The Terribly Exciting World of DIY Recording

 

I often feel the need to pontificate on the "joys" of Do It Yourself (DIY) recording. I don't know why, other than some perverse need to bore people-though, I must say, there are those who, remarkably, find this all somewhat helpful. That, and it justifies the many hours I put into making music in the first place.

The beauty of DIY is total control. No pesky producer or engineer poo-pooing your cogent insights or desires to make what you're certain will be a timeless addition to the world's greatest music.

And in this period of quazi-quarrantine, the opportunities to hole away in one's hovel (see above photo) are plentiful. Being mindful of this, I have been dutifully working through my late-life magnum opus-what used to be the double album when records were the dominant means of entertaining the music listening masses. 16 songs and 2 chants, one to open the record and one to close it.

Why would I choose to do this? Don't ask.

I also felt the need to challenge myself as far as how much I could get away with, whether I had the talent to pull it off or not. That invariably brings up what to play on what instrument in what time and what key on what song. The benefit and curse of having more than one guitar, or instrument, is working through this one and that one, hoping the answer would present itself.

Fortunately, it often did.

Having a home studio also allows those of us who work slowly to do so without going deeply in debt. And with the advent of digital recording, you can record and re-record to your heart's content, or until you run out of space on your hard-drive (and no pesky generational degradations that you use to get with tape, not to mention the warehouse you'd need to store all those reels of tape). This is good and bad. Good that you can work through idea after idea, and bad, when after idea after idea, you're still not happy or even close to finishing. I call this the Peter Gabriel dilemma, as he was known to tinker and tinker and redo to the point of his producer's distraction.

Sometimes this leads to making tough decisions and completing projects or lots of started but never finished ideas. Personally, I have an abhorrence to not getting all my brilliant ideas out there where they can be ignored en masse. 

Which allows me to solder on.

©2021 David William Pearce

Long Dead, Like New

 

Believe it or not, there's an AI program that creates new songs by dead artists because isn't that what we really want: bad, fake Kurt Cobain songs.

Now I could waste the next few minutes of your time pontificating on the value of such an enterprise-as the articles note, this was done as an example of "what if" they, Cobain, Hendrix, Winehouse, hadn't died early-but I think what's more interesting, at least to me, is how this could help aging types, like me, milk out more songs, that quite frankly might be better than anything I could come up with myself.

In fact, think of the potential across the musical board!

Why waste time trying to recreate a particularly period in your musical history when you can get your computer to do it for you? Sweet, huh? Some of it might even be sorta, kinda good. A bonus. Because, let's be honest, writing and crafting a new song is a lot of work, and sometimes it goes nowhere, or even worse, you get it half done and can't figure out a workable bridge, or that last verse, etc. It can be too much!

Bring on technology!

Now some of this requires enough source material for the AI program to actually produce more songs in the idiom you're looking for, without reproducing the same song many times over because it's got only 2  or 3 source songs to work with. Probably not worth the cost of the program, assuming it doesn't cost a fortune to begin with, which assumes you have a fortune to dispense.

If you think this is hooey, well, good for you. All crafts need those hard-nosed types, face to the grindstone, spending untold amounts of time eking out a song now and then, and for what? But for all the rest of us, pressured by the flacks of modern social media, who demand that "content" be pumped out week after week, month after month, year after... well, you get the drift. It's all too much. It's quantification over quality, assuming that matters at all anymore.

So I say, if computerization got us into this mess, it can help us deal with it.

©2021 David William Pearce

Is Rock Like Jazz Like Classical

 

Recently, the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth was celebrated around the world by those who have an affinity for the man's work and his place in the classical canon. (More amazing, to me, is that in 6 years it will be 200 years since the death of Beethoven and we still celebrate his work.)

It also brought out those who are angered by the predominance of dead white males in Classical music-which is somewhat odd as Classical music is mostly European in origin (Meaning what else would it be?). This isn't about that, though I will say that rather than bad-mouthing Ludwig Van, it might be better to actually schedule and play compositions by those commonly left out of the repertoires of leading orchestras.

