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My debut album, WEB, is DIY recording at its most direct, produced at home using a four-track cassette machine, an ancient Atari computer, and a host of other "guerrilla tactics." A number of musicians, engineers, and producers have
asked me about how WEB was created. I've put together the
following semi-technical information to answer any questions folks
may have. If there's anything else you'd like to know about the
project, contact me.
WEB was recorded using a Tascam Portastudio 424 four-track cassette deck with dbx noise reduction, running at high speed (9.5 cm/sec or 3.75 ips). Tape used was TDK SA and Sony UX. No bouncing was done, in order to maximize recording quality. All bass, percussion (except the brush on "The Potter's Daughter"), and keyboard parts (except the Fender Rhodes on "Never Even" and Clavinet on "So Young") were MIDI tracks sequenced on an old Atari ST computer, which was slaved to FSK time code on Track 4 of the four-track (see more about the Atari below). In other words, nearly all the songs on WEB were recorded with only three tracks of live audio: vocal, acoustic guitar, any other live instrument(s) on tracks 1-3, and time code on track 4. This meant that alternate vocal takes were rarely possible, and individual tape tracks often contained several parts occurring at different points in a song. For example, the harmony vocal, second guitar, and harmonica on "Life of the Party" were all on the same tape track. "So Young" was built upon the same foundation, with vocal, guitar, and Clavinet recorded on three separate tape tracks, and the fourth track triggering MIDI bass and percussion on the Atari. However, the sound effects were added in the mixing stage (see more about this song under Mixing, below). The four exceptions to the four-track-plus-MIDI format are "Piggy," "The Potter's Daughter," and "Chant," which are entirely electro-acoustic, and "Interlude II," which is entirely electronic. Basic tracks were recorded from May 1999 to December 2000; "Interlude II" was created during the mixing phase in Spring 2001. Microphones All the vocal and guitar tracks were recorded using an Electrovoice N/D 357A, a cheap dynamic microphone designed primarily for on-stage vocal performance. On "Life of the Party" and "The Potter's Daughter," a second mic (an ATM31 small-diaphragm condenser – another cheapie) was used to record the acoustic guitar in stereo. However, on "Life of the Party," this second track was later eliminated to make room for time code (see next section). Atari Computer Because of the limited number of audio tracks, I used MIDI sequencing to create all the bass, percussion, and piano parts on "WEB." This was done on an Atari 520ST with 4 MB of RAM, running C-LAB Creator 3.0 software (a forerunner of Logic Audio). A J.L. Cooper PPS-2 synchronizer was used to generate FSK time code and sync the computer to tape. Though this technology was quite "obsolete" by most people's standards, I'd been using this workstation for about ten years and knew how to get what I wanted. Besides, it was all that was available at the time. On "Life of the Party," time code was added after the audio tracks were already finished, in order to add new bass and synthesizer parts. Because all four audio tracks were full, one of the stereo pair of guitar tracks had to be sacrificed to make room for the time code. Sound Effects WEB makes extensive use of found and manipulated sounds. Some are recordings of environmental sounds such as rain and wind. Others are recordings of electronic sources (e.g. telephone and radio), samples from obscure LPs, sound effects culled from CD and online collections, and several "quotes" from my personal tape archives. Some sounds were used as is, others altered beyond recognition, and a few were made entirely from scratch through various synthesis techniques. Manipulation methods included analog and digital looping, pitch alteration, editing, filtering, modulation, blending... in some cases, sounds were simply layered in such density that they created something new. I hadn't done sound collage since my days at Cornish College of the Arts in the 1980s, and it was a pleasure to rediscover it on this project. The continual intrusion of sounds from the outside world (especially of the small seaplanes going to and from Lake Union) made me realize that I could welcome that outer world into the album rather than fight a losing battle to keep it out. This opened me once again to the possibilities of found sound, which became one of the most important thematic elements of "WEB." This use of sound reaches its peak in "So Young," which, in addition to the music itself, incorporates dozens of different sounds. For a more detailed discussion of sound effects in "So Young" see MIXING: "So Young" Effects, below. Incidentally, the final sounds heard on the album come from "family album" recordings made by my father over 30 years ago on an old Lucor portable reel-to-reel machine. Other Equipment Though nearly all tracks were recorded straight to tape, several were compressed to tape using a dbx 163X (e.g. guitar and vocal on "Never Even"). A Soundcraft Spirit "Folio Rac Pac" mixer was used for mic preamps and signal routing during tracking. Equipment used for generating and looping source sounds include several old (60s and 70s) Sony reel-to-reel machines, a JVC stereo cassette deck, a 70s Philips turntable, and an Alesis Quadraverb. Telephone sounds were recorded with a telephone pickup transducer from Radio Shack.
