slow minimalist recording of a slow minimalist improvisation

[gsa]

In light of talk about doing some recording soon I've been going through some old four-track tapes that myself and a few friends made back this past spring. As usual the best stuff always seemed to happen while we weren't recording the session, but some of what we did capture I still really enjoy. The recordings weren't meant to be hi-fidelity.. just a document of what were, more often than not, long-form improvisations. I edited this one down to a "short" eight-minute section. It's really a mood piece-- almost soundtrack-like. There isn't really a climax.. or a beginning and ending for that matter. If you wanted to label it, I guess it would fit into the more quiet end of the "post-rock" spectrum. None of us are really trained musicians, so you can really hear us fumbling in places-- fumbling for the right notes, the right chords, the right textures. Maybe that might be charming to someone?

Anyway, as far as I can remember the instrumentation was Guitar, Piano, Casio, a Line6 Delay Modeler (on the Casio) and a Korg Kaoss Pad (on the guitar). There were two of us for the majority of this section, with perhaps a third person moving in and out of the room contributing odd sounds here and there.

Techy stuff--

We were playing in the entry-way of a friend's house. The room is small and oblong.. maybe 12x24 or something. Big enough to fit a piano and a couch and a few chairs in, but not much else. Parallel walls and lots of reflective surfaces. Nothing fancy about the mic selection and placement. Here's what I remember:

-Casio (through a misc. guitar amp) -- Yoga FX588 (looks like a D112) a couple of inches out from the cab, probably off-centre of the speaker.
-Guitar (through a Vox Pathfinder 15R) -- AKG D770 (AKG's take on the 57) probably utilized in much the same way as the Yoga on the keyboard amp.
-Piano (old apartment-sized standup) -- Yoga FX516 (a pencil SDC) stuck maybe six inches or so down inside the top of the piano and pointed down and towards the center of the soundboard.

I also used an AKG D880 as a room mic, but I don't think it got used at all when I did this quick mix-down. The Yoga mics came from a drum microphone kit that I got as a freebie a couple of years ago. I've never been able to find any information about them anywhere. I think they're Japanese?

All of these went into my cheap Alesis Studio24 board, and the tape outs from there went into my Fostex X-24 cassette four track. There is remarkably little tape hiss, and everything sounds relatively clear to my ears, which is why I love this deck. It was running with the varispeed full up.. so 1 7/8 ips + 15%. I mixed it straight from the Fostex into the line-in of my cheapo Soundblaster Live Value.. no outboard. No EQ on mix down nor tracking. Basically barebones recording at its best (worst?).

So, without futher ado.. here it is.

P.S. Its actually an 80kbps/22khz mp3, so that could explain any strange artifacts your audiofile ears might pick up.

[I'm Painting Again]

I liked that one..really nice..I'm into this sort of thing..

check out my Golden Bats album..its all stuff like :

http://www.helstab.com/music/index.php? ... GoldenBats