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.

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.