Nice Cuts

The voting for selections on the next record “Nice Cuts” is complete. Thanks to everyone who voted. I dunno if it’s right to call it a ‘greatest hits’ record, but that seems to be the common term of art, so for those of you not clued in? It’s a ‘Greatest Hits!’ record. Actually, if it didn’t sound so bloody pretentious, I’d have called it a ‘Retrospective’. But to do that I’d have to hang with the kind of people who refer to movies as ‘the cinema’.

And the winnahs are:

1. You Are Loved (Positive) 6:00
2. Why Don’t You Come In? (Positive) 4:08
3. On My Way Home (Positive) 2:51
4. Paul’s Story (Positive) 5:56
5. What A Wonderful World (Superpower) 4:44
6. Shy (Superpower) 3:39
7. Hey Johnny! (Superpower)  2:55
8. Open Your Eyes (Part II)  (Compartments)  7:30
9. Too Far (Balance) 3:39
10. Money (Balance) 3:47
11. Matters Of The Heart (Balance) 6:25
12. Teflon (Home) 3:57
13. Suicide In A Hurry (Home) 4:36
14. The Best Friend I Ever Had (Home) 5:23

Nice Cuts should be available November 1st 2009 at www.jchmusic.com, Amazon and iTunes; just in time for your Christmas shopping (hint, hint!)

To celebrate, we’re doing a new video called Nice Cuts:An Introduction To JCHMusic. The video will include snippets from each of these songs plus some bits to show off the new album Beautiful Sounds.

A Note On ‘Choice’
One takes a marketing risk letting fans choose. You guys did a great job, but frankly, the ones chosen are not necessarily the ones I would’ve chosen in all cases. So there are one or two selections that I substituted for the ones near the bottom of the voting list. In other words, I replaced the 13th and 14th on the list for two songs that I thought better fleshed out a representation of my catalogue. I did this because the actual ‘winning’ songs were stylistically similar to some already represented (in other words, a couple more ‘angry at your ex-wife numbers.)

The House That Became A Studio

STUDIO I: The Wiring

When I bought my house, I realized that there was no way I could afford to put in a proper studio ‘room within a room’ of proper size for really good acoustics right away. On a different track, my house has a crawlspace. When I went under the house to run a network cable between two rooms I decided, since I had to be down there anyway, to create structured cabling throughout the entire house so that every house could have Ethernet (I’d had very bad performance issues with WiFi.) Now after living there for a few weeks I realized that every room has it’s own unique sound and I decided that, since I already had cabling in place, I’d add audio and digital lines to each room. It turns out that it’s not that hard to expand lo-z audio, SP/DIF and lightpipe connections. This gave me the ability to use each room as either:

a) A place to record; each room having a ‘special sound’

b) The ability to put visting musicians anywhere I needed for recording

c) The ability to put all the computers in and run computers out of sight and out of earshot.

STUDIO II: The Acoustics

I picked a particular bedroom to use as a control room and began fitting that with acoustic treatment. There’s a ton that needs to be learned about this stuff and I can recommend visiting the StudioTips Forum for all kinds of good advice. Like many people, my pimp became my local insulation contractor. I’ve made enough absorbers from Owens-Corning 703 to keep a whole village warm. I make many of these with wooden frames and move them about from room to room as needed. In addition to absorption, another thing I did which really helped was building proper speaker stands from concrete and spending a lot of time positioning them properly.

And speaking of ‘positioning’, if one wanted to improve one’s room, the first thing to do is to analyze the room and this alone is worthy of many pages. In fact, I’d suggest that proper positioning is at least as important as any ‘treatment’ one may attempt–especially in a small room. One’s best strategy may in fact be to simply find the best possible listening position and call it a day. One learns after much effort that there is only so much one can do beyond the basic laws of physics. A room needs to be a certain size and have certain attributes in order to be reliable.

STUDIO III: The Recording Gear

I’ve discussed the ‘real’ instruments I play here. The recording end of it currently consists of 2 main computers running Steinberg NUENDO and Cubase with VSTLink and Magix Samplitude. I’m listing the junk below more as a way for me to remember to come back here and start fleshing out various things I want to say about each tool.

A/D-D/A

• • RME 9652
  • Frontier Designs Tango/24
  • Presonus Digimax
  • Samson Control-C monitor/headphone mixer

TRANSDUCERS

• Event ASP-8 Monitors
• Cambridge ‘PC Works’ computer speakers w subwoofer.
• Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones
• Sony 7560 headphones
• Sony walkman headphones

Mics:

• • Apex 460 tube (w Oktava mod)
  • Studio Projects C1
  • Shure SM57
  • Electro Voice RE-20
  • Earthworks SR77
  • Behringer EMC8000
  • Crown PZM (2)

These all run direct through to the Digimax or through a home-made mic pre I’ve done which is basically a Neve 1073-style clone.

