One Take Coming Back!

Today I felt like reviving an old standby!

I used my iPhone to record a One Take version of My Morning Jacket's "I'm Amazed"...

I also happened to capture the video of it in iMovie with the new iMac's built-in iSight camera, so I figured I'd sync the two up and make a video out of it!

FWIW, that's a Summit Maibock that makes an appearance early in the video, and notice how much more smoothly I play that opening lick afterwards... :P

Enjoy the video here!

Filming Day in Secondbedroomville!

With the recent addition of our ridiculously awesome iMac:

I decided it was time to get back to some higher-level computer-doings... One of which is video editing. So the other night I shot some video of myself recording a cover of John Prine's "Wedding Day in Funeralville."

I recorded video with both the built-in iSight camera and a regular DV camcorder for both the guitar track and the vocal track. I imported the video into the iMac and edited it in Final Cut Express. Just wanted to get the feel for it again. Synced up the audio with the video and chopped all 4 video tracks together to form a semblance of the whole, if you will.

The song was recorded in Garageband per usual, it was just also recorded by the iSight at the same time.

Check out the video here!

Wreck of the Ol' 97!

My latest recording is a new experiment I have been working on for a while. It's something I'm pretty damn proud of to tell the truth, both for the sentimental factor and the technical know-how and prowess it took to pull it off!

I took a reel-to-reel recording of my grandfather's bluegrass combo playing the ol' standard "Wreck of the Ol' 97", captured it, digitized it, brought it up to speed, and cleaned it up.

Then I chopped it, arranged and rearranged it (this was the painstaking part), and added a second acoustic guitar, vocals, and solo. Then I mixed it all together!

So the end result is my first chance to play and record with my late grandfather. Sadly, I never got the chance to jam with him on the banjo and myself on the guitar. The combination of my delayed entry into the guitar world and my grandfather's declining dexterity didn't allow us the chance to play together.

With this recording however, I get a bit of a hint at what it might have sounded like. :)

You can hear Wendell (my grandfather) introducing the song as "A little bit of the Wreck of the '97 in the key of G" - It features my grandfather's banjo, as well as (who I assume is) Chet and Danny Stubbs on flat-top guitar and fiddle. I added an additional flat-top guitar track, as well as vocals and an electric lead.

Enjoy on the player to your right!

Paranoid Android

My latest recording is a cover of the Avett Brothers tune, "Paranoia in B Flat Major."

It's a great song and one of my favorites from them. It also features the banjo, so that's always a plus.






















The recording was done in two sessions, one with recording a scratch acoustic guitar, main vocals, and backing vocals... This was back in October.

Then today I added the banjo, a better acoustic guitar track, and some minor overdubs...

I think the end result is pretty good! Just don't listen to Emma's backing vocals too closely, as she gets embarrassed easily...

If the Avetts stumble upon this, it was all a coincidence...

Enjoy on the player to your right!

Radio Killed the Victrola Star

My latest addition to the reel-to-reel recordings is a two-parter on the player to your right.

The first is an excerpt from a radio interview my grandfather gave on KFJB radio in Marshalltown, Ia. I'm not sure of the exact date of the interview (yet), but based on the DJ's talking about Loretta Lynn's new hit single "One's on the Way" early in the show (not in this excerpt) it must be sometime in 1971.

My grandfather, Wendell Willard, and his country music buddy, Warren Riesinger (Not sure of the spelling on that) came on the show and talked about country music, their jam group that met on Tuesday nights in Clemons, IA at Warren's house, and about some recordings Wendell made.

The interview, I can only assume from some of the noises made at the very beginning of the tape (not included in my excerpt), seems to have been recorded by setting up the ol' reel-to-reel next to the radio and letting it run. The recording includes the interviews with Wendell and Warren, as well as all the songs KFJB played during the program that day. Flatt & Scruggs, Loretta Lynn, and Bob Wills to name a few...

The part that I uploaded today is a part of the interview where my grandfather talks about playing the 5-string banjo. I love the line, "The only background I had was the fanatic desire to learn to play a banjo and the great admiration for anyone who was able to play the banjo." Sounds like the way I would phrase an answer...

