Synthesizing Nightmares

In 1983, a young college student plundered his student loan money to buy an analog synthesizer. That young man was me, of course, and the synthesizer was the amazing  Sequencial Circuits Pro One. Sadly, it's long gone from my studio. But one creation I squeezed from it left a lasting impression on a generation of innocent youth.

Back the day my dad was in advertising and promotion and one of his firm's clients was Children's Television Workshop, of Sesame Street and Muppets fame. Papa threw me a bone, hired me to create a three second sound track for the CTW video sign-on above. I was paid $50.

Every sound came from the Sequential Circuits Pro One, recorded on a TASCAM 144 4-track cassette recorder, the original Portastudio. The synth had a 16-step programmable sequencer, which I employed at hyper speed for the cascading effect. I layered more sounds on top of that and ran it through an analog delay pedal. Bingo.

I scarcely gave it a thought for years, but recently, when searched YouTube for it on a lark, I found that many people had posted the sign-on, and it was getting views. I did some quick math and found our ancient video logo had received, easily, over half a million hits.

That was delightful to discover, but it was the comments that were really surprising. I was astounded to learn that a  more than a few children had been traumatized by the spot. They found my soundtrack and the visuals truly frightening. Just read this sampling of YouTube comments:

"This version of the CTW logo should've been one of the scariest logos in television history."— danucciguzman

"yay i'm not the only one who was freaked out by this!!!"— girlintheflesh78

"omg! i thought i was the only one who this scared, lol."— bluebeary07

"That always scared the hell out of me when I was little."— chrisz71

"Oh...My...Gosh... Scared me SO bad when I was little. I hid under my covers when it would come on!! :O"— LuckyPup551

It scared me too. I wouldn't watch my sesame street tape because of it"— Colleen Perisutti

But there were also these:

"Pretty sweet soundtrack."— OmniInc

"i love this it was my childhood i will never forget it"— daminmancejin

Garbage Hammond Organ

The Hammond J-522 came out in 1971.

Curbside, late one November night, this lonely organ called out to me. It was drizzling, so I knew it was at least a little wet, but seemed pretty much intact. Could it possibly work?

I gave it a nudge to see if I could maybe lug it up the street to my house. No way. This sucker was heavy. I trotted home and five minutes later I was back with one of my son's old skateboards. Barely averting a hernia, I tipped the instrument onto it and rolled the organ up the street to my garage. Wiping it down I hoped for the best.

A few days later I went back for a closer look. I plugged it in and bingo! It worked.

But wait, was that the classic rotating Leslie speaker sound I was hearing? And look, a little brass "H" nameplate on the front! I had found myself a Hammond organ.

Sure, it's a living room, church lady model (J-522, circa 1971), but this was a genuine Hammond. Cool. I dragged it to the cellar.

The top register was a little rough, some of the keys did not sound all the tones available from the rocker style drawbars switches, but it mostly worked. The built in rhythms, the bass pedals, volume pedal, the Leslie, the spring reverb and the entire lower register were all in good shape. O.K., the knobs drove crackling potentiometers, but they were functional.  It had what looked like a 12-15" speaker in there, and it was pretty loud. I flipped through the cheesy beats. Very analog and vintage sounding. These where getting looped into Ableton, for sure.

Vintage dust balls.

I decided to open it up.  Inside: 40 years of dust balls. Now, I'm not too experienced with this stuff, but what the hell, it was free, so I dug deeper, removing set of screws after set of screws, and finally, the keys off of the top register.

This was a well built instrument. Everything was holding together snugly after 40 years. And the details were interesting: Every white key was held in with two tiny black screws and every black key by two tiny silver screws. Each key was molded with a number and letter on the underside to identify its place in the musical scale and on the physical keyboard. I applied some contact spray here and there, did a little vacuuming, cleaned up the keys and other surfaces.

Open Sesame

I couldn't fix everything. The keys that didn't fire every tone must have had bad contacts somewhere I couldn't access, I figured. After trying to tunnel into one bad key I lost the tiny spring that worked its action. An hour later I found it perched on a transistor, only to have it boing away 3 more times. I finally got it back in place and called it a day.

All and all it did help. I got a few keys to work better on top, all the knobs now sound clean. The reverb was crisper with that layer of dust removed from the spring and chamber.

So now I'm having fun trying the combinations of tones you can get. Attempting bass lines with my feet. Quite exciting.  I look forward to recording this beast.

Cool fisheye shot.

But what's going on here? Why would someone throw something like this out? I suppose there's little market for it. This wasn't the first time I'd seen this kind of thing either. In addition to this beautiful Hammond, I've found a nice guitar, a banjo, a vintage Ampeg tube amplifier and tons of drums  in the trash. All usable.

I'd like to think they were left there by people knowing they would be rescued by someone like me. Someone who'd appreciate them.

The thought that this was tossed to be ultimately crushed under a heap of disposable diapers in a landfill makes me oh, so very sad.