Controllers:

• • CME UF8 Keyboard
  • Drum Kat (2)
  • 3 Yamaha MIDI foot pedals
    

External Gizmos

• • Numark TT200 turntables (2)
  • Numark DM1000 DJ mixer

Pedals

• • Volume
  • Boss CE2 chorus
  • Boss OC-1 octave pedal
  • Boss Super Distortion & Feedbacker
  • Danelectro Free Speech talkbox

Amplifiers

• • Mesa Boogie .22
  • Hartke 3500 tube/transistor bass head
  • Polytone 100

STUDIO IV: Software

Sampling
Pretty much everything is done through NI’s Kontakt 3 now. I originally developed libraries and some add-on plug-ins for Steinberg’s Halion, but that’s pretty much a dead end now. These are the commercial libs I have used a lot and can highly recommend.

• • BelaDMedia Anthology Winds
  • EastWest Symphonic Choirs
  • Chinee ‘China’
  • Flying Hand Ethnic Percussion
  • KickAss Brass
  • Sample Tekk Black Grand
  • Scarbee Imperial Drums, Clavinet, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer
  • Tonehammer Percussion libraries
  • Toontrack Superior Drummer
  • Home Made:
    • Prepared Piano (including bashing with sledgehammer)
    • Bamboo Drums
    • Washing Machine Drums
    • Toolshop Percussion
    • Bamboo Whistles
    • Electrical Signals

Synths
These are especially near and dear to my heart, having started with my first synthesisers (a Moog Satellite and an Octave ‘Kat’) at the age of sixteen. I spend a lot of time tweaking and I’m never bored with it simply because I remember how excruciating it could be with patch cords or DX-7 algorithms where all could be lost with one mistake. Maybe that’s why I never really got into the ‘hardware v. software wars’. The advantages of save/recall are so amazing that they dwarf any sonic differences.

• • Native Instruments: B4, FM8, Reaktor
  • Pianissimo
  • GMedia’s MTron, Imposcar
  • Arturia’s Jupiter 8v, CS-80v, Minimoog V

Why So Eclectic?

As fans tend to know, I utilize quite a number of musical instruments and varied recording techniques on my albums. But at the same time, I’ve made no secret of my disdain of ‘gear sluts’ constantly in search of the next great gizmo that will propel them to stardom. I’d like to address both these topics here in a way that answers some commonly asked questions and hopefully dispels my image as ‘complete hypocrite.’

Some background. We had basically one radio station to listen to in Galway. It alternated constantly between The Carpenters (‘Close To You’) or Don’t Walk Away Renee or Andy Williams (‘Moon River’) or Elvis or ‘Popcorn’ (my introduction to the synthesizer.) And so on. Ironically, there was very little ‘Irish’ music played. There was no such thing as ‘formatted radio’. Every song would give today’s programmer a severe case of whiplash.

My earliest memories of hearing this sort of diversity in one group came in listening to my sister’s Moody Blues records. I was amazed, not only by the sheer number of things they played on various songs, but also on how diverse the sounds were; stylistically and in terms of timbres. I was into The Beatles of course, but all their various sounds felt more like they had simply hired outsiders to play; not like the Moodies who were playing their own sounds. I was doubly impressed when I found that Mike Pinder was actually involved in making those Mellotron gizmos. That really grabbed me and when I went off to college on a physics scholarship I originally thought I’d like to become a designer of synthesizers, rather like Alan Pearlman or Bob Moog.

Detroit City
The Motor City definitely had a strong impact on me. But not for the reasons you might think. I was very into Iggy in 1975 but The Stooges were not that popular at all. In fact, I dug The Stooges because they weren’t mainstream. I recently read an article where Jack Black says the same thing about his youth—twenty years later. The music he was into in Detroit was not the music that was actually popular at the time.

When you live in Detroit, like Ireland, one has a strong sense of ‘noble decay’. That is, you’re constantly being reminded of past glories—places that used to be fantastic but are now run down. You’d drive by the shuttered Motown Records on Woodward and see the trash whirling against it’s fading blue facade. Or Hitsville studios or clubs like Baker’s Keyboard Lounge or The Bluebird on Six Mile or any of the landmarks that were either closed or hanging on by a musty thread. Supporters would constantly point to these places and try to remind one of their importance to the community— even though they no longer were really active. A main difference between Detroit and Ireland is that Ireland’s faded glories are hundreds of years old. When I was there, the faded glories of Detroit were less than a decade past. The meteoric decline of the city was so rapid that it’s taken thirty years or so for me to believe all the tales of past greatness—which sparked work on my opera Detroit.

