The
Squamidian Report – Jan. 21 / 12
issue #504
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
As some of you know, I’ve been working away at recording some of the songs I like. This is simply for my own enjoyment, recording music is a lot of fun. I certainly also enjoy sharing the ‘finished product’ CD’s with anyone who is interested but the real purpose in doing it is, well, doing it. The ‘finished product’ is not at all polished, not what someone would even remotely think about putting out as a commercial endeavor. It’s basically what I would be doing if it were a Saturday evening and I was sitting in the living room strumming away on my guitar. Actually, its more like if there were about 4 of me sitting there strumming away. That’s my only regret, that there isn’t 4 or so of me, my jam sessions would be pretty cool. Mind you, the rest of the world might not agree with the concept but I’d sure have a lot of fun.
There is quite a lot planning that goes into one of these song. The obvious first thing is to decide on a song to work on and here’s where it can be surprising. I’ve started to record some numbers that I thought would work out great only to end up deleting the project. It was simply not working out the way I figured it should. Other songs just fell into place. Then there are the ones that I really didn’t think would work out at all and they often become the ones I’m most proud of. The real fun starts after a piece of music has been chosen because then I have to decide on what I want to do with it, or at least try to do with it, where I want to take it, or it take me. It does not seem to matter how much punch or drive I put into a song, or whether I use acoustic or electric instrumentation, everything I do ends up sounding like a laid back folk song. I guess my limited vocal range and quality plus my playing style have doomed me to forever sound like a Sunday afternoon folk singer pumping out ‘easy listening’ stuff. But anyway, once a song has been chosen, I lay down the first track. It’s the melody sang into the mic, as I strum along on the acoustic guitar. The mic picks up my voice much stronger than the guitar. I do this combo of voice and rhythm guitar as a single take. It seems to work best that way. I must pre-plan any intro’s, breaks and repeats and leave the appropriate spacing and timing for them. Interestingly, my lead track usually goes down on the first take, very seldom do I ever need (perhaps that should say ‘want’) to do several attempts. One thing that tends to force another take or two is when I’m part way through laying down a track and I begin to hear strange squeaking through the head phones. That will inevitably be the result of Willow having come up behind me with one of her squeaky toys in her mouth, as her jaws work the squeaker at the top of it’s decibel range.
Once the first track is down the fun really starts, and the time really flies. Its from there that I start building on that foundation. Its from there that I can start jamming with myself. I must come up with and then record a lower harmony, then do the same with an upper harmony. Then, if the song permits or requires it, I will start adding in more back-up vocals, high and low, or repeating vocals as well. I’ve discovered that if I separate the harmonies by panning the tracks slightly left and right I get a fuller sound with less muddyness. In a lot of ways, I must learn the song as I build it. I obviously sort-of knew the melody but I’ve had to create my version of the rest of the number. This also applies to the instrumentation. I get to invent things like the intro, or a lead break, or an ending. I often must play along with the unfinished version in order to work out various possible parts. The whole afternoon can slip by without me even noticing. Good thing we have a lot of rainy days this time of year.
One number that worked out quite nicely is ‘Ghost Rider In The Sky’, that old cowboy song. I tend to like cowboy music, which is the original ‘western’ music. It can be quite poetic. The stuff that got labeled ‘Country & Western’ is what commercialism did to the original country, and, western music. I was able to build multiple levels of harmony and repeats into my version, along with some electric guitar leads and repeats. I think it came out pretty good. Another song that surprised me was ‘Cool Water’. I didn’t think it would go very far but decided to give it a try anyway. You know that song, “All day I face the barren waste, bla, bla, bla” It was pretty boring the way we all learned it as kids. I’ve heard the Barbershoppers do it quite nicely and I’ve played around a bit with it in the past, so, I recorded it. Again, it became a lot of fun adding multiple harmonies and I ended up sounding like a whole chorus, or at least a quartet. Makes for a great hobby.
Something I do like are songs with words in them. That sounds silly until you think about most of the modern stuff that simply repeats a few lines over and over. Songs with a lot of words tell a story, and they can be a lot of fun as you try to enunciate your way through them. The fun gets even better when you try to sync your harmonies with your lead vocals. Just try doing Johnny Cash’s ‘Get Rhythm’. You need all your teeth for that one. Same with ‘Ghost Riders’, a lot of neat words in there.
