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 Song (1989)

Well, here it is. My very first full-length song that I recorded on my own. I never gave this song a title for whatever reason. Maybe because at that point I wasn't frequently doing my own songs but rather doing 'covers' of songs that inspired me. That is, if you could call them covers. Regardless of the reason, this tune still remains untitled thirty years later.

First let me convey what was the inspiration behind this song. Around that time I used to listen to a lot of college radio--nothing's changed there--and some blues shows. I remember hearing a blues show that had a really cool beat and some Hammond organ. I was very interested in organs then and again nothing's changed. I used to tape a lot of songs from the radio and I'm pretty sure I recorded this one but I haven't been able to find it to this day. Another thing I did a lot back then was accidentally record over things and I suspect this is the fate this song experienced. Yet another issue during those days was tapes getting crunched and damaged in the cassette playing mechanism so this is a possibility as well. It's been thirty years and my memory has become less friendly over time.

So basically the beat in this song was inspired by the beat in that blues song. And while the song featured a full drum set, here I played a single empty candy can with one hand. It is the red one in the photo below:

I'm not sure but at the time I recorded this song the can may have been fully intact. Eventually I cut the bottom off and tried a variety of 'heads' that would give me a desire snare drum sound. Nothing every really worked of course. But it was better than nothing. It wasn't until a little later that I expanded the drums to the two coffee cans, two markers for drumsticks and that device on the left that held my 'cymbal' up. (That device was actually made from two reels from 8-track tape cartridges and a colored pencil).

Around this time my sister had purchased a dual-cassette boombox. This was something very new to me and I found it to be very cool. Not only that but it had a microphone jack. I started using this thing and it was through this that I discovered the magic of overdubbing. In case you don't know what that is, it is the ability to record something onto something that has already been recorded. That is, overlaying recordings. At first I began overlaying recordings of any kind of sound. This included voice, instrument sounds and whatever else until I finally realized I could make music with this.

This boombox was a Sanyo and its two most important features were the dual cassette capability which allowed you to make your own mix tapes, and the microphone jack. Mind you, without either one of these features I would have never stumbled upon what I actually did. I would not have the countless recordings that I made.

I ended up using this boombox more than even my sister did. I had great fun with it. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it only allowed mono microphone recordings. This was around the time that I started understanding what stereo was and began noticing the extreme differences on the left and right channels of many recordings from the 1960s. I was really interested in making stereo recordings but there was no way with this device and I wouldn't have the capability until sometime later. Thus, mono it was.

When I set out to record this song, I cannot confirm whether I did it all in one day or not. See, I've always been very shy about doing anything around anyone else so I always needed complete privacy when I recorded. That hasn't changed either. I still only record when absolutely no one else is around me. But I don't remember if I had the time I needed to do all four tracks which comprise this recording all in the same sitting. I'm leaning on the side that I did not and probably did only two or three tracks on the first day and the last one or two the next day or sometime soon after.

The first track I recorded was the drum track. Very unconventional for anyone and no less for me. Nowadays drums are usually the very last track I record. But for this recording 'drums' was the first. The second track was my 'bass'. This was another homemade instrument which unfortunately I don't have any photos of. After I moved into my current abode sixteen years ago I have not seen it. Fortunately it was nothing terribly complicated so I can still describe it in words and photos. One of my Christmas gifts as a child was a set of Chinese Checkers and traditional Checkers that came in a round tin that opened up and stored all the parts inside. Here are some pictures of the very same kind I had:

I used the traditional Checkers half for my bass instrument. (The other half would later be used with thinner rubber bands for guitar sounds). At that time we had some extra big & thick red rubber bands that one day I placed on this round pizza-pan-like tin and voila! I had a stringed instrument that if I put really close up to my ear sounded like the bass guitar sounds I had been hearing in a lot of my favorite songs. But there were at least two main problems with this instrument. First, as I already hinted, the volume was nearly inaudible. Second, how could I go about getting the exact notes I needed? Well, I came up with suitable-enough-for-me remedies that seemed to work but those were not to come till after my earliest recordings. For this song I had the rubber bands set to the notes I wanted, and in terms of volume I played the strings as close to the microphone as possible. (I should show some pics of the mics I used as well. They were nothing more than the generic mics that were used for voice recording onto cassettes).

