Re: ...while waiting for RECORDING THE BEATLES.
- From: timagine@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 14 Sep 2006 11:41:48 -0700
My first recording with a band at home was live, and we were recording
Mr Moonlight:
"Mr. Moonlight, come again please here I am on my knees beggin if you
please"
Then I played: "bum, bum, bum----BINK!" having played the wrong note...
voice from the past
JohnB wrote:
Lookingglass wrote:
While I am EAGERLY awaiting the delivery of this book, I am reminded of the
first time I tried to do my own 'home recording'.
I am not a professional musician or studio tech.
Being influenced by the BEATLES early in my 'artistic' life, I figured
GEE...if they can do it, why can't I...?!? (Nothing stands in the way of
Youth).
So I started to write (this was late '60s)... a few lyrics...some music
picked out at a piano that happened to be nearby...I didn't have any musical
instruments at home, so any opportunity to play a piano at school or work
(the local YMCA) or church was welcome. As the years went by, I got better
at playing and writing. I also picked up the guitar and taught myself how to
play a few rudimentary chords... it's funny... the differences between the
songs that were written on the guitar as opposed to those written at the
piano.
But it wasn't till 1980 that I was inspired by a little girl's answer to the
Question Man... a local newspaper would put a man on the street and he would
ask people that passed by the 'Question of the Day'. This particular day the
question was...What was your worst nightmare? Heidi answered (she was 9)
"Falling off the Moon!"...naive!
I was inspired as I was working with kids at the time and thought it would
go over 'big'. So I wrote DANCING A JIG ON THE MOON...lots of
child-like images.
I had to record it...and having read enough (at the time) about how the
Beatles recorded, I ran out with my modest budget and bought a Radio Shack
2-track cassette recorder and a very cheap, dinky microphone.. A friend had
a Sony 2-track reel to reel recorder I 'absconded' when he wasn't looking
(!). I did the initial play through of the song on guitar...Whew!!!... and
then I double-tracked the guitar and recorded the vocals and drums (actually
just a tambourine)...
Well you get the picture...lots of over-dubbing and 'flanging' and bouncing
(I even layered a loop of some bagpipes playing into the instrumental break
for 'ambience') ...etc...etc...etc! All of this taking place in my
studio/bedroom/attic/storage area...!
...and in the end...
NOTHING can match that first 'triumph'. IT WAS BRILLIANT...!!!
I have re-recorded the song a couple of times since, but I don't get
the same 'feel' as that first 'virgin' recording...I treasure it.
Since then I have made numerous 'home' recordings...the equipment has been
upgraded (thanks to 'modern' technology and computers!..and a better
budget), but being forced to 'invent' a process that would work with my
knowledge, equipment, and budget at the time, helped me to discover my
'ART'...
Thank you Beatles.
dave (...and you know that can't be bad...)
www.Shemakhan.com
All this made me think back to my early recording experiences. Ah,
those were the days! All started with a mono mike into a mono cassette
recorder (borrowed) in about 1971. Results were truly awful (so were
my songs back then).
Nothing happened for years (poor student, then setting up a home with
my first wife). Then I got myself into a band playing folk music. We
got enough local success to consider making an album and so we booked
ourselves into Woodworm Studios owned and run by Dave Pegg (Fairport
Convention and once upon a time Jethro Tull). Here we had access to 2"
8-track tape with all the effects you could imagine and an engineer who
knew how to work it all. The leap in technology put us in a
dreamworld. This was 1983.
We later made a second album in 1985/6 at the same studio - though by
then they had 16-track tape machines. However, later that year the
band split.
Having spent 5 years making folk music, I now returned to my
songwriting and wanted to see what multi-tracking could do for my
creations. I saved up and bought a Vesta Fire 4-track cassette
machine, the first that was affordable that I'd come across. Usual
trick with this was to record guitar, vocals, drum machine and bass
onto the four tracks; mix this down in stereo onto my hi-fi cassette
deck; load the stereo back to tracks 1&2 and record more overdubs on
tracks 3&4, etc.. Final quality was naturally below lo-fi but I was
still really proud of the results.
I was then playing in a pub band which was earning me a bit of pocket
money. This enabled me to buy a second hand Tascam 388, a
desktop-sized box containing a 1/2" open reel 8-track recorder complete
with mixing console. Imagine the fun I had with that! This was more
technologically advanced than the Beatles had for most of their career!
Only last year I had forced myself to sell this monster on e-bay and I
now have Cubase - though I never have time to learn how to use it all
properly. However, after recording an album last year using a friend's
Cubase system, I've seen what it can do.
When I look now at all the tricks you can use in even a home studio -
pitch correction, cut and paste, all the plug in effects - I think it
makes people lazy these days. I wonder how most modern bands would
have fared with the 4-track tape machines they used to make Revolver
and Sgt Pepper? I know some artists still prefer tape to digital
recording but even these have so much more in the way of gadgets and
trickery - and I suppose the passed-down know-how that was being
developed by JPGR and Sir George.
I would like to express my personal thanks to those five for showing me
how an inventive mind can create wonderful tapestries of sound despite
limitations - and can then defy those limitations because their
imagination said they needed to. Who has such invention these days?
.
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