In a break from my traditional rantings, I would like to begin by bringing to your attention a small vignette concerning my musical activities of the last twenty years or so. Back in January, 1990, I was given the opportunity by a lecturer at my University (it was a plain old 'college' then) to make use of a recording studio that was sitting idle in the back arse end of the Music Department. I was utterly overjoyed. I unlocked the door (I have by-passed the fact that I was first given the key), to discover a whole new world which, at the time, seemed like a paradise to me but that I now look back upon with amusement as the equipment list in this 'studio' was basic, to say the least. In addition to an upright piano and monophonic synthesiser, there were 2 Otari 2-track reel-to-reel tape recorders, a cassette deck and quite a bit of fungal growth around the skirting boards.
Over the next two months, I proceeded to spend as much time as was humanly possible recording what was to become my first proper 'album.' In a way it proved to be the perfect statement of everything that's good and bad about being left to run riot entire on your own in a recording studio.
First, I had no knowledge or experience of anything at all to do with music recording. I didn't know how to work a synthesiser, and I sure as hell had no clue about the tape machines. I had to supply my own acoustic guitar, and a cheap microphone, plug it directly into the tape machine, and go. Nobody showed me how to work anything. I don't think anyone else knew, to be honest, which is why the studio had lain idle for so long. The first song I recorded was a song that my friend Michael and I had written several years before, entitled 'Whatever Happens.' It seemed appropriate, somehow. I recorded a basic rhythm guitar track on one of the tape machines. But wait - I had no bass, so I used the acoustic and thumbed out a bass line on the lower strings and hoped for the best, whilst simultaneously playing the acoustic guitar track from one tape machine to the other I 'laid down' the bass line.
Anyone familiar with recording techniques, especially in the dark pre-computer days, will know that as soon as you record from one cassette to another you're going to create a certain amount of 'hiss' on the second recording. Then, if you want to record further, as I did, you need to record back to the first machine the two tracks you have already done, whilst at the same time playing a third. This new transfer effectively doubles the amount of 'hiss' you already had. Ultimately, during an afternoon's recording I managed to record 2 chord tracks, a 'bass', a 'lead' piano, synth and voice (with overdubs). The amount of hiss on this final recording sounded like I was singing and playing from the inside of a snake-charmer's basket, and factoring in that I had no drums or any kind of metronome meant that the final recording was a completely out of time, out of tune mess with more hiss than there was music. But I was completely besotted by this recording that I took it home to Jane and played it to her, and took her total indifference to it as a sign that she loved it.
And so it went on for another five songs, which brings me to another down-side of self-producing one's music: there's no-one else to tell you to stop. I was completely and utterly alone during those sessions, a practice I have continued to this day, but none of the six song set finished up under five minutes long and three of them ended up being over eight. And all because of the dreaded popular music device known as the 'playout.' This little passage of music, at the end of a song, can be maybe four or eight bars in length and precedes either a swift fade or a proper end to the song. Some of my 'playouts' went on for four and a half minutes! It wouldn't be so bad, I guess, if a song had so many words it had to go on for six minutes, like 'Tangled Up in Blue' by Bob Dylan, but if the song itself is actually only three minutes or so but you want to keep it going and going and going so you just play the same thing over and over and over and....oh, you get the point.
Trouble is, I still do it. I can't stop myself. Not only that, but I still have that early album, which I aptly titled 'Whatever Happened...?', on my iPod. One of these days I'm going to find some dark corner of the internet willing to take my back catalogue and shove it out there as an abject lesson to you all - don't do it, kids!
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