The second part/song is the tape my grandfather brought in. I separated it so I could do a bit different EQ on the song part than the interview part. I haven't found the actual tape (yet), so the quality isn't very good. Recording a song played on a reel-to-reel on a radio show by placing a reel-to-reel next to a radio doesn't lend itself to very high quality. I think the actual tape will turn up on one of the numerous tapes I haven't listened to yet.

Enjoy!

Dinosaur Victrola Listening to Buck Owens

The next installment of my reel-to-reel conversions is another tune where my grandfather isn't singing, but is pickin' it up on the banjo.

It's a cover of "Heartbreak Mountain", which may be a traditional bluegrass tune done by many others, but I remember it done by Buck Owens. The version I listened to back in the day (and now for that matter) is from his album "Ruby" which has a lot of bluegrass tunes on it.

The cover is fairly faithful to the Buck Owens version, only it's in the key of A instead of Buck's original key of C. The singer forgets a couple lyrics on the third verse and laughs, but I think it adds to the jam sound of the tune.

I tried a little more intensive EQing on this one, and fiddled a little more with various digital doo-hickeries in the Garageband. I think the sound turned out really full sounding!

Check it out on the player to your right!

Two New Tunes!

I recently found a couple gems on the old reel-to-reel tapes.

The first one is a version of "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms," which is one of my favorite bluegrass tunes. My grandfather isn't on vocals this time, but the song features the banjo quite a bit. You can hear the lead vocalist yell out "5 String!" when he wants my grandpa to step up to the mic and play a solo on the banjo.

My Dad has told me that the main other two guys in the group were Chet Stubbs and Danny Stubbs, a father/son combo on flattop guitar and fiddle. He also said Everett Whitmore was in the group as well. I'm not sure what he played. Perhaps bass.

The second song is an instrumental version of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," better known as the theme to the TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies." It features the banjo pretty heavily and the mandolin as well.

I believe it's my grandfather introducing the song as "A little bit of 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett' in the key of G." It sounds like his voice anyhow. I'm guessing he liked this one because of it's feature of the banjo and for the fact that it was a Flatt & Scruggs song.

You can enjoy the songs on the player to your right! The other recording is still there as well.

Enjoy!

First Reel-to-Reel Digitization!

I have begun the process of converting some analog reel-to-reel recordings my grandfather made with his bluegrass combo.

My grandfather Wendell, who passed away a few years ago, had given me a Sony TC-530 reel-to-reel machine quite a few years back, but I had no idea what to do with it. It didn't work up to snuff for recording purposes, but there was a stack of his tapes that came along with it.

I have no ideas when the recordings were made (I imagine late 70's) but they were made at my grandfather's house in Marshalltown, Iowa. I'm just in the stages of researching, but I believe it was a three piece combo consisting of my grandfather on banjo and occasional vocals, and two other gentlemen on guitar and fiddle.

Sorry, my grandfather can't hear you over the sound of how awesome he is....


I posted the first recording I digitized on the player to your right, "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee." I chose this particular recording because it features my grandfather on vocals, which is rare as he usually just played banjo without singing.

I have no idea whether this is a "good" version of the song according to them. There aren't really any notes on the tapes about which take is which or whether it's a good one. I haven't even listened to all the tapes, so there could be a much better version of the song on a different tape.

I just wanted to start somewhere, so I started there.

So listen and enjoy!


p.s. Nerdy info = I sent the audio out from the reel-to-reel into my Tascam FW-1804 through the line input, then used the Tascam to convert it to digital as it has a Firewire output. I captured the audio in Garageband on my G4 MDD PowerMac. I then had to send the .aiff of the recording to Audacity to speed up the recording. Based on the fact that the song is traditionally done in the key of G, I sped the audio up 17%, bringing the guitar and banjo into G. Then I reimported in Garageband, doubled up the track, panned them for mock-stereo, and did some equalization to eliminate some hiss. Then I sent it to iTunes as an .aiff, and converted it there to .mp3 for the web. Whew!