t a k k i m e d i a
Writing songs is all I ever wanted to do. Did I do it right?
By 1985, gear got cheaper and I was making more money, so we met in the middle. The bar was raised though: No more "it's just a sketch". Now I (unrealistically, foolishly) expected everything to end up as a finished song. Most of the time I was just fucking around, but never underestimate the value of "just fucking around" to the processes of composition and recording.
busybox 85 86 87
Sixty hour weeks driving a Boston Cab, on top of rehearsals and gigs, and busybox was born.
Studiomaster board, Tascam deck, not a whole lot of mics and outboard; for a while I was still using guitar stomp boxes as insert
effects. It wasn't until the end of '85 when I added a Mac 512k with sequencing software, so until then I used the Ensoniq Mirage's
onboard sequencer. The Oberheim DX had a sync-to-tape feature, and a Roland sync box locked the Mirage to the DX.
I still wrote music on staff paper, or chord progressions in a notebook, but now I was more inclined to play ideas to tape and
sort through them later.
This was laid down on multi-track. In sketches, the Mirage bass was meant to be a stand-in for real electric bass, except when it wasn't. Some of the first looped samples I made are on this. Also: real cymbals.
A typical sketchpad recording: just Mirage piano and Oberheim drums, through the board to cassette. There's something about that Mirage piano sample that I still love. It's got a lot of character.
Split-keyboard Mirage: bass and piano. A bit more than a sketch, since I must have taken the time to string drum patterns together in song mode. No subtlety in my chord progressions back in 1986.
Oh, hey: the fucking circus is in town. This is a Mirage split plus Juno-106 on top of the Oberheim.
This might make a good dream pop cut with a spacier arrangement. I just have to slap a rubber band on my scrote to sing the high parts.
Whew. Thought it was going to be Agnus Dei for a second. Mirage factory chorus disk and either a Yamaha REV-7 or a Roland SR-2000.
More Mirage/Juno/Obie. Really don't know where I was going with this. I guess the answer was "No where".
Not for nothing, but Wendy Carlos was a huge influence.
I did something with the A section, didn't like it, and erased it (tape was not cheap).
Pseudo-baroque noodling.
And neo-classical noodling.
Sampling with the Mirage got a lot easier with Sound Designer II on the Mac. I could visually find zero crossings to make loops instead of trial and error with a chicklet keypad and a 2-digit display.
Mirage harp sample doubled with Juno-106. Love harp and marimba, percussive yet melodic.
A keyboard sequence triggering drum sounds. Three years of Oberheim DX and I was getting a little tired of the stock samples.
Playing a resonant filter patch on the Juno with the Obie DX. Always looking for new drum sounds.
The only time I step-recorded something was this Scarlatti toccata. It was an exercise in tedium.
Oh, hey, the Mirage string sound rears its ugly head.
Same as 87e but with strings.
Yeah, I had it bad for Ensoniq's factory strings diskette.
Stumpworld 88 89
Until 1988, the studio was wherever my band rehearsed. That year, I moved it to Stumpworld, the house where
I was living in on Allston Street, Allston, Massachusetts. Eventually, I built a multi-line audio snake between the third floor, where
the board and deck were, down to the basement, which is where we rehearsed. By '89, I was writing more music on guitar than
on keyboards, and using live drummers more than drum machine. Every now and then, I'd spin up the keys and drum machines and
do something non-guitar based.
By this time, busybox was a real studio with decent mics, outboard, and a PCM digital audio mix deck. Now it's a laptop and I'm fine
with that, but I do miss the smell of a freshly opened reel of Ampex 456 tape.
I miss the old Darkworld Frippertronix days. Gonna smoke this fatty and play my plastic alto recorder through a digital delay line.
Oh, yeah. We back to DX/Mirage/Juno. I like to think that my harmonic content got a little more sophisticated.
If Bob Guccione ever makes a Vivaldi biopic, I've got the score right here.
Fear of a John Tesh Planet.
Just a throbbing drone thing.
Same throbbing drone as 88k but with vocal samples instead of Juno.
The filename says 89 but this was 1988; the Juno-106 died that summer.
This ended up at the end of a Hunger Moon cassette.
Definitely 1988, despite the filename.
An unfinished song.
Another unfinished song.
Yet another unfinished song.
Still 1988, judging from the pathos-filled sound of a Juno violin patch.
Is there any end to the number of unfinished songs?
There is an unfinished song haunting Europe.
