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February 27, 2009
Here we go again! I posted Kreggers' The Rest of My Days as the featured song, and while he and I were both
pretty happy with it as it stood a month or two ago, he did say that he wanted more of that guitar in there and that it should come in sooner. I had that other mix in my head at the time and couldn't exactly hear how to do what he wanted.
Listening to it recently I came up with a better kick drum pattern to play. One thing led to the next and over the
course of a couple of nights I recorded different drum parts and remixed the thing. It is now more rockin'.
Craig_Wise_Rest_Of_My_Days03.mp3
I ran out of time last night, but I will be tweeking this mix a bit- I want to hear more of the steel guitar, and I
think it's a little muddy in the bass. Let me know how you like it so far.
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February 23, 2009
Kregger and his pal Dave checked in last Friday and started work on a new version of Kindred Spirits. Don't adjust your set- Kregger really does have a green guitar.
We also got some rough ideas recorded for two or three others, so stay tuned...
How 'bout we feature his first one for a while?
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February 20, 2009
Farewell to all that...
The engineers warned me about this. The technology behind the first recordable CDs was such that the information
encoded in the bits and pits, the ones and zeros, would gradually be lost. Soon the title I gave this one ten
or fifteen years ago will accurately describe the information contained on it.
This was my first home-made CD recording. CD recorders for computers hadn't made the scene yet, so this was done
on a stand-alone CD recorder I borrowed. Recording one of these was very iffy, and there were plenty of coasters
created in the process- at about $5 apiece.
Here's the beginning of the song list on it. You could add songs at different times, but until the disk was
finalized you couldn't play it back. There were different standards for finalizing too, I think- Red Book,
White Book and so on. It was nuts.
It starts with a track of digital noise. Not intentionally, I'm sure. Sort of broke the mood when you hit play on
the old CD player without skipping right to track 2, I'll tell ya! Track 9 sort of appeared in the process- there's
nothing on it, it's just a track of emptyness that the machine decided to add, and it threw off all the numbering.
Here's the rest of the song list- you could jam a lot on there. All that work to make a CD that would not play on most CD players. It was pretty exciting! But now this disk with its flaky noise bursts and empty tracks can't be played at
all. Well, actually, the cheapo Dell Music Player on my computer will sort of play it, but it stutters and
skips and is very noisy.
noisy track sample.mp3
Anyway, no worries. The engineers warned me that this would happen, and I made a backup copy- on DAT!
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February 19, 2009
I just found out about a new holiday for musicians- St. Practice Day. It falls on
February 17th, and is the day musicians start practicing for their highly lucerative St. Patricks Day gigs.
I've started a day late, but, god willing, will be gigging that night with an outfit which may be called
Save the Kells at a place definitely called McCleary's.
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February 14, 2009
Here's a recent photo of the elusive band...
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February 11, 2009
More wayback for you.
The basic instrumental tracks for this one were recorded on reel to reel, and I suspect it was during the period
of time when I had a four track surround-sound recorder. This wasn't real multi-track, where you could listen
back to previously recorded tracks and record new ones at the same time time- no, this was just a regular stereo
machine with two extra channels, which were supposed to be for the rear speakers. Way ahead of its time...
Be that as it may, it was a major step ahead for me, because once I got it I could bounce recordings from another
machine to two of the channels and record new things on the other two and be able to mix them later. This minimized
the complication and stress factors greatly. In a band situation I could do a stereo mix of drums and bass and record
two other instruments seperately, then add vocals and leads on a bounce. This was very clean compared to what I had been able to do with stereo recorders.
I found these tracks some time ago and transferred them to my digital recorder. It was all there, premixed,
except for the vocals. Last night I went in and sang along with work I had done at least 25 years ago. It was
kind of fun to do that. I think the song and the recording have held up well. Back then
I had no noise gates, no limiting, no compression, and the effects consisted of the spring reverb in a Peavy board and
an external analogue delay. My mic selection was pretty limited as well, yet these tracks have some snap.
A lot of that was because of the snappy drumming, and while I don't know for sure, it sounds like
Rick Bowman playing them to me.
Jeff Coleman Fall Right Through.mp3 or
Jeff Coleman Fall Right Through.ogg
If any of you have heard this one before, you may not think that I've redone the vocals. For better or worse,
I sing it just the way I did back then. They're cleaner now, is all...
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February 07, 2009
One for the sponsors. A while back Trance and I put together a band for one gig- we called ourselves Death Clowns. Trance said, more like Deaf Clowns, but whatever. We had the mighty Jeff Clinton on drums, and I hope the bass player will forgive me because I don't remember who that was. We played our one gig, opening for somebody at the Italian American Club, everyone's favorite late-night drinking establishment.
Well, a tape of the event was made, but for whatever reason it was mostly high frequencies. May have been the tape machine we were using, I don't know. Today I dared to cut them high frequencies very hard and got a reasonable version of one of my early 80's songs, Grizzly Delights, with Trance and I trading reasonable leads. Sponsors only- look to the catalog!
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February 06, 2009
Bonus Friday! A two-fer featured song to start the weekend!
(later)
I'm still working through older things I'd transferred to the hard drive recorder
from reel to reel tape. These are some partial songs, some early tracks* and some completed songs
that have never made it to the digital realm.
This one is a sort of touchstone for me- it has elements in it (water, magnetic waves?) that
have worked their way into subsequent songs of mine (Toujours Ensemble?). Plus it turned out pretty well, I think, technically...
Jeff Coleman Surfin To You.mp3 or
Jeff Coleman Surfin To You.ogg
*Back in the day I would "bounce" tracks from one recorder to another, adding parts during the
transfer. It was a way to multitrack without having big expensive recording machines, but with some
significant drawbacks. First of all, every bounce added noise and distortion. This could be used to advantage, but it wouldn't win any awards. Secondly, once you set sail, you committed yourself to
following wherever the additional tracks lead you- you couldn't just decide to scrub a part later on if
it didn't suit you. Not such a bad thing, really, just different from the way things are now.
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February 05, 2009
Music brings me joy...
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February 04, 2009
I did some remixing last night- new and improved...
The Stokers- Groove01.mp3 or
The Stokers- Groove01.ogg
Again, this is all i-Pod except for the lead guitar. Some of those guitar riffs have got hair on them.
(later)
I'm trying to catch up with the past a little here... this next one must have started back in Paradise,
in the Cat Ranch studio, so that goes back a ways. See, I had a dream that there was a mile-high platform,
nothing but a garden built up on steel legs, and that I drove there one night, and went up to the garden and watched
the sun rise over distant mountains. The sun was lighting up this garden, while far below the land was still
dark.
This song is about that dream, sort of. I couldn't think of any other way to write it except for that sort of
prog rock that Genesis was doing. I guess that now I could write about it differently.
But it is what it is. When I listened back to it, there was a whole lot of the high frequency stuff in it, it
was horrible. I have no idea what I was doing, I must have been going after something, but it was painful to
listen to. Tonight I just slashed away at that high end (which included a bunch of tape noise, as the original
was recorded on my old reel to reel) and now I feel pretty comfortable with it:
The Stokers- Life On Earth.mp3 or
The Stokers- Life On Earth.ogg
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February 02, 2009
It's all about the Knob this morning...
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Featured Song:
#270
Craig Wise
The Rest of My Days
mp3
or
ogg
3:43
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