The following is from my friend Chris Sotelo, an audio engineer (among other things) who knows an awful lot about analog recording techniques. I’ve posted the song below so you can listen along as he picks out the tons of tape splices and other anomalies in the recording.
Have fun!
Moot
ROSE GARDEN
I think it is interesting what one can do with 30 inches per second tape (while the world thought 7 1/2 IPS was fast), razor blade, splicing tape and great session musicians.
Listen closely…..
Rose Garden (<---If the player doesn't work, use this link)
Grab your headphones, plan to stay there a while and let’s critically listen
to this recording. Keep your hand [or cursor ] close to the pause and rewind buttons at all times.
I was on a cassette tape trip today…Don’t know why exactly, but for some reason I’ve decided to dig through the archives again. To my surprise, I found some stuff I made when I was a Freshman in High School that doesn’t suck! As a matter of fact, I was pretty impressed. It’s very sloppy, sure, but it definitely shows a direction that I was taking in music at the time.
The following is the sound of a 14-year-old pre-Moot Booxle (I hadn’t been given the moniker yet) in the spring of 1998. The only instruments used are a Yamaha PSR-530 keyboard, and a Squier Stratocaster. I’m not sure if it was plugged in directly, or was going through a miked amp…I do remember that the effects were a Boss CE-2 analog Chorus and a Boss OD-2 Turbo Overdrive.
It kills me. Every time I go into a store that sells recorded music, the first place I go is to the Soul/R&B/Urban/whatever they’re calling it now section. Now, I know – I know I’m going to be disappointed. But something in me keeps dragging me back to look anyway. It’s kind of like when you go in a store, and you’re looking for one specific item that you’re pretty sure they’re not gonna have, but to delay the inevitable, rather than asking a clerk who would most likely go ahead and tell you they don’t have it, you go and search high and low through the shelves, clinging to false hope.
Sometime or ‘nother…through thick and thin…Sometime or ‘nother, the truth is gonna win…
STANGA
The words don’t seem to mean much on the surface…but beneath that surface lies a different story. The song: “Stanga”. The author: Sly Stone. Sly fans know this song as recorded by his little sister Vet’s group, Little Sister, on a 45 released under his fledgling company/label Stone Flower.
The musical backing was all provided by Sly himself, on Maestro Rhythm King drum machine, Fender Bass, Fender Telecaster, and (I believe) Farfisa combo organ through his signature wah-wah pedal. If you think it sounds like There’s A Riot Goin’ On you’d be right…it was recorded during that same heady, electrified, Funkafied period….
But what if he had saved it for his own group to record? What if he had sat on it for a couple of years and brought it out during the Fresh sessions?
The idea struck me all at once while driving down the road one day. I will make that happen. I will record my version of what it might have sounded like. This thing has been on the back burner for almost a year, getting little tweaks here and there to the arrangement, adding parts sporadically. FINALLY, at long last, I’m finished.
I think this is the funkiest recording I have ever made. All instruments and voices were played live by me – no MIDI or any other shortcuts. It’s real and it’s raw. And it might be the first time you’ve ever heard me play Sax or Trumpet.
Prepare to be FUNKATIZED.
Dig it:
(The track is downloadable too – just click the little down arrow on the right side of the player.)
INSTRUMENTATION:
Yamaha bass, MPC-2500 (Rhythm King samples), Acoustic drums (hi-hats were two 16″ Zildjian crashes!), Rhodes Suitcase 73, Nord Lead 2x through wah (Organ sound), DeArmond electric guitar through wah into Epiphone Valve Junior, King saxophone, Bundy trumpet, tambourine, vocals (recorded with Studio Projects C1 mic).
Hit me and let me know what you think! Hope you dig!
It’s here! The new album from Moot Booxlé, Talkin’ About Christmas!
Produced, Arranged, Performed, Mixed, Mastered, and whatever else by Moot Booxlé.
Many of you had asked for a whole album of funky talkbox Christmas music after seeing my Talkbox Christmas videos on YouTube. Well, the wait is over, my friends.
I got a late start working on this music, after having spent the past month or so working on a Christmas musical. That is my good excuse for delivering this to your ears so late into the season.
Anyway, put a glide in yo stride, a dip in yo hip, and come on and download this here thing!
TRACKLIST:
1. Little Drummer Boy
2. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
3. Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
4. Jingle Bells Etc.
5. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (remix)
6. This Christmas
7. Greensleeves (What Child Is This)
CHECK IT OUT:
This is a high-quality 320kbps MP3 download, and as always, it’s DRM-free, and it’s available for the LOW, LOW PRICE OF $1.99. A dollar and ninety nine cents. Trust me on this – I guarantee you will not be disappointed!
DOWNLOAD HERE:
I’ll spare you all the tech geek info on how I made this music…I’ll explain all that in a future post.
For now…Enjoy the music, and have a Merry Christmas!
I feel the need to share this, even though I’m still really fuzzy on the details. My apologies in advance if this comes out really weird. It was really weird.
I just awoke from a very disturbing dream. The whole thing felt familiar; It was like watching a movie, only with me in it. From what I can tell, the whole thing was shaped by the music that was in my ears. I’m a habitual listener of music to fall asleep by…
This time I put my iPod on shuffle rather than playing through one of my many “sleepy time” playlists. I’ll tell you what was playing in a second.
