As a teenager I poured over the PAiA catalog and fantasized about soldering together a music studio from their modular kits. They had polyphonic synths, all kinds of effects, computer controlled sequencers, space-age stuff — and this was 1977 or so, way before the Mac and P.C.
The first kit I got was the Gnome Synth. When I opened the box I found a dozen or so plastic baggies full of teensy little resistors and what not, green and gold circuit boards, lots of wire and LEDs. Somehow I soldered the Gnome together. As you can see in the photo, it had a few knobs but no keyboard. It had this ribbon controller across the front, with a metal probe you ran across it to make the sounds. It was supposed to bleep, and wine and boing and growl, but mine probably had a dozen fried components (I was new to the soldering iron) and didn't work. I sent it back and they fixed it for free. Later I got the OZ Mini-Organ.
PAiA was started by a guy named John Simonton in 1969. Later, in 1975 he launched Polyphonymagazine, which was later renamed Electronic Musician. I learned my synthesis basics from reading his sales sheets, instruction booklets and magazine articles.
When I decided to hunt down some old PAiA kits on the internet a few years ago, I discovered, much to my surprise, that the company still existed! When my email was cheerfully answered by John himself, I froze in disbelief. To me, John was was a rock star.
It was 1980, and I'd never recorded a song before, but when I read about this machine, I knew that I could. I bought it with student loan money, and wrote my first songs on it — about 100 of them. It's hard for the home-recordists of the Garageband age to appreciate what this machine represented in terms of making recording technology available to the masses. A generation of musicians, producers and engineers cut their teeth on this and subsequent portastudio models. This was the piece of gear that spawned the home recording revolution that continues today.
The 144 had an integrated mixer with EQ, aux sends and a cue mixer, could punch-in silently, had Dobly B noise reduction and ran at 3.75 ips for better fidelity. And oh, what about that vari-speed motor for getting that weird piano in tune or creating those chipmunk and super low effects? Importantly, it sounded pretty good. My index finger went numb from constant punch-ins and I wore out many belts and capstans. It finally broke down and was replaced by another portastudio, and another. None of them were as good as the original.
Springstein famously recorded "Nebraska" on one. My own productions were not nearly as spare — bounced tracks often numbered in the dozens. Follow up post here.
John Vanderslice @ The Bowery Ballroom was so great last night. Who is he? I found him wikipediaing the 40-track recorders I started fooling around with years ago – like the one behind me in the picture in the right column of this blog, the Tascam 144, the original portastudio.
I found links to John's "Life and Death of an American 4-Tracker" album, on which he sings an ode to the Tascam 424 analog cassette recorder, a few models down from that first one, but still the same animal, and analog 4 track self-contained cassette recorder. More on that later. I got curious about Vanderslice and after some digging I found that he actually gives(!) away mp3s of a lot of his music on his website. They were so good I ended up buying his other albums.
Inventive song structures, themes from the very dark (9/11, child kidnapping/murder) to the sweet (singing to a child about a lost pet), really creative recording studio work, and beautiful and cryptic, yet literate, compelling lyrics hooked me into this songwriter. He doesn't really sound like anyone else.
On top of that he takes beautiful photographs, which you can find on his site too.
Back to last night - I almost thought I'd miss the show when system failures kept me at work way past my exit time, and then, subway slowness found me trotting through lower Manhattan, not sure which way was toward Delancy. When I finally walked up the Bowery Ballroom stairs which plant you right at the sides of the stage I found myself eye to toe with John and the band just going on.
The sound was really good and the crowd of the mellow sensitive variety you'd expect- well behaved. But the bands play moved way beyond the fuzzy west coast granola sensibility that I was feeling in the crowd. (I say that with love, I really do like granola). The sounds ranged from the simple melodic to angular rock-outs that found John banging on his guitar for noisy effects and pulling off atonal harmonics, and the like — but all very, very musical.
I liked the records, that is, cds (my age is showing) but I was really impressed with the live show. At one point it was down to John alone with an acoustic, but that turned out to be one of the more raging performances ("Numbered Lithograph" from the new cd) rather than a sensitive singer-songwriter moment. Then it was drummer and John a la White Stripes. A combination I really like as the new accepted (?) bare minimum rock band configuration. The old minimum: guitar, bass and drums, of course.
Importantly, John has a generous vibe about him. You get the sense he likes you. He picks fans to come up and sing or play on stage with him (if you email him first and somehow get it set up). The last song was done without amps or mics in the middle of the floor, among the people, like happy non-cynical hippie sing-along. Seemed very sincere. There's a video (below) of Vanderslice during that in-crowd sing-along from another blog.
For me, making music includes a love of buttons, wires and the smell of a hot transistor. I've gone through a lot of recording gear. This is where I put it to rest.
— SMOKOTALKY
As a teenager I poured over the PAiA catalog and fantasized about soldering together a music studio from their modular kits. They had polyphonic synths, all kinds of effects, computer controlled sequencers, space-age stuff — and this was 1977 or so, way before the Mac and P.C.