The third track was a homemade guitar my dad had carved out of wood for me. This creation was probably never intended to be played or used as an instrument. But once fishing rod line and some small wood additions were added it became usable for a type of percussion sound if nothing else. I've posted photos of it before but here it is again:

So you can hear this guitar's sounds on the recording similar to how you might hear an acoustic guitar's strumming amidst a highly amplified soundscape. Or in the rhythmic way a mandolin player uses his instrument in a bluegrass band.

Finally, the fourth track is the Casio PT-1 keyboard that my brother bought for me as a gift once. After I started acquiring full-size keyboards over the years I ended up giving the Casio to my niece. Regrettably, she no longer has it nor remembers ever having it! This is what it looked like:

This was a tiny keyboard with a range of only four voices: piano, fantasy, violin, flute. The one used on this recording was flute. The part was completely improvised. Not being much of a musician at the time I didn't want to be very adventurous on the keys. But I was content with the end result.

Here's the thing about overdubbing with cheap tapes and microphones on analog equipment: each time you add another layer or overdub some of the quality of the earlier track(s) goes south. I have many of these recordings where I've seen the quality decrease substantially each time I added something new. And later when I started to do the stereo recordings the deterioration was even more noticeable due to the nature of my method.

That's the story behind this song. Certainly I wish it were of better sonic quality. But it was 1989 and I was a poor kid with no real gear for this sort of thing. Not to sound like an old person but today's kids have an immense amount of high quality gear at their disposal which are really just wasted in their hands. Such is life!

This has been the first of my many recordings. Plenty more to come!

Spring Update

So we're into the final third of April and I have not written any holiday or seasonal tunes! And to be honest, I don't really feel like it! I knew this would happen. I have not able to immerse myself into that genre of music as I had wanted to. But fear not--I have been working on other music. I have about four songs I am working on right now. One is lyrically complete and ready to start recording. The other three are more in the infant stages of writing. But I feel good that ideas are flowing. And at this time, I feel as though I'm going in the direction of shorter songs. The bulk of the music I love is pop & rock of the 1960's & early 1970's. If I had to sum it up into a range it would be 1964-1972. The majority of the hit songs of that era were all just about under three minutes long. So I'm probably going to keep them short and (hopefully) sweet. I'm also considering mixing all the songs in mono just to give the project that extra 60's sound. Some of my all-time favorite songs are in mono and only available in mono (as far as I know). Here are some of them:

Heart Full of Soul (The Yardbirds)

Gimme Some Lovin' (The Spencer Davis Group)

Can't Be Still (Booker T & The M.G.'s)

Ya Ya (Lee Dorsey)

Take a Heart (The Sorrows)

Down Home Girl (The Stones)

You Need Lovin' (The Small Faces)

Baby Don't Go (Sonny & Cher)

Barefootin' (Robert Parker)

Good Time Charlie (Bobby Bland)

I realize some of those may fall outside the specified range, but it's not an exclusive range. Anyway I'm not a huge fan of mono but it does give a recorded song more of a vintage, lo-fi feel. Plus, when comparing mono mixes to stereo ones of the thousands of songs I have in my library, the mono mixes usually sound louder and more balanced. Of course, that could have to do with mastering techniques as well. In the 60's most singles on 45 were punchy mono mixes made specifically to sound loud over the radio and on your home turntables. The Beatles released all their albums in both mono and stereo up through 1968. They involved themselves in the mono mixes and left the stereo mixing up to the studio staff.

I'm going to do this. And it's cool because I will still have access to make stereo mixes whenever the mood strikes or if need be. That's the difference between my recordings and the ones listed above. Many of those were recorded on two or three-track tape with the masters no longer available. Thus they are preserved for posterity in mono and nothing else. But it is fun to think about how they would have been mixed in stereo. I got used to a lot of The Beatles' earlier stereo output where most instruments would be panned to one side and the vocals on the other, with nothing much in the center. Those stereo recordings helped me better hear and figure out the different instrument parts so I could learn to play them. That's one of the reasons I prefer stereo overall--there is a lot more to be heard that mono mixes do not permit.

I think the four songs I'm working on will be interesting. If I can get really serious about finishing them up and doing a few more things I may actually have something to release this year.