Here is a Lava recording from 1995. The box of the old 2 inch multitrack tape says T-Rex #3 is the title. Musicians: the usual suspects… OL, Jon Gagan, Carl Coletti, Mark Clark and featuring Eric Schemerhorn, fresh from tour with Iggy Pop. Technical info: recorded in my Santa Fe studio on a Sony 24-track, 2 inch machine. Transferred to digital (24/48k) in 2003 and mixed this week.
Oh, and the sound (((identified as Solo Gtr on the track sheet))) that starts about a minute and a half into the song and develops into something that reminds me of the sound of a large propeller plane in the middle of the night, was made by a guitar, played through the wonderful Eventide H3000…
TONE and NOTE are the exact same letters, rearranged. In fact, if you discard the “e”, NOT is TON backwards. In my opinion one could not, should not be without the other.
Victor commented on February 19th, 2010 at 12:37 Hi Ottmar would you mind sharing about how far the mic is from your guitar or hand when you are recoding? Just wondering as I saw a pic of John measuring mic distances. Love the way your guitar sounds and how you capture the beauty of your playing.
Thank you, Victor. No, I don’t mind at all, because the secret of my tone lies not in the distance of the microphone to the guitar, nor does it, I believe, lie in the model of microphone or pre-amp I use. I also don’t think the guitar itself or the brand of strings is most important. To be sure, all of these items add to the sound, and have been carefully selected to either bring out certain qualities of tone I like or make the playing of the instrument more enjoyable.
Since I don’t have a fixed distance between the guitar and the microphone, I will measure the distance once we are set up for recording in HD, next Tuesday. I generally use a greater distance for solo recordings, and move the microphone closer for band recordings. I’d say the mike is about a foot away from the soundhole, and maybe a foot and a half for solo recordings.
Jon suggested also doing that for my solo concerts last fall, since I don’t have to compete with other instruments and the P.A. only amplifies my guitar. We moved the microphone, which is normally just a few inches (((I’d say between 1 and 2 and no more than 3 inches))) from the soundhole when I play with the band, to a distance of about a foot away from the guitar and it sounded very nice and natural.
Short list of my equipment, pretty much unchanged since 2002:
Lester DeVoe Flamenco guitar (1 Negra and 1 Blanca)
D’Addario Composite strings for the 3 bass strings and D’Addario Titanium for the 3 treble strings
Shure KSM141 microphone (live) and Neumann M-149 (studio)
Martech MSS-10 microphone pre-amp (was only studio, but I will also use it on tour this year)
I think the most important part of my gear is the shape of my fingers, the shape and thickness of my nails and how I touch the strings. I think because of the HD recording quality and because it’s just a trio (((no rhtyhm guitars or percussion to distract))) one will be able to really hear on the new album how I constantly change my hand position, from playing by the bridge to playing over the soundhole and near the neck.
Hope that helps. More next Tuesday, and please remind me on Wednesday if I forget to post the distance. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• PS: (updated on Monday)
steve commented: I believe it was Jaco Pastorius who said, “the sound is in my hands.”
If one listens to Jaco on various recordings, no matter what bass he plays, it sounds like Jaco.
Very true.
Brenda commented: Would you share a lttle more about your first paragraph? Thank you.
In the first paragraph I was wondering whether there is a linguistic reason for the fact that the words “Note” and “Tone” contain the same letters. After all, they are equally important for making music. Even on the piano, which, unlike the guitar or trumpet, is a mechanical instrument, one can often distinguish the touch of different pianists.
On many instruments the tone-creation is an essential element of the perfomance. It does not matter how well you can play the notes on a saxophone or trumpet if you can’t produce a pleasant tone – who wants to listen if you have an ugly sound.
Then there are synthesizers, a relatively new instrument. It’s quite a tricky instrument. Some very accomplished pianists sound terrible on a synth, because while they have great technique, they have no ear for programming a nice sound on a synth. Then there are keyboard players like Brian Eno. He does not have much of a technique or training, and yet he produces marvellous synth pieces that rely on gorgeous sounds.