Anyway, everything I record gets posted to my web site, and once there was enough material to fill a second CD, I put one together. Now I’m working on CD #3 but I’m running out of material that I know or sort of know, so it might be a while before its done. The songs on the web site are MP3’s for faster downloading. When I burn a CD of songs to the CD’s, they go on as uncompressed M4A’s or some such thing, which permits a much higher sound quality. So, if you have (or want) the CD’s, they sound better than the web site versions, but they all sound best when listened to through ear phones. I’ve test played my stuff over various sound systems and get different results through each, but the best sound always seems to be through phones, no matter what system is playing the CD.
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Different topic now… the weather. This is Canada in the winter and that’s what we always talk about sometimes. We (the west coast) were supposed to get hit with 3 snowstorms in a row over the past week. We didn’t get any of them, or at least this part of the Lower Mainland didn’t. Vancouver went through the usual hustle and bustle of getting all their snow equipment ready, and the media bombarded the area with storm information. But it didn’t happen, except for way out the Fraser Valley from Abbottsford to Hope and of course the mountain passes. Oh, and Victoria over on the Island got hit a couple of times. Its all to do with wind direction. Places like Squamish tend to get nailed when the wind brings the weather up the Sound and it piles up where the mountains close in and block said wind. But when the wind is from a slightly more westerly direction, it goes right over top of us and piles up the weather out toward Hope and they get hit.
Some of those areas did get hit pretty hard with blowing and drifting and that’s unusual for out here as snow is usually too heavy to blow or drift but it’s been dropping down to -15 or so with wind chills close to -25 and that makes for snow that can blow. There was lots of news footage of vehicles in the ditch, or into each other etc. The police kept telling everyone to slow down if they must go out at all but no one listens. Why should they, there’re all invincible. A good example was some news footage of a nice new state-of-the-art SUV, upside down in the ditch. The vehicle had everything, computer controlled traction, anti-skid, stability, the works. And you could easily see from the view of the rolled-over vehicle that it had proper winter tires, but, it also had a driver who felt that with all this ‘safety’ equipment and features he could go anywhere at any speed because he and his SUV were invincible, nothing could stop or harm him. Well, an icy stretch of highway and some strong cross winds put him in his place, the ditch. But no one listens or learns.
And guess what… I finally used my snow blower again after it sat idle and un-needed for over 2 months, on a whole whopping 1-inch of snow. Yup, 1 silly little inch. I could have hand shoveled faster and easier but any kind of equipment should be used occasionally, just to keep it from crumbling into dust, so, I fired it up and basically pretended to blow the dusting from my driveway.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
We’ve finally gotten a little snow here in KW. I went out to find about 3” on the driveway this afternoon, just enough to make use of the snow blower and burn off some of the old gas that’s been in the tank since last year. With a chest cold that’s been bugging me for the past week it was actually good to breath some fresh air for a change. The only time I get a little fresh air is when I let the dog out the back to do his business.
Looks like south western Ontario is getting blasted again this year with snow just like it did last year around this time. They had Hwy 402 closed last year and had to bring in the army to extract people from the wreckage of about 30 vehicles. The small towns in the area were putting people up in their arena’s and private homes till the storm blew over. Today on that same stretch of the 402 there was another 24 vehicle pile up and a few deaths involved this time. The last vehicle to plow into the mess of vehicles was an OPP cruiser responding to the scene! I guess nobody’s immune to the curses of such heavy winter weather, not even the mighty OPP! It’ll take a few days before they get this latest mess cleaned up. Let’s hope the weather clears up so they can see what they’re doing!
I’m glad I don’t have to work in such weather any more!
One of the benefits of retirement is that you don’t have to go out in such crappy weather if you don’t want to!
Sorry folks but this is one of those weeks where the writer doesn’t have a lot to say!
I think I’ll spare you the agony and call it a night for this week!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
Cats have over 100 vocal cords. Dogs have only 10.
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Have a good one..
the doug
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