Forgotten Genre Productions

I came across this video in a typical meandering social media progression. My old acquaintance Charlie Peacock has a blog that I suggest you check out, that he referenced on his facebook page which showed up on my news feed. From there I watched this video and discovered That the female here is Joy Williams who I did a show with years ago when I was touring with Waterdeep. They loved Joy and already had prior knowledge of her work but I heard her for the first time that night. She has a beautiful voice and has teamed up with this gent, John Paul White. This song is hauntingly beautiful and gets me in the way much of the Deadman music gets me. Also to note is the use of the Heil PR20 mic on Joy’s voice. As some of you may know I am a big fan of the Heil mics and have and use quite a few of them in the studio myself. Actually we used the same mic on Jennifer Lewis’ voice for the Trash & Glory project. Of course we used the gold grill and refered to it as the “Diva” mic.I will have to do more research on the Civil Wars but for now enjoy this video and check out Charlie’s post of the background of  it here.

 I realize I have been hung up on a lot of guitar toys lately but this one takes the cake, or at least fills a gap for something I have been waiting for. As all you gear savvy engineers out there know NAMM 2010 just wrapped up in Anaheim CA. For all you unsavvy engineers. NAMM is the trade show for the music products industry. This is the time when all the manufacturers show new gear and get you hyped up about it. Electro Harmonix released the Deluxe Memory Boy and a few other cool pedals but it is the Deluxe Memory Boy that catches my attention. Heres why. Back in the day (the zeros you know, naughts if you will.) I had a line 6 DD4 delay which I liked. It had some great sounds and you had the ability to have 3 different programs on one pedal. It also had the looper feature blah, blah, blah (not something I use or care about) of course one of the handiest features was the tap tempo which allowed you to quickly adjust to fit into different songs and helped me to pretend or at least try to convince others that I was playing the same song that they were. As is the case with much of life eventually the DD4 hit the wall due to over use and abuse by friendly borrowers and my self. I am not a big Line 6 fan as many of you know and this pretty much sealed their fate in regards to my meaningless support of their products. Their was no way I was spending another 250 or 300 bones to replace the delay. Of course the only delays that I used consistently in the DD4 was the analog w/ mod settings which consequentially was modelled after the EHX memory man. So in my travels I discovered the MXR Carbon Copy which I absolutely love. It is a tone machine and has a warmth and realness that I just like from the get go. I decided to replace the DD4 with a carbon copy. There was only one down side to this plan and that was tap tempo or the lack thereof as the case may be. I even considered some day adding another Carbon Copy and having one set to a lead longer delay and the other set to a shorter slap back kind of thing. Since my Egnater Rebel 20 has no reverb the extra option was even more intriguing. Then I discovered the Memory Boy and the Memory Toy from EHX. 2 different updated versions of the old Memory Man pedals. They were affordable and had that great analog tone. I thought that the memory boy was a little hard to control with the modulation being a little over the top for me but the Memory Toy was just right. I was demoing one for a while and liked what I was getting from it but felt some innate sense that I should just wait. I had long since given up on the tap tempo delay. Alas as I was dutifully trolling the NAMM releases to keep informed I came across my dream, The Deluxe Memory Boy WITH tap tempo people!!! It’s too good to be true. So now I have to wait untill they actually release them. Feast your ears on this video clip.