Anyhoo, the thing I took away from my teens in Detroit was a working class ethic about rock and roll more than an appreciation for the music of the time/place. Of course I love Motown stuff but beyond that, most of the groups people think of when Detroit is mentioned (Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, etc.) never really touched me that much.

My Sister’s Record Collection
The one huge take-away from my teen-agedness in Detroit was the inheritance of her record collection after my sister’s untimely death. I now realise that her record collection was the single biggest influence on my musical career.

Her collection was this absolute goulash of musical styles; white and black; local and national; American and British. And the interesting thing is that her taste was far from unique—she merely reflected a typical well educated seventeen year old middle class girl’s taste circa 1971. Just a few examples:

Beatles (and their solo projects which were just starting)
Bob Seger
Cream
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Four Tops
The Frost
Grand Funk Railroad
Jethro Tull
Jimi Hendrix
Led Zeppelin
Moody Blues
Rationals
Ronettes
Rolling Stones
Simon & Garfunkel
Stevie Wonder
Supremes
Terry Knight And The Pack (Check out ‘I Who Have Nothing’)

We’re talking a range of sounds. The only thing I can see that they all tend to have in common? Lasting quality. The crowd she ran with certainly knew how to pick ‘em.

I must admit I did not initially take to much of this stuff. But something told me that if my older (much cooler) sister like them, that I simply must study the stuff until I got it. (After all, she was into incense and beads and all that other way cool sixties jazz!)

So How Did You Get Interested In Progressive Rock?
Truthfully? This kid at my high school traded me a ‘Yes/Fragile’ cassette in exchange for a duplicate Black Sabbath record I had. I didn’t much care for it—largely because I didn’t have a good cassette player. I also maintain I didn’t get into it because the artwork was so tiny; if I’d had the album, I probably would’ve been far more impressed. And that’s the point I wanted to make here. A lot of the time back then, you chose music because of the cool artwork. It was hard to preview music so that covers mattered. (The number of truly crappy records I bought just because the cover looked great in the store? Oy.)

And then one day I was in a record store and they had a sale on an unsealed copy ‘Yessongs’—a double album with the most fantabulous Roger Dean artwork ever. I bought it simply because it looked great and had a booklet! And that, as they say, was that. The moment I heard the live versions of ‘Yours Is No Disgrace’ and ‘Perpetual Change’ I thought to myself, “This is the greatest rock and roll I have ever heard.” I had never heard playing like this. Singing like this. I still maintain it is one of the greatest live records ever made and that the performances far surpass the studio recordings on Close To The Edge, Fragile and The Yes Album. In fact, if you are new to Yes, I would strongly suggest you get this one first.

The Absolutely Wonderful Thing About My Music Teachers
My main teachers at college were all very electic types. My mentor Alvin King, was a student of Paul Hindemith. Hindemith was, by all accounts a total musical polymath. King claimed—and I believe him—that ‘Paulsche’ played every instrument in the modern orchestra to at least college level; and many at a professional level. King was from Nebraska and had a very down-on-the-farm work ethic. I remember one day passing him after he had played harpsichord at a student recital. I asked where he was off to and he reported that he had to rush to get ready for another student recital where he was to play some medieval instrument. I said, ‘I didn’t know you played that.’ To which he replied, Well I will by Friday!’ That killed me. Dr. King devoted 2-1/2 years of his life to giving me personalised instruction every morning for two hours at six AM. As I write this I still find it unbelievable. (By the way, he also taught me a technique for getting by on four hours of sleep a night—thus enabling that six AM schedule after nights playing rock and roll!)

Macalester College had an instrument locker filled with virtually every instrument one could ever imagine. They encouraged students to work in as many genres as possible and their methods classes made sure you became fluent on several instruments. I was even allowed to womp away on the pipe organ at six AM on the days Dr. King couldn’t make it. (You want to hear real power? Forget heavy metal. Arrange to spend two minutes doing whatever you want on a real pipe organ. The raw energy will make yer trousers flare, mate.)

And both Mac and UM had great music libraries where one could study scores and listen to great music for free—they’d even happily make cassettes of various things for you without thoughts about the whole ‘piracy’ deal.