But what I really find fascinating by this regular occuring hubbub, is that it's beginning to play out in Rock, just as it has in Jazz, which had its heyday in the first 70 years of the 20th century. There are the titans of Rock and everyone who followed. With the deaths of Eddie Van Halen, Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), and others, the pantheon of the Rock-n-Roll era continues to pass into history. The question then becomes will anyone take their place or like Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc., will they forever be the standard and the iconography of Rock music?

This isn't an idle question. Name a single recent rock band. If you can, can you say they're distinctive enough to stand out against what we've set up as the Rock standard? And if you think this is bunk, think of Jazz and how anyone coming up is inevitably compared to the titans of Jazz, be it Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Coltrane, or Miles. Every genre has its glory period, and the greats of that period, whether you like it or not, dominate.

For those of us so blessed to have grownup with and seen, live and in person, these bands and performers, it is, in some sense, our gift, just as it was for all those who first heard something new and vibrant in classical music and Jazz. And it's hard to deny their place when their music, now some 40-60 years old, is still being played and the artists continue being venerated by young people, not just us geezers. That doesn't mean they always will; all greats go through periods of diminishment and reassessment, as Ludwig Van did, but he never went away and the quality of his works remains.

 This doesn't mean people won't continue to play and write within the rock idiom and all of its subgenres, I imagine they will, but I also think that for the foreseeable future, and perhaps beyond, the greats will continue to be the standard.

©2021 David William Pearce

An Obligatory Look Back

 

Ah, 2020, that you should go quietly into that good night. (I started this before all hell broke loose... so... but that's for another time and blog.)

Having not written anything in the couple of months for this blog, I wondered if an end of the year navel gaze was a good idea. Aaaa... sure why not.

In normal times, I would brag about everything that was accomplished-and there was some of that-as well as all the good times that were had throughout, though after March, there was not too much of that. 

Mostly.

I had big plans, but most of us did that did not come to pass. Concerts, open-mics, even general get togethers were canceled or replaced by Zoom meetings, which are not terribly conducive to good sound, not to mention the human qualities of being "in the room" when there is a performance. Again it's what we have at our present disposal.

On the plus side, I released the last of my "legacy" albums, Fingers in the Air ('85), No Love Here ('86), and Nothing Left to Say ('91), which means that all that fit to release has been. I've also finished half of the upcoming album, This Wonderful Life, which I hope to complete and release sometime this year.

In addition, I helped with the recording of songs for Joy Taeko, and Benny Lee. They came out quite nicely such that neither Joy or Ben have disparaged me terribly.

I would like to believe that 2021 will be something to behold, though I'm not holding my breath. And I'll hold off wondering if all this is an utter waste of time. This is a honored tradition for those of us yet to hit the big time. Those who have, spend their time trying to stay hip and relevant, as well as selling some or all of their catalog now that their revenue streams have gone off the road into a ditch.

I, fortunately, do not have that problem.

My problem is how much time and effort to put into this, which might sound somewhat defeatist (and I'll cope to that), but that is going to come (and hopefully go) as one does these creative types of things. Maybe it's just the product of a difficult year. Only time will tell. 

I'll ponder that as I try to make good in my other life as a writer of scintillating mysteries. 

Because if there's one thing we all know, it's how easy it is to make it big in the entertainment business.

Happy New Year.

©2021 David William Pearce

The Distant Past Comes Calling

 

Awhile ago, I foolishly admitted to still having old cassette tapes from the late 70s of me singing demos of songs I'd written. Like most people of a certain vintage, I have vague recollections of that time, some good, some not so good. This carries over to my memory of the songs themselves and whether they're worth the time and effort to review.

And paradoxically, it did take time and effort for all my cassette players, except for the one in my wife's car, no longer functioned. Apparently, not using them for years at a time comes at a cost. Something I'm especially eager to find out.

However...

As I mentioned, the cassette player in the car still works, no doubt because it's not nearly as old as my beloved Nakamichi LX-5. 

I don't even want to think about trying to get that fixed.