The guitar, I feel, lands somewhere smack in the middle. There are plenty of guitarists who play the notes well, but produce a rather ugly tone. I find that practicing one’s tone-production is just as important as playing the notes.
Making lemonade… will have to check this show out.
Hasan Elahi: Tracking Transience After new media professor Hasan Elahi was falsely accused by a neighbor of being a 9/11 terrorist accomplice in 2002, the Bangladesh-born American underwent six months of scrutiny from the FBI. Turning the tables, he personally documented the minutiae of his everyday occurrences now on view in a project called Tracking Transience at the Santa Fe art space SITE. (Via Cool Hunting)
Oxfam: Tajikistan on the Brink from Climate Change : TreeHugger The already harsh life of Tajikistan’s large population of rural poor will be “dealt an even harder blow” by extreme weather and water shortages in the coming decades, according to a new report by Oxfam International on the Central Asian nation, which the World Bank had previously named the region’s most vulnerable country to climate change — and the one with the least capacity to adapt.
How long before international courts are chocking from the barrage of lawsuits initiated by stricken countries, (((countries with grand-scale crop failures or islands that are disappearing under water))) desperately trying to get help from the countries that have contributed the most to the emissions that have lead to climate change? I’ll give it five to ten years.
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Very funny. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Safak’s second novel written in English is The Bastard of Istanbul (a literal Turkish translation of the title would be “The Father and the Bastard”), which was the bestselling book of 2006 in Turkey. The novel brought Safak under prosecution by the Turkish government for “insulting Turkishness” under Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code. The charges stemmed from a statement made by a character in her novel, who characterized the massacres of Armenians in World War I as genocide.
In response, Safak noted that “the way ultranationalists are trying to penetrate the domain of art and literature is quite new, and quite disturbing.” The charges were ultimately dismissed.
Maybe you are wondering what connects this book to the above images I captured early on Friday Morning? The photographs were taken at the Santa Fe monument commemorating the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2. (more info: Justice Department’s Prison Camp Remembered and Executive Order 9066)
I think there is this very interesting thing that happens with history… we have to remember, in order not to make the same mistake again and in order to gain perspective, but at the other end of that rememberence can lurk racism, among other dangers. I mean, one can’t seem to meet a person of Armenian heritage who doesn’t hate the Turkish without ever having known a Turk or ever having been there.
I want to remember those moments in our collective history:
the Armenian massacres in Turkey in 1915
the Nanjing massacre from 1937 (also known as the Rape of Nanking, it refers to a six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), the former capital of the Republic of China)
the holocaust in Germany 1938-1945
No, I am not going to list them all… it would take too many pages…
So, how do we hold this knowledge in our heart without letting it poison us… The unbearable lightness of being… Bearing witness without letting it stain any present or future relations. Difficult, for sure, but also important, I feel.
I visit the Santa Fe monument that commemorates the Japanese internment every year. If I lived nearby I would also visit Auschwitz and the Nanjing Memorial Hall regularly.
I also realize that these things are in our lives every single day. On a different scale, to be sure, but it shows in how we treat each other, how we think of one another.
My world at Jon’s studio: •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Very useful tool:
SPL Meter | Andrew Smith SPL Meter is a professional-grade sound level meter, also known as a decibel or dB meter, for your iPhone or iPod touch. Modeled after a traditional analog SPL meter, we have faithfully reproduced all the characteristics and qualities found in those meters, including the ballistics, ranges, filters, and decay rates. But don’t compare us to a Radio Shack meter, ours is much more accurate! We have also included a small digital LCD display, as shown in the picture, to make this the best SPL meter on the store. And this is something that the old analog meters never had!
And:
Select 40dB to 120dB in 9 ranges. Whatever range is selected, this is the value at the 0dB mark on the meter. Don’t worry if you peg the meter, you won’t bend the needle.