Ye Olde 5.25 Inch Floppy Disks

Here they are, Ye Olde Voyetra Sequencer Plus mkIII 5.25" Floppy Disks

A few years ago I fondly remembered my first midi sequencer, Voyetra Sequencer Plus, which I ran on the PC XT way back in the mid 1980s. Well, I finally crawled up into the attic in my mother-in-law's house where I thought the disks were. And alas, I found them, along with DOS boot disks!

The next step will be to go back up there and retrieve the PCXT computer that is still sitting up there, find a DOS command crib sheet and hope the thing fires up.

On the hunt now for a vintage midi interface from that era. I hope to recreate a semblance of the midi studio I had at home back then. Should be interesting.

Watch for updates.

MKB300 Redux

Back in the 1980s, midi was young, and so was I. It was then that I fell in love with the Roland MKB-300 controller keyboard. You can read Chapter One elsewhere on this blog.

I'd used it for years, but other synths and controllers eventually took its place. I'd tried, and failed, to sell it on Craig's list and Ebay. Shipping and packing seemed daunting anyway, so eventually the MKB-300 was just sitting in a closet gathering dust.

Chapter Two for the MKB-300 began when someone else fell in love with it. A Gearchild reader named Anonymous.

Anonymous, it turned out, had an actual name, Peter Ehrlich, and it turned out he was looking for one. He rocked a mellow techno groove, was into vintage synths and it seemed he really took a shine to the controller keyboard. Emails ensued, I posted the video, above, to show him the keyboard in action, we settled on a price. He was game.

 From Mr. Ehrlich:

"The Roland MKB represents to me the pinnacle of midi controller design because it sits at such a transitional period in the history of midi.  It is an instrument in its own right and, as such, is geared towards players rather than producer/engineers, where I fall. I enjoy the idea that I may be able to assist this instrument in continuing its musical journey.  At least I intend to give it my best shot.

But I was still wary about shipping the hulking monster keyboard.  Its hugeness was one of the main reasons I'd resisted putting up on ebay. It would likely be expensive to ship and be a huge hassle as well.

But Peter's enthusiasm won out and his shipping tips convinced me it would be possible: Hit your local bike shop trash for huge sized cartons, use a lot of bubble wrap, tape and ship it via the post office. The post office? Yes. He said he once even got a stove shipped through the post office.

Low and behold, the U.S.P.S. web site seemed to suggest they'd take a package of this size and weight. Unfortunately my local post office EMPLOYEE would NOT take it. The clerk with the tape measure said it was too big. I sensed ineptitude and my instinct was right—the post office two miles down the road had no issues with it. I heaved the coffin-sized box over the counter, and off it went.

After a a week and 3000 miles on mail trucks, it arrived without a hitch. The MKB-300 was home again.

Garbage Banjo

Once again my instrument finding Karma has surfaced. I spotted this banjo at the curb on bulky-waste trash day in my New Jersey hamlet. I don't know what it is with this town, but they sure throw a lot of musical gear away. I've previously found a vintage Ampeg tube amp, a replica of a Gibson Dove acoustic guitar, and many, many drum set parts equaling more than a full set.

Banjo has always been cool to me, way beyond bluegrass, which I do enjoy. Check out Bela Fleck, who takes it to another level. Of course there's the Steve Martin thing that's brought the instrument into the spotlight now, his banjoism gone "serious" with his collaborative album that pulled in tons of high profile musicians.

I hear the instrument as koto-like Asian, as African, of course, and in it's chime-like twang there is also a celtic flavor. It's got a  raw worldliness that, with this particular banjo, extends the instrument's history to the midwestern U.S.A.

I wonder what adventures this instrument has known. Unknown U. of Wisconsin student who at one time cared enough to proudly and carefully letter their school's name this instrument's case: I don't know why you threw this out. I don't even know if you're alive. Perhaps you peered from the window as I plucked this treasure from the curb? Perhaps you knew someone would grab this?

In any case, thanks. To me, this is treasure.

What's So Great About Non-Destructive Editing?

Ok, I'm in a rut. I just can't get anything finished.

It started with MIDI in the 80s, and got worse with Cubase VST in the 90s, and now that I'm into Pro Tools and Albeton LIVE, now that my hard disk is huge, now that I have the processing power to fill a hundred tracks, and redo, reprocess, repitch, auto harmonize, quantize to audio or MIDI, stretch time, reverse, reprocess, mimic any instrument, any aural environment and now that I have a library of a million loops. . . now it's possible I'll never leave my insane musical playground with a finished recording. I'm all lost in the supermarket!

I love my computer DAWs, but sometimes they offer too many choices.

All this technology has made things easier, and endless with possibility, but too many choices also confound, confuse and make it easy to fiddle forever. As technology has gotten better, I've finished fewer songs, fewer compositions, and spent a lot more time noodling around to no end. And I don't think I'm alone.

In the simpler times of linear analog tape recording you didn't have infinite choices. If you were a regular guy, you had 4 tracks, maybe 8, that's it.

