B Studio Adventures!

Hello again - betcha' thought I'd forgotten this place. No, I seem to have exhausted my supply of old master tapes/mixes, at least ones I'd like to share, and being out of a band and pretty much out of playing altogether these days, there just hasn't been much reason to post...

Meet the B Studio (to the missus's chagrin, she wants the living room back). I have a Roland JX-305 keyboard which doesn't play at all well w/others at least in the midi sense of things. Last night I finally figured out a good way to access some of my pieces stored in it and here are two of them. The first one is a single loop in the JX-305 and I'm using its mute function to control what you're hearing along with a layer of analog grit courtesy of my noise band rig, the Pro One through a delay & a multi-effect. I even splooged a bit of live keys into the mix. Recording is 2ch->digital via a Behringer UCA202 interface, a marvelously inexpensive yet quite nice piece of hardware, into the netbook in the picture.Yes the fade-in is quite long but I think you will find your patience rewarded.

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A 3/4 piece

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The second piece is more straight forward yet to me interesting in its own way. It's 24 bars from the JX-305 that repeat twice dumped directly into the computer. What's nifty about it is that the melody seems to constantly descend while staying within a single octave while modulating through all twelve keys, a theme I've been playing with for a number of decades. It was originally inspired by a mis-heard muzak version of Stevie Wonder's "Too High" a very long time ago. Funny how that stuff stays with me... Enjoy!

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Shepard Function1

A Challenge Piece

Hi, world. Can you do anything w/this? It's yours, & on request, I can create more or change what's here. Will you?

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122905

Reverse Drums

This one was composed back in 1987 or 1988 and was one of my first 'successful' ambient pieces. It originally had a numbered title but for now that title is lost. The piece was played almost entirely on my Ensoniq Mirage w/the backwards drum sounds being samples I took from my Roland TR-707 and looped, detuned & reversed. The breathy vox sounds are also Mirage samples. The computer driving the sequencer was most likely my C= meaning the sequencer was Dr. T's KCS. The delay sounds too clean to be the mk. III Echoplex but I don't remember if I had a digital delay at the time. Tracking & mastering are problematic but were most likely to cassette.

My ambient pieces like this one were designed to be heard at low to very low volume in a room w/no bright or direct lightning. They were intended as unobtrusive 'audio wallpaper', something to form an overall space ambiance w/o demanding the listener focus on the material. Good frequency response descending to sub-octaves is essential, however, as I make use of the entire audible spectra. As always, I do have higher resolution files available...

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ReverseDrums-96KB

S'Not Tuna!

As Advertised! The name of this release-candidate was of course an in-joke against the duo of Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen aka "Hot Tuna", a duo that I've seen several times and whose work I did & continue to revere. The truth here is that I & SS never played w/a live drummer & frequently played w/o even a robot drummer.

The first tune is a punk tune I wrote to put on access teevee. This version is similar but not exactly the same as the version on the extant video which I will post when I'm able to. The main difference is that my vox on this version, while buried, are still audible unlike the vox on the video which are masked by tape echo. The raison d'etre for the lyrics was to write a political song that used the f* word as many times as I could (10?). What was funny was the video at ~3 minutes was good filler and appeared on the local access channel for quite some time in-between fundamentalist preachers' shows. Date 10/91?

SS is direct through his Digitech rack fx & everything else is midi.

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Track_1

A piece that we worked on for 8 hours straight one Sunday afternoon. SS brought me a partial progression, we extended it and I wrote midi parts for it. On the final take, the one documented here, I stuck a live microphone in front of SS and commanded that he 'sing now, dammit' and sing he did. The lyrics are simple as he made them up line by line while he was singing them, but I always liked his ideas on this and thought them far better than 'adequate'.

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Track_2

Found another version, probably a previous recording as it doesn't have vocals. Or it might be from when I archived my 4-track recordings as it wasn't mastered until some time later.