As with my sister’s record collection, much of the music I was assigned in school did not immediately thrill me. But also like her records, something told me that it was up to me to get it. For example, I really did not take to Mozart much at all. It just seemed pretty darned sissi-fied to my uncultured ears. No guts at all. But the constant pressure from everyone—teachers and students made me feel that there was something wrong with me that had to be corrected. So I forced myself to listen to Mozart and Gesualdo and all these other (at the time) faggoty-sounding musics until I really got into them all. The day that I joined an Early Music Ensemble was the day I was ‘cured’. I call this the Alex DeLarge School Of Music Appreciation. No eyeball extenders required. (One final note: the only exception to this cure was opera, which frankly, did not submit to actual enjoyment until many years later—that process is a rant for another day to be sure.

The Twin Cities Environment
I can’t emphasize enough the effect of the Minneapolis/St. Paul environment on my development. As so often happens, I had no idea how wonderful I had it until I left. At the time, the Minnesota Orchestra was considered quite highly. And the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra was often spoken of as the best small orchestra in America. Garrison Keillor’s ‘Prairie Home Companion’ was a reflection of the huge folk music scene. It was not uncommon to see most all the giants of American folk music in town on the same weekend—eg Leo Kottke, John Fahey, Bob Brozman, et al.

Some of the best ‘Celtic’ music around was to be heard as guys like Daithí Sproule had (for some reason) settled there.

The Twin Cities was arguably the epicenter of Punk in America. Need I mention ‘The Replacements’ and ‘Husker Du’?

And did I mention ‘Prince’?

And In Conclusion

It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to catch the recurring themes in my development as a musician. I was lucky enough to have started out in a place without much recorded music, but with a chance to get together with others and learn a real tradition of music. When I moved to Detroit, the same benefits were afforded to me. And the same in St. Paul. But it was also my willingness (and even will) to constantly try new things that drew me to playing and writing music that covers a wide variety of seemingly disparate styles. At the end of the day, though? I’m probably mostly just the product of my sister’s record collection, it’s varied stylistic influences and colourful album jackets.

The Gear

I get a number of questions re. what I play and how I do things. This article is basically a list of the instruments I play, the songs you’d hear them on and some links to more information on them.

KEYBOARDS
Kimball Upright Player Piano. I got this from a girlfriend who owed me money. When she walked out she left me a note saying I should take it in lieu of payment. Seriously. But a piano is a good thing to have. It’s a crappy piano. I had it tuned by a friend who remarked, “Well I’d say 62 or 3 notes sound OK. That’s not a bad average.” That said, there’s something nice about feeling the sound as you play… and not having to wait for some electric device to ‘boot’. Good, bad or indifferent, there’s nothing like a real instrument.

All the synthesized sounds you hear are various pieces of software played from a keyboard directly into the computer. These include Native Instruments, Inc. B4, FM8 and Kontakt; Arturia, Inc (Synthesizers) and Steinberg Halion (sampler)

ELECTRIC GUITARS

• 1976 Fender Stratocaster – I literally got this from a junkie on a street corner  for $175. It’s been my main ‘axe’ for 25 years. I’ve modified it a bit and for those who care about such things, here are the details.
• Line 6 Variax 700
• Carter ‘Starter’ Pedal Steel Guitar

BASSES

• 1985 Fender Mexican Jazz Bass
• 1960 Fender fretless Jazz Bass
• 1984 Fender V with Ken Smith pickups/pre-amp1993 Rickenbacker 4001
• BSX Allegro Electric Upright Bass

ACOUSTIC GUITARS
Seagull S6 Acoustic Guitar – this is one of the original ‘Godin’ models
1973 Alhambra Classical Guitar
Line 6 Variax Acoustic

• 1996 Johnson Octave Mandolin
• 1956 Giannini Baritone Ukelele
• 1949 Kameahmea Tenor Ukelele
• 2008 Lanakai Soprano Ukulele
• 1964 Oscar Schmidt 15-chord Autoharp

WINDS
The feadog stá¡n (tin whistle) is something I’ve fooled with since I was a kid. I play OK and use it a lot, but not in particularly ‘Irish’ way (eg. Time on Compartments.) The reason is simple, I no longer have the breath control to do the various ornaments smoothly. I have one Jerry Freeman whistle and it’s great. But the truth is that the 1 € whistle you can probably still get from Walton’s Music works just fine.

Recorders On Wall

I’d like to say that I have a really nice set of recorders. I’d like to but, I can’t. I use a set of Yamaha plastics in the four common sizes. I especially recommend a baritone recorder as great fun. I used them on the title cut to Home in the middle section that people always seem to think is a mellotron.

