark) one had just the top metal lid removed. The green one had both the top and bottom metal lids cut and were replaced by the plastic lid. This can also doubled as my bass drum. When I wanted to record bass drum parts I would play it with another non-working marker that had a lot of cloth wrapped around it to give a nice deep sound. Had to be recorded separately though. Could not play the snare, toms, cymbal and bass at the same time. Didn't have the proper set up. In my early recordings I didn't even use the bass drum option. It was just snare, toms and cymbal. Later is when I started using the bass in the way described. In the final stages of using this equipment I was just alternating between playing the snare and the bass just to keep it all in one whole track. When you're doing analog recording--and especially with cheap cassettes--quality starts going down very quickly as you add more and more layers of tracks.

So those items are part of my music history. I still have them and want to keep them as a reminder of what I used to do with much of my spare time when I was in school. Maybe they'll end up in a museum someday?

There is some other gear which I no longer have and others which I do. I'll have to post photos of them when I come across them.

Homemade Electric Guitar & Bass

My very first amplifier was a mini-amplifier that I purchased from Radio Shack:

This thing was the first step towards 'electrifying' my homemade stringed instruments. This was way back when. I had this game set made out of round aluminum or some other kind of metal that resembled a pizza pan. On one side was a checkerboard design, on the other was a Chinese checkers game board. The 'pan' opened up and stored all the game pieces inside. In essence, when the pan was opened up I had 2 pans. After I had no one left to play the games with, I decided to find a new use for these aluminum pans.

I had these pretty thick and oversized rubber bands that I put around one of the pans. The size of the rubber bands gave nice low tones when plucked--tones similar to that of other stringed bass instruments. But the tones could only be heard if the pan was placed really close to the ears. And needless to say the tiny amp pictured above was not going to reproduce any low frequency sounds. So I had to explore other possibilities for amplification of that instrument.

But what that amp did turn out to be great for was the other pan, which I also put rubber bands around. But these rubber bands were the more typical thin and smaller type. Not good for bass sounds. But good for tenor type stringed instruments!

So I used an old speaker that I pulled out of a broken radio or something as the pickup or microphone. (I used to save old speakers and parts from old radios or tv's or other things that no longer worked). The good thing about using a speaker was that it would lay flat against the back of the pan and remain held in place by the rubber bands. The rubber bands served a dual purpose--the musical notes and keeping the speaker in place. A typical mic would not cooperate as well.

I had wires going from the speaker to a 1/4" plug on the other end for inserting into the mini amp. And when I turned on the amp, VOILA! I now had the sound of amplified rubber bands! It wasn't very musical and it was difficult to get the right tones. But if there was a recording I wanted to make I would mark the rubber bands just where I had 'fret' them in order to get the proper notes. And if I turned the amp up all the way it really sounded like a distorted guitar.

Here is a little recording I made using that set up. Remember, this is before I actually had any real instruments whatsoever. I had no musical training or any lessons. And the recording itself is very old and originally made on very cheap Certron cassette tapes from the 80s and early 90s. This may be as lo-fi as it gets.




There is my rubber band electric guitar! If I can locate the whereabouts of the pans I will gladly photograph them and post on here to give a better idea visually.

I also want to include a snip of how the bass rubber band instrument sounded:




Very hard to get the correct intonation but for me it was super cool and exciting because I got to experiment with sounds and music!