The Light of Day

So you want to make an album? (part 1)
KeithHandy posted in Instruments, Old skool, Producing, So You Want..., Your Soul on March 15th, 2007

In this multi-installment posting, at least partly inspired by a new/old net friend who is embarking on an exciting and treacherous creative journey, I aim to recollect my personal experiences with the combined thrill and agony of recording original music, and hopefully pass on a few useful words of wisdom along the way.

Today, we set the stage by going way farther into my past than necessary.

Installment 1: The Soil and the Seeds (1982-1984)

My earliest recollection of talking to Jeff Lewis differs from his. In mine, we were in seventh grade, sharing a bus seat on a mini field trip, cracking each other up with obscure bits we’d memorized from Steve Martin records. In his first memory, I tapped him on the shoulder in an eighth grade classroom and asked “do you play drums?”

At the time, I wasn’t aware of any internal rift or dichotomy, but the seeds for it had already been planted: I was more interested in studio records than I was in live concerts. I loved to listen carefully with headphones and pick apart all the elements that had been put together to make up that sound. I loved to listen to the left or right speaker by itself, to hear what had been masked by instruments on the other side. I discovered by accident that if I cut a certain wire on the headphone cord, I could cancel the center out (karaoke style) and reveal even more “hidden” sounds. Needless to say, I destroyed a lot of headphones.

Of course, if you coexist with the human race, you have to speak their language. “Are you in a band?” Of course we were in a band. “Cool!” Hooray, I’d moved up a few notches on the popularity grid! Never mind that we hadn’t even gotten together in the same room, let alone played any music together — but that would be rectified soon enough.

I could have started off as a guitarist. I certainly liked guitars enough. But the idea of buying replacements for the three broken strings on my father’s acoustic dust collector never occurred to me, or maybe I just assumed strings weren’t affordable (not that I didn’t muck around with the three survivors). Besides, most of my musical learning was happening on my grandmother’s Wurlitzer organ and the pianos at school. Keyboardists were less common than guitarists, as keyboards were not considered an essential rock instrument (in spite of featuring on pretty much every rock song I’d ever heard); and besides, the keyboard magazines were always more intellectually stimulating and less degrading to women than the guitar magazines. So, for the foreseeable future, I was a keyboardist.

After many months of nothing but talking with friends and writing up elaborate plans for a mind-bending double album, I set out to do the actual dirty work. If you want to be technical, I had already experienced a sort of “multitracking” on my own using two portable cassette recorders, by playing three-stringed guitar, tambourine, and recorder along with one tape of myself and recording to the other one. I even created altered-speed effects by wedging small objects between the capstan and pinch roller while playing or recording.

Now, however, it was time to upgrade to the big time … I somehow acquired two stereo cassette decks (with Dolby C, for sound so clean it would of course rival the professional studios), a stereo equalizer, two microphones from Radio Shack, and two strange reverb units that doubled as mixers, since they each had a line in and an adjustable mic in. (I eventually got a third reverb, because I couldn’t use the other two as reverbs if I was using them as mixers!) I was all set for cutting-edge ping-pong cassette wizardry.

Geared to proceed forward with my great vision of using this “band” as my vehicle for creative expression, I invited Jeff over to record his drumming in my family’s basement. I didn’t have any way for him to hear what the songs would sound like, other than by trying to describe them to him verbally, and dictating to him what kind of beats and fills to play. (To remember the rhythm of one fill in particular, I told him to think the words “order a pizza”, and it’s been a recurring joke ever since.) I can’t imagine how uninspiring the overall experience must have been for him.

I did manage to record several Wurlitzer organ overdubs atop Jeff’s drumming, blissfully oblivious to the rapid deterioration of his sound with each successive “ping” and “pong” between the two cassette decks. Hearing myself layered like that for the first time ever was — for me, anyway — like splitting the atom and discovering sex at the same time. Alas, this particular magnum opus was not to be. It was certainly not igniting the enthusiasm of my “bandmates”, and other musical directions would soon consume my focus.

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.