Open Sesame!

The opening theme of Sesame Street!

Such a fun song to cover, with a 1960's beat reminiscent of a number of Beatles songs like "Good Day Sunshine", "Penny Lane', "Got to Get You Into My Life" among others.

I had to find the right key for a slightly McCartney-ish vocal, and settled on F-major. The drums, piano, brass and bells were sequenced, and recorded on one track. There are two tracks of mixed vocals and guitars; and the last track dedicated to the bass.

Jimmy Webb, Wichita Lineman

Jimmy Webb is an amazing songwriter.
This is my favorite Jimmy Webb song, a hit for country star Glenn Campbell. A search on Google reveals James Taylor also has a version.
Wichita Lineman

The Fool on the Hill, not with a Kazoo

Another day, another Lennon-McCartney cover.

The Magical Mystery Tour is one of my favorite albums, though it's not as cohesive or balanced as Revolver, Sgt Peppers and Abbey Road. The album's two hits - Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, were originally recorded during the Sgt Pepper's sessions.

The Fool on the Hill remains one of the most poetic and melodic songs in the Beatles catalog, continuing McCartney's discourse on apathy that he started on "Eleanor Rigby" (and continued on with one of his solo songs,  "Another Day")

Fool on The Hill, 4 track tape cover

The main challenge here was what to do with the adlib portion - the only acoustic wind instrument I have (not counting musical farts) is a Kazoo :

Better suited for Wile E Coyote

But it sounded too Looney-tunish!
In the end, I opted to use the wonderful woodwind samples from the Emu Proteus.
Track 1 - I sequenced the piano part on the Korg Kross, and sang while playing the egg shaker
Track 2 - synthesized woodwinds played live on the Emu keyboard
Track 3 - Hofner bass
Track 4 - Epi Casino and back-up vocals played through a TC Helicon Harmony G

Hello Goodbye

In honor of Sirs John and Paul, here's Hello Goodbye, recorded on 4 track cassette
There's some degradation towards the end, both in tape quality and performance(!). Still, isn't this a great drinking song?

The bass and guitars used are the Beatles staples, the Hofner violin bass and the Epiphone Casino

Meant to be together

This is the 2nd track where I didn't use any sequencing or drum machines (the first was this), all tracks played straight into the recorder. The rhythm machine is still the egg shaker.

Anticipation , Hofner Bass, and the Egg

I re-discovered an old Mandy Moore cassette and played it - the covers album with some very tasteful Todd Lundgren and Elton John songs. I was particularly drawn to her version of Carly Simon's Anticipation, and decided that's going to be my test song for some new gear I'm trying out. The first, of course, are the cassette tapes I got from the bowels of Sulit.com.

The second is a ninety-peso egg shaker, which is the percussion of choice for this number :

scrambled please!

Fab!

The third is a Hofner violin-bass! This is the cheap version of the original German made bass of choice by a certain left handed bassist. I really haven't explored it a bit, but it's very light, sounds good, and makes me want to play bass!

So here it is : Anticipation 4 track cover
Very very quick recording, no edits! How can you edit with tape???
Track 1 - vocals / piano
Track 2 - vocals/ egg shaker
Track 3 - vocals / bass
Track 4 - vocals/ guitar

The guitar I used is the Epiphone Casino (of course!)

Woo-hoo Cassette Tapes!

1,242meters of High Bias tapes

After quite a search, I found cassette tapes without having to go through EkkkkBay.

I went the rounds of record stores and electronic shops -- most of the "kids" manning the stores haven't even heard of cassette tapes. Which is a good thing. I take this to mean that this format is now truly vintage. 

So everyday, I'd drop by a local buy and sell website and type "cassette tape" on the search window. Dud. But of course, it's also plentiful on EeekBay; but I'm trying to limit my dealings with  Customs people (who called the Jack Bauer action figure I purchased "Ken", but that's another story).

Anyway, this local website produced a jackpot - some guy was selling one lot of cassette tapes, around 40 in all, for 500 pesos. I asked him if there were "high bias" tapes among the lot, and he said yes. No-brainer, I bought it.

Yup, it's forty plus tapes from some aspiring singer. His "demos" of James Ingram songs are on the high bias tapes - around 9 of the 40 -- I'll take that. My only disappointment is that he preferred to use the 90-minute tapes, which are more cost effective (then), but have thinner tapes. Oh well, this will have to do.

So today, I tested and taped over his version of "Every Breath You Take" (ooo kent yoooseee... yoobelong toooo meeeee...) . The tapes seem to be in good condition. I have 435 minutes of 4 track glory. Let's get down to work.

Really rough vocals

I finally got around to putting rough vocals on "Anything..". But, with my track record, I won't be able to edit this and keep it as it is. The tape is showing its age, and there's a lot of junk there (the vocals being the biggest culprit)
Anything

Pretend Orchestra and Sore Throat

So I worked on this for a good part of the morning.
Just the Instruments
And I found out I sound like Oscar the Grouch (even more so than on other days).

The "cheat" here is that everything was played live into the Korg Kross' sequencer. What's unusual here is I recorded the drums last, finger drumming on the keyboard. I did not want it to sound like a "pop/rock drummer"; but as pseudo-orchestral, contributing more to tone color than rhythm. The rhythm is propelled more by the bass track.

Kristopher's Kross!

The Kross' cello sounds like a nasal clarinet (ugh!). But the neat thing is there's a switch that changes the sound to pizzicato, and I'm able to use that to record the cello track straight through.

There are two guitar sounds buried in the mix - the Casino and the Telecaster Thinline.

The Orchestra - real and faking it

I watched the Manila Symphony Orchestra last night perform Mozart's Symphony #39 and Beethoven's Symphony #3 (Eroica). Man oh man. Pure music. Time to quit pretending to play.

No effects required

.... Ok, that won't work. There was a time when all I listened to was classical music, and I used to smuggle a lot of CDs (which work as nice coasters today, vintage digital, never thought we'd get to that) as you can't usually find these in the Philippines (or usually mis-classified under "easy listening" alongside Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra).

So I wrote this tune, twenty years ago, and was track#10 in our 1996 album. It's pop, with elements of the orchestra sprinkled in. One record reviewer thought we had a real cello (it was an Emu Proteus)
Afterschool, "Anything But Love"

I'll recreate this today. I still have an Emu Proteus. but I'll use a new toy, the Korg Kross, which seems to have some nice orchestral sounds.

New !