In preparation for this  recording session with Doug Plank and Crossway Church I have been getting my Guitar rig in order. As you see from my previous post I added a guitar. The other recent addition is the Wiggler from Electro Harmonix. Electro Harmonix makes some great pedals and the wiggler is definitely one of the greats. The thing I love about EHX is their pedals have a certain warmth to them. They usually go from subtle to over the top and have a definate analog feel to them. If you are looking for pristine sparkly clean EHX is not the way to go but if you are looking for character they nail it. I have found that when you are mixing in the box and have access to hundreds of plug ins things get a little too clean. I tend to prefer a more organic approach to tone. The only critique I have about the EHX pedals are they tend to be a little noisy. Now there are ways around this. I find as a player I need to be more aware of rolling the volume down when I am not playing. This is becoming somewhat of a lost art with all these processors and pods etc. out on the market. Back in the day as players tried to control the noise issues they discovered that their tone changed a little at different volumes and they used it as one more tone tool in their tool bag. They also discovered the volume swell which is a technique that I would certainly like to perfect. I am still refining the volume roll off.Ok, back to the wiggler. A couple of things that are interesting about the wiggler. There is an output control at the top left. You can use this to drive your amp a little for fatter slightly knarlier sounds. Oh yeah that brings us back to one of the clutch features; Tubes, baby, tubes. The wiggler has 2 12ax7wb tubes in it to give that tone mojo that we like. It is an all tube path and it sounds lush. You also have 4 different character options for vibrato and true amplitude modulation tremolo. Not only am I excited about using the wiggler with my guitar rig but I am anxious to use it on other sounds patched out of my recording rig. Sometimes having knobs to grab onto is more vibe inducing then clicking on a mouse so I am looking for another exciting tone mangler. I will keep you posted on the results.

For Christmas this year I decided I was going to get a guitar. The last couple of years for Christmas I used my Christmas money on studio gear. One year I upgraded my Studio computer, one year it was an ART Pro Channel tube channel strip, another year it was a mic I haven’t made any guitar purchases for a long time. This year however I am about to start on a project where I will be playing a little guitar and a little bass and I wanted to have the tools for tone that were necessary. I actually came close to purchasing a Les Paul Traditional Gold top. I never really saw myself as a Les Paul guy but I picked up a limited edition Les Paul for a customer of mine. There were only 100 of these models available and when it arrived in the shop I thought to my self, “what is the big deal here about a les paul. Aren’t these just over hyped over priced guitars with a name stamped on them?” So I pulled out the guitar and tuned it and played it and loved it. First of all the neck was solid on it. I like a big fat neck on my guitars, which is why I have kept my Washburn grover jackson designed MG410. If I could find another one of those guitars I would buy it in a second. They are worthless on the market but the neck is the fatest neck I have seen and the frets are these huge jumbo frets that are so easy to play. I am not a fast player I am really looking for tone. So much of the tone comes from the neck and thin little heavy metal necks do not cut it for me. Anywho, The Les Paul blew me away. I had this plan that I would put it on law a way and sell some gear and have the guitar some day. After dwelling on it for weeks I came to the conclusion that I could not justify spending that kind of money at this point in my life. I still wanted something so my quest went on. In searching I came across the JA-90 Fender Tele which is the Jim Adkins Signature tele. Jim is from Jimmy Eats World. I loved the idea of the P90’s and the different tonal options there. I started to lean towards this guitar and as I was researching it I discovered that the guitar was modeled after Jim’s TC90 tele that was no longer made when I saw the picture I loved the double cut away and the over all look. The guitar also has a set neck which is  a very nice feature. These guitars were made in Korea and the workmanship was excellent on them. On a whim I decided to do a search to see if Guitar Center had any used ones in the chain and sure enough I found one in Oklahoma City. I ordered it and waited. It arrived last week and I loved it. In the mean time I decided to take my lovely wife’s advice and clear out some of the gear that I was not using because I was waiting for the right project. I traded in a guitar and a couple of pedals that I had not used in a while and ended up paying much less than I would have for the Paul and I have a unique guitar that I love.

I heard a great interview by a friend of mine Kevin Breuner with Howard Massey about his book Behind the Glass. This is volume II which has just been released. I am a sucker for these books that document and interview pros that have recorded projects that I respect and are legendary in there own right. Some quick background on those involved is due so let me fill you in. Kevin Breuner was the guitar player in the Grammy nominated band, Smalltown Poets who I toured with as a road manager back in 1998. Kevin is now working for CD baby. Cd Baby is the largest online distributer of independent music and is a great resource for all of you interested in getting your music out to the masses. Howard Massey is a producer and engineer and author who has written many books on recording and equipment. The interview between Kevin and Howard was extremely interesting and delved into the difference in the business in this day and age compared to the climate when Howard wrote Behind the Glass volume I. They talk about how many of the big name guys are working at home now. Check out the interview here  Also they are offering a 25% of discount on the book so jog over and enlighten yourselves.