Clarinet is a short haul from recorder. I have two Buffet’s both student models: a Bb and an Eb Bass. I got these at a music store I worked at years ago (more on that in a minute.) I can never seem to get the tone right so I tend to use these as backgrounds—the low winds on The One True Vine (Balance).

My Alto Sax is a gold-plated Buescher. It’s the one thing I have that’s worth some money amongst enthusiasts but it’s heavier than heck on my neck so I rarely get it out. Like a lot of stuff I have I got it when I worked at a music store years ago. The owner was always broke and would offer gear in lieu of actual cash. I’ve dared to expose it to public view was on the title cut to Home at the end when I wanted a sort of Motown-ish brass section so I played it on top of the synths a la Weather Report. It’s amazing how one line from a ‘real’ horn makes a synth section come to life.

PERCUSSION

Irish
A lot of people in Ireland still play either the bodhran. A few play the bones. It would be a lie to say I had a great interest in drumming as a kid. I try to put them in a few places for colour. The pulse of For Angela (Balance) is my hairy bodhràn, from Charlie Byrne down in Co. Tipperary.

Brazilian
I collected a lot of this stuff over the years (agogos, pandieros, bongos, cajon, reco-reco, shakers, etc.),  and it’s probably my favourite drumming in the world. The only commercial gizmo is a Pearl 10″ Cuica. I still practice a lot on the Berimbau (bow and arrow) which I used on This Time (Positive) as well as the caixa (snare drum).

A digression: One of the most influential albums of me life was Patrick Moraz’s ‘Story Of I’. Unfortunately it’s may also be one of the worst mixed records of all time. Which is unfortunate because of all the attempts back in the 70′s to ‘fuse’ rock and various ethnic styles, this things worked. There’s a complete samba outfit behind Patrick as well as the ferocious Jeff Berlin and Alphonse Mouzon and these guys just kill. Too bad you need a microscope to find all the thousand treasures hidden inside. For years, wherever I went, I search for those sounds.

Kit
The drum kit is usually my old Ringo kit (A Ludwig Super Classic). If I play ‘live’ I’ll usually replace the sounds with samples from Scarbee Imperial Drums or Superior Drummer 2.
I also have a pair of DrumKats from Alternate Mode which I regularly use for anything that won’t require a lot of finesse.

Home-Made Stuff
I’ve done a lot with various home made instruments. This started in response to attempting to clear a nasty bamboo forest from backyard. Bamboo is an impressive material. It’s fun to hit; to blow into; to look at. Remember that TV show Gilligan’s Island? They made everything out of bamboo. So I started making various things out of bamboo, including boo-bams and various whistles. The fast section of the title cut on Beautiful Sounds? All bamboo drums.
And then it just went from there. Since I can record in my laundry room, I recorded my washing machine— which creates the most intense kettle drum effects you ever heard. I put mics on my tool bench. Smacking sheet metal and vises. Or recording various power tools can be great. The backing percussion for Too Far (Balance) is all my washing machine.

RECORDING
The actual studio is discussed here.

I Just Flew In From Santa Fe And Boy Are My Arms Tired!

I wanted to comment a bit on the kinds of gigs I play and why you haven’t seen much of me lately.

I just got back from Santa Fe, NM where I played a gig at a convention for psychologists studying the effects of various music-based therapies and the unique emotional challenges and personality disorders which tend to affect people in the creative arts.

And let me just say, you’d have to be nuts to play in front of a bunch of shrinks.

<rimshot>

I’m keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeding. I booked the gig months ahead based on a recommendation of a fan who also happens to be a psychologist. If it had been a ‘normal’ gig and I had not already committed, I probably would have backed out. But it wasn’t normal in any sense of the word.

What I do is targeted. When people come to see me they know what to expect and they expect me to docertain things. Because of the nature of this gig, meaning that people had no idea who I was, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted was to save my aching hands, which often no longer do what I want them to. So for this show I played some covers (which I never do) and I took breaks as often as possible. In short, I took it easy.

The problem is that, since the various accidents of Spring 2007, my right hand has been regularly finding ways to mess up my shows. So the reason you don’t see me as much as you used to is simply that I have a great deal of difficulty doing a proper show.

The latest deal is something called ganglion cysts which have made all my knuckles swell and that right there is making finger-picking a serious challenge. I’ve already had an outpatient surgery and expect to have at least one more to suck out the swelling (seriously). I’ll let you know how things progress.

Right now, I’m focusing on what I can do—compositions for films (check out the main site for more), new ways to market the CDs and always more songs.

The nagging doubt I have is, of course, will you be there when I (finally) get it back together? I sure hope so!