That aside, I bravely mustered the courage to listen to the tape, which was recorded in the Spring of 1979. It's a collection of songs written that Spring as demos for a possible album (3 of the songs ended up on my first album, PearceArrow). Surprisingly, I did not find myself aghast at my terrible-ness. That's not to say I found the experience super wonderful.

My tendency in those days to play a riff over and over was on full display, nearly every song is way too long (It's a demo, man; keep it short and sweet!). More than once I yelled at the machine to "Get on with it!" It also shows its age, lyrically and musically, assuming you have any memory of the 70s and the songs from that era.

On the plus side, it turns out the songs aren't terrible, and, other than me, were well received by those fearless enough to take a listen. We are talking about songs sung into a mono cassette deck, not something known for its aural fidelity. And I didn't think the songs were bad, per se, only that they were those confessional singer/songwriter type songs that now give me the heebie-jeebies. 

I know, I know; it's my problem and I'll deal with it.

The one question that does arise, beyond what I'll do with all these leftover cassettes if I don't repair the LX-5, is what to do with the songs. Let sleeping dogs lie, or produce a more stereophonic version (Minus the neverending riffing).

First I'll have to sit in the car and try to remember what chords I was playing.

©2020 David William Pearce

Remembering Eddie Van Halen

 

I can remember vividly the first time I heard Van Halen. I was at my girlfriend's house, when her younger sister told me I had to hear this new band. Van Halen.

Never heard  of them.

Another guitar band in the days when there were lots of guitar bands.

But the ugly truth, in those days, was that the big guitar heroes were all from the 60s: Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Beck. The other great guitarists you had to look for, because they weren't in heavy rotation on the radio. You heard about them from other guitar affectionados.

Then came Eddie.

It was quite literally like nothing else. To me it shimmered in intensity, in color, and in spirit. It shot you into the sky. 

It was easy to see that what he was doing was new, vibrant, and vital. Everybody knew it. It was lightening filling the sky, and it was irrepressibly joyful. Anyone who ever went to see Van Halen in concert got that right away: he loved to play.

To me, though, the part of his game that doesn't always get enough play is how his playing, especially in the band's recordings, always enhanced the songs. The songs weren't there for the benefit of the guitar; the opposite was true: the guitar was there for the song. The solos and the fireworks always enhanced the song, the recording, the performance. 

I think that's key.

My favorite Van Halen album was, by most accounts, their least successful, Fair Warning, as there were no covers and it's not really a party album. But it best distills the songs of Eddie Van Halen, as he was their principle writer, and how he integrated his guitar playing seamlessly into the songs.

And those songs and recordings will live on.

©2020 David William Pearce

Playing With Others

 

For the longest time, it was just me. After leaving Denver in '85, I didn't collaborate or play with others; I did my own thing. I knew other musicians and went to their shows, but collaborations and the like wasn't something I was either ready for or had time for.

I was a hermit, planting myself in front of my Tascam 244 and playing away. 

These days, these ever delightful Covid days, and the fact that there's nowhere to play, and may not be anywhere to play for some time, I returned, sort of, to planting myself in front of my Tascam DP32sd (the 244 ran out of gas years ago, though I still have it).

But I also, when we were allowed to form our small hermetically sealed groups of less than 5 or 6, decided to work with others or they decided to work with me. I forget. Some of this was due to my acquiring a Focusrite interface for my computer for Zoom meetings because the audio on Zoom stinks. A side benefit was it works really well with Garageband, which I hadn't used because I already had a study set up elsewhere and Garageband has its limitations.

But I found it's quite good for songs that don't require a lot of instruments or orchestration or any of that. And I had friends in our hermetically sealed group who wanted to make a few recordings. 

So we did.

And I had a lot of fun doing it since both Joy and Ben-the two people I was working with-write in different styles and it meant I'd have to adjust; and isn't that what life is about?

Feel free not to answer that.

So far it's turned out really well with 6 of Ben's songs finished, and 2 of Joy's in the works. We've finished 1. All in all, a good time and something to show for it.

You can hear one of Benny's songs at Benny Lee Country.

©2020 David William Pearce