For 9 months of 1989, I lived in Goleta, California (just north of
Santa Barbara). I rented a three bedroom house and used one of
the rooms as a studio. During my stay there, I purchased a Tascam
688 MIDI Studio (8-tracks on a cassette). Most of the music here
was recorded on this recorder.
- Slimey Weeds
-
A Grandma Gershwin clasic. A version of this is on almost
every GGB and Humboldt Brothers albums. The frist track was
the drum track using a Yamaha drum machine, will fills done on
a Roland Octopad. The lead guitar was done with headphones on
loud!
- Blow Away
-
This was originally a keyboard piece. I was trying to figure
out some of the melody and harmony, so I recorded the first
acoustic guitar track. I wasn't quite satisfied with that
track, so I recorded another guitar track.
I then pulled out the mandolin to figure out the melody, and
recorded that track. I wasn't quite satisfied, so I
recorded another. The same thing happened with the melody line.
When mixing down to cassette so I could listen to the music
in my car, I forgot to mute three of the channels. I found
the combination of two guitar and four mandolin tracks to be
very full sounding. I added two more mandolin tracks to
"fill in" where the previous mandolin tracks were lacking,
and finished mixing.
- Cat's Tongue in a Peach Wine Sauce
-
This was originally recorded at Thurin Studios with Rick Duim
of the Humboldt Brothers on a 4-track machine. One weekend
when Mark & Rick drove up, Mark brought his four-track up,
and I dubbed the original 4-track tape onto my 8-track deck.
I then added some Fripp-ish background loops and mixed it
down.
There is a very short bit at the beginning when you can hear
a melotron-string sounding bit come in. That's all that I
actually mixed in of Rick's track. There's another version
of this song that has Rick's track in full on some other
album.
- Ballet (YMO)
-
This was the first song recorded on the 8-track. I recorded
it in the almost-empty living room of the house I was
renting. I really liked the small-room echoey sound I had.
Unfortunately, I used decent mic's, so none of the reverb came
through. So, I used a Alesis mini-verb to add that small room
cheesy echo to the song.
- Andy Norris (Badfinger)
-
This is one of the songs that the Humboldt Brothers were
practicing before I left for my short trip up north. The
original lead was simply a flanged guitar. I added distortion
during the mixdown for the CD. If you have a copy of the cassette
(titled The Point Is Taken), you'll have the mix
without the distorted lead.
- Heroes (Bowie)
-
I like Bowie, Eno, and Fripp. I got the Fripp sound on my
lead guitar by turning the compression to full on my little
foot pedal, then piping that into the distortion unit. I've
never been able to quite get that sound again. The sudden
ending to the song is due to End Of Tape.
- Waiting for the Robins
-
One weekend when Rick came up to visit, we did some goofing
around in the studio. This song started off as
Crimson And Clover, which he and Mark were working on
down south. He played guitar, and I played his Ensoniq
keyboard. A few days later I put an acoustic guitar on
another track.
While I was playing the guitar track, I just started singing
some words. It turns out that the guitar mic picked up
those words. I decided to write down the words and do a
full track for vocals. I then added bass guitar, and added
some flute-sounding keyboards. Very psychedelic.
Again, I mixed Rick's guitar out for most of the song,
except where the lead guitar comes in.
- SAE
-
This is a piano song that I used to play whenever I found a
piano. I would estimate I first started playing this around
1980 or so.
- This Budd's for You
-
Richard Johnson (raj) is a friend with whom I worked while I
was up in Santa Barbara. He had a 286 that he wasn't using,
so he lent it to me. I purchased a Roland MPU 401 card (one
of the originals!) and Cakewalk MIDI software.
This was the first piece I did using that software. The
entire piece is one loop. During mixdown, as each loop
finished, I would add or subtract one of the tracks.
- The Point is Taken
-
This is one of my Fripp-ish loop pieces, using the Ibanez
DM1100 3.6 second digital delay. Instead of guitar, though, I
used my Juno 106 keyboard. During mixdown, I modified the
reverb to get the various effects.
- I've Got A Secret Agent Gunn
- Rain (Lennon/McCartney)
-
One weekend, Mark & Rick came up, along with Rich. (This
may have been thr 4th of July weekend). We had a jam session
in the little 8x10 foot studio. Nothing really good
came out of the sessions, but we had a lot of fun, and I think
these two selections show it.
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