Track 2 (81st)

Last one on side one and was a rushed improv - I'd only played through this SS progression once or twice but we ran out of time and so had to record it when we did. While I made a number of (bass) mistakes in the song, I think I did a decent job of convincing unsuspecting listeners those mistakes were 'supposed to be like that'.

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Track_3

112992

Do you too seem to sense a gap in my memory from late '91 until sometime after '94? Various reasons would explain same but I'll leave them to the shrinks, ok? I'm here, I'm now, and what else matters, eh? Some life seems to have erupted during this (2008) October, hence the paucity of posts as of late...

Again, don't remember many of the details for this piece. Think that's the Poly800 for the first lead (& definitely a Lexicon LXP-5 for the fx). I think the bass was from the Ensoniq Mirage as I didn't have any other resources for that 'toothy' bass sound back then. Mastered to cassette most likely.

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112992

10-19-2008 aka something new

Yes, this was snagged off my loop recorder and the last part was recorded moments ago w/my Moog Voyager. It's in the WIP queue meaning it's something I've fooled with over the last 18 months but it never really had a 'formal' work session so outside of all the sounds being recent, can't really go much deeper into the performance details. It was recorded direct to digital loop machine.

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101908

051893 & 070293

This piece represents an interesting conundrum - the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. The core idea, the quiet little sequence at the center of this piece, is something especially lame. Yet after coming up with that rippin' drumpart and adding those dense slabs of Poly-800 washes/pads, wow, something worth sharing. So here t'is.

Somewhere in the mythology this became the "Ricky Ricardo Drum Piece" as for some deranged reason I could see Desi Arnaz whaling away on his conga up on stage waiting for the moment to yell "Babalooah!". I think this piece was specially created for an ambient demo tape ('Ambient Shit', the tape the last few pieces are from) and may have been the inspiration for the tape itself. I gave a copy to someone who was doing an electronic music show on the radio and heard later that some of the tape was actually aired. Since it is all Midi this was most likely simultaneously tracked and mastered to a three-head cassette deck.

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051893

This is a related piece from a similar time, again off my 'ambient shit' cassette - who needs vox, eh?

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070293

StringBass

Another two takes of a piece off that poorly-labeled worktape. The bass is this wonderful string bass sound from my Ensoniq Mirage that I'd been fooling with for a while. The guitar lick was originally SS's but we'd been working together for several years at this point so I'm not sure if it was 100% his or a joint-inspiration. Anyway, my apologies if he's recorded & copyrighted it elsewhere but I'm certain any version he did is different from these.

This sounds sloppy as both takes were live w/no sequencing whatsoever, both takes a bit different as well. Note that only take 3 has a break. No click track, either, as my studio at the time did not have the capability to do a click that wouldn't also appear on tape. We did this in 'free time', something I'll say more about when I get to the "S'not Tuna" tape, but for now let it suffice that I have a very strong sense for the rhythm of a piece of music and do not need a drummer to play in time. Most likely recorded fall of 1992.

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StringBass T3


StringBass T4

DumDumDum-96KB

Now kids, let this serve as a lesson to you-the only version I've found of this nifty piece is off an old worktape labeled "Dum Dum Dum Deh Dum De Dum Dum Dum". Yeah, no kidding. Please label your stuff and if possible, please document it at the time, too, you might want to know this crap 16 years later, ok? Especially if your SMPTE sync gets hosed making your master tapes unusable...

Bass is Ensoniq Mirage, much Poly-800 & Casio sounds as well, all sequenced. Sounds like the Alesis D4 drumbox as well. SS is playing his heart out on the guitar w/his Digitech rack effect. The 'vocals' are me reading something, most likely H.P. Lovecraft. This was likely recorded summer of 1992, probably direct to 2-track casette.

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DumDumDum-96KB

mystery 100991

Don't remember the details of this one, either, except that I liked it a lot. (probably 1991/2) While I respect the blues, I do not think this white anglo can play them correctly so I defer to the masters. That said, this one is intense. I definitely remember recording a version of this w/a keyboard lead, will post that one here if & when I find it.
Update - 27 Oct 2008. Found the original composition date at least....

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mystery