Your weirdest, most eclectic/esoteric recording session?

[digital eagle audio]

i'm an intern at a studio, and occasionally i'll be given some weird ass project that nobody else has time for. which is awesome, because we all know that the best way to learn is by actually doing. check this out:
a band that was recording wanted to do an intro to one of their songs. the lead singer had recorded some carnival barker type rant, and he wanted it to sound like it was coming out of an old radio. we then recorded some sounds from a really really old crank-powered victrola using a telefunken u47 into an 002. i had to edit the recordings into a nice sequence, and basically cut the five minutes worth of stuff down to about 30 seconds. then i had to crush his vocal part, do a buttload of creative eq, tight reverb,fadeins and fade outs, and abusive dithering, to try and make the whole thing sound like it was all coming from the same old am station. the end result was awesome - you can hear the victrola cranking up at the beginning and winding down at the end. it was a lot of fun.

[heylow]

"This came out great and I was feeling pretty pleased so I threw up."
-Heylow

I wish that was all you wrote.

Might have been a bit more clear, I suppose.

Besides...at the end of the day, if a guy can say just that about a good day's work, I'd say he's doing OK.



heylow

I actually laughed out loud.... man when are you coming back to Brooklyn? Come play a show here! I will help get you a decent show....

Fun times.

Joel....

You know....truth be told....I honestly miss Brooklyn. We all had such a great time....NY, in general was just a blast for us. As for coming back, most any excuse would probably do! We may have to talk about the show thing!

Word. I'd have sent a box of fuses in with the "care package", had I known what kind.



heylow

[brian beattie]

I recorded a chair once...
brian

[centurymantra]

You know...I've thought about the 'old radio' effect a few times as I really like that sound, though it's not something you're going to want to overuse. That was a pretty sweet solution to getting that 'sound'. One thing I had thought about is turning it into an actual radio signal. You could use one of those mini radio broadcasting units; the type that stadiums use for broadcasting instructions to people near the station and realtors commonly use to run a looped message about properties by sending a signal on an unused frequency within their limited broadcast range. We had one of those at work for a time and they're pretty cool. I tested it's range out once, and it was about half a mile or so. Anyway, you could simply plug your recording into the unit, send it to a radio in the same room, preferably some old tube-driven shortwave radio or something of that ilk, mic the speaker on the radio and that'd be about as good as it gets...or so it would seem. I also think Ipods have a plug in device that converts the output into a radio signal for use in car stereos and that would be a similar solution.

And BTW...'heylow' gets a big thumbs up from this direction for fabulous and demented drum production. That is seriously awesome in a manner that words cannot convey...seriously! Now I've gotta hear it.

[centurymantra]

I recorded a chair once...
brian

A friend of mine was telling me about a performance art/experimental music program they once attended where I believe Tony Conrad was the headliner.

He relayed a hilarious account of a quintessentially ponderous presentation in which some EXTREMELY serious and well-known-in-those-circles German artist composed a musical piece (though some would consider it a stretch to label it as such) in which he had several students of this particular college scraping chairs along the floor as they responded to specific instructions from this gentleman on the telephone, (although it may have been a pre-recorded message). It turns out that he could not attend and this was his solution to provide something for the program in his absence. My friend was a little dubious about the artistic merit and general tedium of the experience and couldn't very well hide his general mockery. Now, I actually love a lot of experimental/conceptual art and musical performance of this nature, but there are points where things get stretched a little far and you've just gotta laugh, especially when you consider what the majority of folks would think about such proceedings. Maybe that was the point, and he was poking some fun at a scene that does a get a little TOO serious at points. I mean, you've gotta revel in the cosmic joke of the scheme of things sometimes...

[NewAndImprov]

The majority of projects I record are avant garde improvised music, so almost all of my sessions could be called weird or esoteric, depending on your definitions, really.

Probably the weirdest yet was a month ago. A drummer who played on my next CD asked for his pay in recording time. I'm not usually into trading, but he's a really honest and reliable guy who only plays good music, so I said sure.

He showed up a week later with three improvisers from Beiruit, Lebanon. Trumpet, electric guitar, and alto sax. The saxophonist had an array of odd techinques ranging from spitting air past the reed to muting the horn with her leg, and on out from there. She had an incredibly unique sound, but the techniques themselves were all things I'd seen before.

The guitarist had an Epiphone Les Paul copy and few effects, but mostly he used preparations on the instrument to acheive his f'd up tones. He played very quietly, but always felt like he was on the verge of explosion, sometimes attaching a piece of surgical tubing directly to one of his pickups and bowing it with a small bow to make some truly indescribeable textures.

Maybe the most remarkable of all was the trumpet player. He did all the things I've seen experimental guys do to a trumpet, and then added about 100 other sounds to the ensemble. I had to use 2 mics on him, and he filled up half my tracking room with preparations, mutes, bells, tubes, and so on. Some sounds required he play the trumpet holding it between his knees, and others up in the usual position (hence the 2 mics). Fortunately, I didn't have to have him demo all his sounds for me when setting up. He was experienced and smart. He said, "look, there are two positions I play in: up here, and down here." He also said he'd never be using both positions in a single piece of music. OK, no sweat, I thought. I can mix whichever mic out that isn't used on any given piece...

Well, I sure was bummed that I can't watch the entire tracking room from my control room position cause the sounds coming out of this guy--well, all of them, including the percussionist, who bowed, shook, and rubbed his instruments with expertise--were really stunning and often hard to identify. They recorded about 2 and 1/2 hours of music and at the mix session we narrowed it down to 1.5 hours. They'll do the final edits at mastering.

I was really proud and honored to work on it, and the cultural aspect felt great. The Lebanese cats' lack of self-conciousness about their music was refreshing. They were so matter-of-fact about it. I really hope it gets released sometime soon, cause I think it came out great. I know they played great, and frankly I think I was the perfect engineer to capture it, if I do say so myself...

This didn't happen to be Rouba3i, did it? There was a feature on trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj in the latest Wire, and the group sounded exactly like what you describe in your post. Sounds like a very cool session!

[Reuben]

Yep! That's them. The percussionist was New Yorker Andrew Drury, but the rest were Mazen, Christine and Sharif. Truly amazing.

[Ronan]

Out stuff is a lot of my bread and butter, but I think it would be hard for me to beat the time I recorded a piece for 12 opera sopranos crumpling paper bags. God Bless Canadian funding for the arts!!!

Also on a recent project over in Italy I recorded a gospel choir in a 1000 year old church singing a song about getting laid in a public toilet.