You had to record your masterpiece from the beginning to the end. Sure, you could re-take or punch in a correction, but once you started building on that, you weren't really going back. The movement was forward, onward and upward.

Or downward. Yes, it was easier to fail, but you were also more likely to finish, where as now, living in a world where you never have to commit, you may just never, ever do it.

So what's a thoroughly modern man to do? Well I've thought about this a lot, and I've talked about this with friends. There are many approaches that one can put to use.

Deadlines: For those of us for whom this is not bread and butter, deadlines don't really exist. So give yourself a fixed period of time to finish your personal projects. Or seek to work with or for others, maybe even for money. You don't finish, you don't get paid. In the absence of cash, a collaborator is a good motivator.

Limit your toolbox: Set up a template. Say, 8 tracks, and stop there. A vocal track, a guitar track a synth track, a drum track and 4 more something else tracks. If you can't get it cooking within those, maybe there's really no idea there. You can stop wasting time and start fresh.

Keep Your Studio Simple and Wired to Go: That way you don't waste time getting ready to waste time.

Write It First: Focus on recording performances from beginning to end rather than piecing things together. In other words, plan it and write it AWAY from the computer, on your piano or guitar or tuba. On paper. Then sit down and play it, embellish it. And maybe after letting it sit a while, go in and chop it a little.

Shut Down the Computer All Together: One songwriter friend, like me, is on a computer for 8 to 10 hours at the day job, and finds being on one all night makes life seem an endless grind. She got herself a hard disk based Roland multitrack and uses that to make music. Sure, you could do some editing on that, or export your audio and mess with it. You have non destructive effects, and multiple takes to swap in. But somehow it isn't the same as the massive ease of doing and undoing on a computer based DAW. You instrument becomes your (musical) instrument, you guitar, your piano – not the mouse and quad core processor. It's more like playing, less like work, she said, and proceeded to record her first album that way.

Go Back to Tape: Lots of folks record on old tape machines for the sound, they'd say, but the vibe and creative process is very different when you work linearly. It's more like music, less like dicing data. It's more about performances, and requires more though and planning, which in turn makes for a smarter and better composition. John Vanderslice is a great example of this process, a favorite of mine, a very creative analog recording artist who does it on tape.

Lyrics First: This way song structure is largely finished before you begin recording. Make your music to fit. You run out of lyrics, you are done.

Me? A Drummer?

Young me practicing my paradiddles.
Note the jazz grip and my trusty cassette deck, at left.

I wasn't the guy who pounded rhythms on his desk or cafeteria tray, geez, I barely tapped my foot. But rock and roll is a powerful magnet. The idea of playing in a band was loaded with all the potential cool a freshly minted teenager could imagine and some friends happened to be forming one. They needed a drummer, so I got me some lessons at the local music shop.

My teacher, a jazz guy, was delighted that I could read music. I'd taken 5 years of classical piano lessons, and the drum charts he put in front of me were a piece of cake. I had a good ear and it turned out I was coordinated too. I started on a practice pad and soon I was begging for drums of my own.

Before you knew it I had my nose in the want ads looking for used kits – I found one across town. To me they were amazing: $125 of chrome, twinkle and marble-look laminate. In reality they were a little 4 piece kit with crappy, dull sounding pie tin cymbals, some no-name cheapo brand. Excitedly, I took them home.

Within a few months my buds and I had recorded a noisy cassette (I still have it) of "Sympathy for the Devil," "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Woman." I wasn't that great, but I was keeping tempo and singing at the same time, to boot. I had taken to it. I was becoming a drummer.

I carried on practicing and jamming. I got better cymbals, added cowbells and blocks, experimented with tuning and muffling heads. I took my lessons but really learned by playing along with the greats on my trusty cassette deck. I broke sticks as I dueled with Moon and Bonham and absorbed Ringo and Charlies Watts' patient competence.

Those drums played exactly one paid gig: I was hired for the pit orchestra for an 8th grade catholic school production of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." But playing rock with my friends was much more satisfying.

I became known in my little circle as a pretty good drummer. I felt cool and got some needed teenage cred. But drumming did more than that. Drumming is humbling. One must support and be never waver. I learned I could be dependable.

Sure, there was room for powerful showboating. Being a drummer was decidedly macho — important for a guy growing up in the estrogen bath our home had become with the departure of my father (two sisters a mother and me, the male minority). The emotional turmoil and angst every teenager feels was given a primal voice though rock and roll.

More importantly, I learned how to improvise and go with the flow. Something my classical music training did not teach me. A useful skill in life.

Soon I felt limited by those drums and after a summer toiling as a messenger in Manhattan, I'd saved enough to purchase a a beautiful cherry red Premier kit.

I ran my own classified ad and the first looker took them away for a paltry $75. I was sick with a fever and too weak to bargain. But that was fine. In the exchange they only cost me $50. And what I gained from those drums can't be measured in dollars and cents.