(This is a re-post from my Blogspot, which is going away. Originally posted 6/30/2009.)
Is it possible that my years of carrying a tape recorder in my pocket could be over?
Since 1999, I’ve used a tape recorder for everything: musical idea sketchpad, diary, confidant, “audio camera”. Some of the best and worst moments of my life have been captured on cassette tape.
Enter the iPhone 3G S. I finally stepped into the 21st century and bought the newfangled gadget, and now I’m finding myself using it for everything. Camera, memo pad, Twitter, Facebook, Email, iPod, game machine…and oh yeah, it’s a good phone too. I can talk inside my house now!
I got curious about its audio recording capabilities and a few searches led me to this app: http://www.sonomawireworks.com/iphone/fourtrack/
I was skeptical at first, but I went for it…and it’s amazing. Does everything it says on the label, and does it well. I can record a song idea very quick just using the standard earbuds/microphone that come with the phone. And when I’m done, I can transfer the raw tracks via WiFi to my studio computer and work on my idea further, or just make a mix for archival purposes. Very cool.
So I was driving home last night from a friend’s house and thought…ok, now that I have what amounts to a mobile studio in my pocket, what can I do with it that was never possible before?
Hey, I know! How about I record a whole song while driving down the interstate!
Without any thought, I put the phones in my ears, opened up the 4-track app, and laid down a vocal “bass line” to the built in metronome. By the time I rolled into my driveway, I had a vocals-only version of “If You Want Me To Stay” recorded, start to finish.
I put it in the computer today and couldn’t resist throwing real bass and some synthetic drums on there, but I left it alone otherwise. I wanted to preserve the spontaneity.
So here it is, for your listening pleasure, my mobile cover of Sly’s “If You Want Me To Stay”, more or less exactly as-is, except with a little EQ and the aforementioned bass/drum overdubs.
Just picture me driving down I-75 at 2AM while doing this.
(this a re-post from my Blogspot, which is going away. Originally posted 10/7/2009.)
As I unearth them, I’m going to start posting some of the more “interesting” writings I’ve done over the years. Here’s one I wrote somewhere around April 2000 (before I started putting dates on everything).
This was a series I did by drawing random lines in old textbooks, then making sentences out of the words inside the lines. Yeah, I didn’t pay much attention in High School. This is the kind of stuff I would do. Without further ado, here’s:
TOPICS OF A DEEP, PROFOUND NATURE (OR NOT)
Which future; They expect presently to restrict themselves, not become involved in that available to all. Instance: old man and so forth, despite the needs, is a child. A skinny feels guilty if he weighs…while both seem they are trying. Themselves, they do not see the problem. For example, many are unable or unwilling when they’re sober. But they are in a fog. They can also avoid the obvious, really. Since there is, it would be, which would point. Some pleasant experience is to accept the incoming. Reinterpreting that impulse coming from an injury makes them feel good. You imagine it ready to drill you. Developing these opposites reduces pain. In addition, he had his family. During these periods, he became irrational. Any process is normal, mainly caused by oxidation. Oxygen is a fresh development.
Hey, I didn’t say it was going to make sense. Or even have complete sentences. However, I feel that the last sentence really sums it up. Fresh.
When is music not music? At what point does a musical artist cross from the realm of musical performance into the realm of performance art/theatre?
I ask myself this after watching a news segment about concertgoers walking out on Britney Spears in Perth, Australia recently. Apparently, they were shocked and appalled that Britney wasn’t singing live; she was lip-synching the whole time. I’m shocked myself. Shocked at the fact that they didn’t see that coming!
It’s common knowledge (or so I thought) that lots of pop artists use pre-recorded tracks live, including, quite often, their vocals. This is usually to insure that the audience gets to hear actual singing while they do their crazy choreography, instead of them just huffing and puffing through the song.
Milli Vanilli where are you now? Those guys (minus the one that died) have to be pretty disgusted by this modern pop landscape. Their career went into the toilet when the fans found out that not only were they lip-synching, the voices being heard were not those of Rob and Fab, but studio singers. Imagine how different that scenario would have been if they had debuted in 2008 instead of 1988. In this day and age, a savvy producer can take any bum off the street and make a passable performance out of their off-key warbling. I don’t know how much actual singing talent those dudes had, but it’s for sure that if they’d had the technology that we do now, any lack thereof could have been masked and a huge scandal avoided.
So let me get this straight. Almost two decades ago, a major record label (Arista) dumped a huge-selling artist for lip-synching live, but today, it’s almost encouraged, expected. Talent seems to be secondary to performance ability and image. As long as the “artist” has the look and the moves, the rest (the actual MUSIC!) can be manufactured in the studio.
Aussie Britney fans, I feel your pain. But at the same time, I’m shaking my head in amazement that you are fans of this manufactured product, yet you actually expected to get an authentic experience out of her live show. Don’t you see that it’s not about the music? If you’re a fan of the music, good for you. But that’s not really the point. The music is merely a vehicle by which money travels from your pocket into someone else’s.
I’m pretty much done ranting now.
Keep it on the ONE y’all.
MooT
PS: Remember when the Black Eyed Peas were a Hip-Hop group? Those were the days…
] close to the pause and rewind buttons at all times.
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Jul 26 2010