I played all the parts on WEB myself, using a wide range of acoustic, electric, and electronic instruments: Guitars / Amps All acoustic guitar parts were played on a Taylor 410K dreadnought with koa back and sides, with the exception of the lead guitar on "So Young," which is an Epiphone PR745 dreadnought. Both were strung with Elixir medium strings. All electric guitar parts were played on a mid-late 80s G&L strat-style S-500, through a mid-70s Fender Princeton Reverb (which supplied the vibrato on "Piggy"). All the apparent slide and pedal steel effects (e.g. "Chant") were achieved using the whammy bar on the G&L; no slide was used. The S-500 was strung with Dean Markley regular strings. Tunings used: Vintage Keyboards The solo at the end of "Never Even" was played on a Fender Rhodes Mark I "Seventy-Three" stage piano, recorded straight into the board. The Clavinet on "So Young" is a Hohner D6, run through an original Thomas Organ "Cry Baby" wah-wah pedal, and plugged straight into the board. There's also some sampled Mellotron on each end of "A Night Like This." The samples are from J.P.Hovercraft's Mellotron sample page, tinpan.fortunecity.com/aphex/113. When playing these Mellotron parts, I sorely missed my own, real Mellotron, which I sold years ago during a period of financial hardship and temporary insanity – I still regret it. The one bright spot in that sad tale is that I sold it to David Kean, who has since become the "go-to guy" for everything to do with Mellotrons, from parts, plans, and tape racks to brand new, custom 'Trons with high-torque motors – check him out at www.mellotron.com. I've had the Rhodes and Clavinet for twenty-five years now, and will never let them go. Synths All the bass, piano, and organ sounds were generated by a Kurzweil PX1000 rack-mounted sound module. In its own way, this is a "vintage keyboard" too, because it was one of the first and best sample-based synths of the mid-80s, and still holds its own against much that's on the market today. All the percussion sounds (except "The Potter's Daughter") were generated by a Roland R8, which was Roland's flagship model about 14 years ago. (Hmm... maybe all I have is "vintage" gear.) The synth on "Life of the Party," the descending sine wave on "A Night Like This," and some of the electronic textures on "So Young" were programmed on a Kawai K4 keyboard... another oldie. As synths go, it was a bit of a dog, but had some surprisingly useful sound editing and synthesis capabilities, which I exploited here. The saxes on "So Young" and flutes on "A Night Like This" were generated by a Yamaha TG-55 rack-mounted module (c. 1991). The strings in the midst of "Interlude II" and "A Night Like This" were generated by the EXS24 software sampler by Emagic, played via MIDI as a VST instrument in Logic. Other Instruments The harmonica at the end of "Life of the Party" is an old Hohner "Marine Band." The fiddle played on "Piggy" was made by
my great-grandfather, Leiner Skrivseth, in 1967. Violin making was
just a hobby for him, but this one turned out nicely, I think.
MIXING Digital Transfers In fall 2000, the song "Life of the Party" was mixed for inclusion on the Seattle Performing Songwriters (SPS) compilation, which was released that November. I did the mix at Will Dowd's studio, Spikehaus, using Digital Performer running on a G4. The tape and MIDI tracks were first transferred to ADAT, as I was intending to mix in real time. However, I decided to do the mix in Digital Performer, so the tracks were then imported into the computer. This compilation mix of "Life of the Party" was not used on WEB. In December 2000, all the audio and MIDI tracks for
the remaining songs were transferred into Logic Audio Gold (running
on a beige Mac G3) through a MOTU 2408 interface. Logic Gold allows
only 16-bit recording, so this was the resolution of the final audio
files. The resulting AIFFs and Logic song files were saved to CDR
so I could mix them later in Logic on my own system. Digital Workstation In January 2001, these files (and the raw audio files from the original "Life of the Party" mix) were imported into Logic Audio Platinum, running on a Mac G3 system (blue)... a marked improvement over the Atari. Many folks have asked why I didn't simply record WEB in Logic to begin with. The answer is that the G3/Logic workstation wasn't ready to go until well after all the recording was completed. G3 system specs: 350 MHz, 256 MB of RAM, 45 GB internal ATA hard drive dedicated to audio. The sound card was an Echo Darla 24/96 (2 in, 8 out, all analog, no digital I/O) with a PCI card interface. The system ran pretty well, though there were some frustrating crashes, due (I believe) to Echo's drivers. It was interesting learning to use Logic while mixing the album. The program is reputedly difficult to use, but the real problem isn't Logic itself, it's the manual – written by programmers for programmers. While I wouldn't recommend this kind of "on-the-job training" to everyone, it proved to be a great way to learn the system. Mixing Notes The main reason to mix digitally was to be able to automate the process. I'd been dreading mixing WEB by hand – a daunting task, considering the number of fader moves that some songs would have required. I've mixed that way before, and wasn't looking forward to the inevitable "near misses." Logic allowed me to step outside real time and build mixes bit by bit, auditioning and automating changes as I went, without the risk of losing anything. I was determined not to "cheat" by using Logic to add tracks, and on all but one song ("So Young," see below), I used only the original four-track-plus-MIDI basic tracks. "Interlude II" was created entirely in Logic, using MIDI and processed audio. Song transitions were mixed in Logic, using prerecorded analog source material. The microphones and room used to record WEB were far from ideal, and