The Exotic Element in Popular Mid-Century Music
Here’s the script to my lecture (pdf), but I spoke freely for the better part and ignored what I had written. The music in brackets is what I didn’t play in execution.

I have made a gallery of pictures of spring reverb units. These are elemental in achieving the wet Surf-guitar sound and also the big splash on Dub-drums. They are from all decades, most have tube pre-amps, some have transistors. Some are pro-studio gear, but most are built for use between the guitar and amp.

Spring Reverb Units now at Flickr!

Today I googled for Vincent Bell’s name because I couldn’t believe Danelectro didn’t mention him in their promo for the Coral Hornet re-issue now called Dead-On-67. He designed those in the sixties along with several other classic and unique models like the Bellzouki (first electric 12-string) and the Coral Sitar (electric guitar with 12 bordun strings and a sitar bridge). Anyway, so I came across this great page by Moe Thomas for the first time. He says he’s a long time friend of Mr. Bell and when he visited the legendary guitar player’s basement he took pictures of the sheer mass of historic and unique guitars and prototypes – many built by Vinnie himself. He’s a very inventive guy thinking up things like the first wahwah or his trademark underwater sound as heard on Moon Gas and apparently various practices and machinery used in guitar manufacturing – all while making a living as one of the east coast’s busiest studio session men.

Here are links to some highlights of the collection:

• photo of Sitar prototypes
• the sitar-shaped Bellzouki as portrayed on the back of Joe Harnell’s Bossa Now! album
• Vinnie Bell’s personal 6-string bass (who knows how many records we have heard this one on?!!!)
• one of a kind Coral Scorpio-style 12-string Sitar (a dream instrument of mine)
• Vinnie Bell model Stratocaster as presented to him by Fender Musical Instruments (note straight bridge pick-up)
• the banjo he played on Louis Armstrong’s recording Hello Dolly
• the mandolin Bell played on The Godfather-soundtracks

also visit www.vinniebell.com

Audio geeks and songwriters have another tool at their disposal: FourTrack, a well-designed app for the iPhone or iPod Touch that records, mixes and plays up to four tracks like

go to bookmark

The reason I chose this one was that the loudest and first track I ripped peaked at 0dB without the limiter catching it. I just left the dials to their own devices and hoped I can capture the entire album with this “magic” setting. It was just plain luck. So I ripped this particular vinyl record without any additional limiting or compression, peaking at 0dB and all the music of that album perfectly relative to that peak.

When you see the soundwaves you will recogn that each one has got its own shape. This means that the creativity of the musicians is reflected in the volume at any given point in time, allowing for drama, surprises and expression. Sure there was some kind of processing going on even in those days, but it was to get a good, hi-fi sound at the end-consumer, with the goal being a natural room impression – heavy compression doesn’t allow that. See that one very quiet track – it’s meant to be that way. How they made it? They played their instruments softer. You have to be quiet yourself to clearly hear it, you start interacting with the music.

It all made me realize on a new level, what beautiful works of art music masters can be.

Here are two Heavy Metal soundfiles for comparison. It’s the same track, the upper, more dynamic one was given to a game company, the lower one is from the CD album. Wether this was a mistake or the less dynamic sound was considered more desireable I don’t know.

related posts:
Turn Me Up! | Bringing Dynamics Back To Music
Loudness Wars Explained
Article on Metallica‘s new album at Wired.

I like reading this kind of stuff. It’s good to refresh the mike knowledge and read others opinions and hints on recording techniques. In the old days, before EQs were common the mike and the room combo was the equalizer.

Go to bookmark

Event: Don’t Knock The Rock Film Festival
Time: 8:00PM
Date: Thurs., July 3rd, 2008
Location: Silent Movie Theatre
611 N. Fairfax Avenue
tickets link

Hi Wrecking Crew supporters!

Thank you for making the LA premiere at the Grand Performances a Great Success but if they missed it and want to send a friend, this is a great event. After playing to great response at SXSW, Buffalo, Nashville and Seattle Film Festivals (see reviews), we are very excited that “The Wrecking Crew” documentary will screen as part of the “Don’t Knock The Rock” Film Festival at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax in Los Angeles.

Join us for a beautiful tribute to those brilliant musicians who made some of the best records of our lifetime, yet rarely the picture on the record — now they get the spotlight. In fact, if you showed up to The T.A.M.I. Show Sunday night, you heard them, but you barely saw them — they were the house band for all those great acts. This evening is all about them!

A Q&A with Denny Tedesco will follow the screening and Boyd Rice DJ’s Wrecking Crew classics and novelties from Rodney Bingenheimer’s personal collection, while Kari French and her Go Go Troupe do the hippy hippy shake to Rice’s collection of rare 60s Scopitones!

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