I had to do a good deal of "forensic" work to clean things up, including editing, smoothing the levels and dynamics, intensive EQ and filtering, etc. At the mixing stage, I acquired a pair of Event 20/20 powered monitors, which allowed me to finally hear what I was doing. During tracking, I'd been using a $50 Radio Shack bookshelf stereo system – yikes! At some point in the post-production process, mixing slowly transformed into mastering. I worked carefully to ensure that these songs that had been recorded over many months would sound cohesive in terms of level, EQ, and vocal/instrumental balance. Once all the tracks were finished, I did the final "assembly" using Jam 2.6. This wonderful program allows you to customize and audition the program order, song transitions, and cross-fades, as well as fine-tune track levels and burn a master CD – all from one easy to use interface. back to top A wide range of VST plug-ins were used throughout the mixing stage. Among my favorites were the Waves line (esp. TrueVerb, Q10 EQ, L1 limiter, DeEsser, and PAZ frequency analyzer), Steinberg's DeNoiser, GRM's wonderful dynamic filters, Prosoniq's Orange Vocoder and Ambisone, and TC's delays and reverbs. Emagic's own plug-ins held up surprisingly well against these third-party tools, providing excellent sound and conserving system resources. Among these, I especially liked the Platinum Reverb, Tape Delay, and no-nonsense, useful solutions such as the Gain'er. Their phasers, flangers, and choruses are great, too. Emagic's excellent EXS24 software sampler operates as a "plug-in" on an Audio Instrument channel. For "Interlude II" and "A Night Like This," I used the EXS string sounds, as well as a sample of a Mellotron. A part played on the EXS is recorded as MIDI, which then "plays" the sampler internally to generate audio. This audio can be manipulated like any other audio in Logic (i.e. you can add effects, route to a bus, automate parameters, etc.). If your processor headroom gets low, you can bounce down the sampler part into its own audio file so that the sampler itself is no longer needed. Incidentally, if you use Logic for MIDI, I highly recommend using one of Emagic's proprietary USB MIDI interfaces. Because Logic recognizes these devices directly, you can completely avoid using an intermediary protocol such as OMS. I used the small MT4 interface and it worked very well. "So Young" Effects "So Young" incorporates so many sounds that I decided, for this one song, to make full use of Logic's multitrack capabilities. Building on the original four-track and MIDI tracks, I added dozens of sounds, including AM radio stations and static, laughter, ring modulated wave loops, audience applause, dial tones and busy signals, and many more. Most of these sounds had been recorded beforehand on cassettes and tape loops, however the elaborate montage effect at the end of the song was created entirely within Logic. This ending montage was accomplished by layering and filtering sounds such as frying bacon and crackling fire to create a "sizzling" effect. This sound builds in intensity until it overwhelms the underlying groove, which becomes warped and distorted and eventually falls apart. This warping was done with a vocoder, dynamic filtering, and a "bit crusher" distortion effect. As the groove lurches and dies, you can also hear a facsimile of the Emergency Broadcast Service alert tone (which I created myself using an oscillator plug-in) fading away in the background. This single 20-second sequence required eighteen separate audio tracks, numerous effect plug-ins, and many automated fader moves, and therefore was mixed as a mini-song all its own. This mix was bounced down to a single stereo AIFF file, then added to the end of the main "So Young" song file. The intro to "So Young" is an edited cassette recording of random sweeps along the AM radio dial. I did the editing on a cassette dubbing deck, simply dubbing what I liked from the original source cassette onto another tape one bit at a time. A bit of trivia... Fans of my late-80s band project, Slang, may recognize the laughter loop in "So Young." It was originally used in the song, "If Tears Could Talk," on the Slang cassette, released in 1988 (now out of print). MANUFACTURING Graphics The image on the cover of WEB comes from a rubber stamp carved for me years ago by my wife, Maria-Consuelo Gonzalez, who is a gifted healer. I've had a spiritual affinity with spiders since I was quite young, and this image has become something of a talisman (and logo) for me. As a cover image, it not only carries personal significance and symbolic power, but also evokes the interconnected nature of the album. The photomontage on the back of the album (and featured in various areas of this site) combines two images: the handwriting is Walt Whitman's, from a recently discovered notebook; the musical notes come from a transcription of Track 10 on the album, "The Potter's Daughter." back to top For duplication and printing, I worked with NW Discs, a Seattle outfit run by Andrew Ratshin, a masterful songwriter and musician in his own right (Uncle Bonsai, Electric Bonsai Band, and Mel Cooleys). Andrew is very knowledgeable and helpful, and has great relationships with vendors all over the country. For me, this meant a fast turnaround, low unit pricing, and a comprehensive package deal that was hard to beat. Budget & Funding Because I did all the recording, mixing, mastering, and graphic design myself, my only real cost to produce WEB was manufacturing. The grand total for films, proofs, printing (8-panel booklet), duplication, and shipping was $1,900.00 – which was $1,900.00 more than I had. Fortunately, fans, friends, and family pitched in with donations and advance purchases, and my CD release concert was a huge success, so red ink was kept to a minimum.
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