Behind The Sound

What makes my solo act unique is that I play all the various instruments of a band myself, recording the backing tracks I use on stage in my own small studio. Because of this unusual approach, I thought I would provide a look backstage at how the music gets made. You can skip to any particular instrument by simply clicking on the highlighted text in the paragraph below, or read the whole page in order.

The foundation of any band is the rhythm section: drums and other percussion, and bass. I also play acoustic guitars and electric guitars, harmonica,  and keyboards as well, plus I sing all the vocals. All these tracks are recorded on studio recording equipment and mixed down onto the hard drive of a laptop computer. I've also included a more detailed equipment list at the end.

Unlike most solo acts, I began my career as a drummer. In fact, the only formal musical education I had—except for voice—was in percussion. I started drumming professionally before I could drive a car and continued until I began my solo career in 1982. My father gave me the classic set of red sparkle Ludwigs pictured here in 1965, which I still use for my recordings. Over the years I've added better hardware and some great Zyldjian cymbals to the set, as well as an excellent Yamaha snare drum and some chrome tom-toms. One of the greatest technical challenges I’ve had to face is to record myself on drums, since the drum track has to be recorded in a single, long take and the live sound of the drums makes it impossible to engineer the recording until after the session. For some songs I use the original recording as a template for the drum part. For others and for all my original songs, I use a drum machine to establish the basic arrangement and then record real drums over it. (Some songs I play on stage still retain these drum machine parts, though most people can't tell which ones.) While I don't have any one instrument that I prefer, I sometimes miss playing drums: it's a great way to get the yeah-yeahs out of your system.

Being on the road with my new digital recorder (see below) I've invested in a new drum machine. This small package (it's only about as big as a paperback book) packs a whallop, with over 200 tunable drum sounds, touch-sensitive pads, and a great deal of recording flexability. It's not the same as playing real drums, of course, but it's close enough that I can barely tell the difference--except that the drum parts have none of the usual  noise that goes along with live drum recording.

Any studio engineer will tell you that percussion doesn’t end with drums, and often a tambourine or maracas part can prove the most distinctive sound on a recording. Pictured here are a few of the percussion instruments I use: cowbell, tambourine, maracas, woodblock, claves, and guiro. I’ve also used things as diverse as wind chimes, a chef’s knife, and a plastic jar of onion flakes as percussion instruments. Also not pictured is a set of congas borrowed from a friend that filled out the percussion tracks of songs like “Margaritaville.”

The bass player is the unsung hero of a band, laying down the vital backbone on which the rest of the song is built. I spend at least as much time copying bass parts note-for-note, or writing original bass lines, as I do on any other instrument, but people rarely comment on those difficult tracks. One of the few comments came when I performed as a duo with a bass player who thought he could match my parts fairly easily, but quickly gave up. I record the bass part for some songs on my keyboard, but for most I use a bass guitar, usually this Yamaha BB-300. A keyboard just can’t match the subtleties of a real bass.

I've written most of my songs on the classic Glen Campbell model Ovation guitar pictured above, one of the first Ovations made. Unfortunately, on a particularly cold trip to Montana the bridge broke off. Even though I managed to repair it, the electronics no longer function correctly. So these days I play the Gretsch Grand Concert Acoustic pictured at right, a beautiful maple-finished guitar with a soft sound and a light touch that makes it a pleasure to play on stage. I still use the Ovation for some studio recordings, though.

Almost every song I play or record calls for an electric guitar, which usually means this silver sunburst Fender Stratocaster. I also use a rare Ovation UK-II, which has a much fatter sound than the Strat. I run both through the state-of-the-art Line 6 PODxt preamp pictured to the right and then directly into the mixing board so I don’t have to lug around a separate amp for stage work. The preamp gives me access to dozens of presets that call up at the touch of a button the emulated sounds of hundreds of classic amps, speaker cabinets, mike placements, and a huge array of reverbs, choruses, echoes, distortions, and other effects, so that no two guitar parts sound the same. With my new computer system, I can hyperlink to the different settings with a simple click.

Harmonica is a small instrument but it finds its way into many songs. In the studio I can play the harmonica by itself and toy with the amplification and reverb to get just the right sound. On stage, of course, I usually have to use a harmonica holder so I can play guitar at the same time, always a crowd pleaser.

My father was a successful professional keyboardist—piano, organ, and accordion—as well as a band leader. While he didn’t teach me much formally, we always had a piano at home on which I learned music theory and practised piano technique. I record a few tracks on Dad’s accordion, but most of my keyboard work is done on this Yamaha DX-7 that I use to synthesize the usual piano and organ sounds, as well as strings and horns and many other instruments that fill in the backgrounds of my recordings. I also play it on stage using a variety of sounds, sometimes with a standard piano sound as the sole accompaniment for ballads.

Vocals make or break any band. Though I wasn’t blessed with a great natural voice, I always had a wide range, often singing the highest and lowest parts in the bands I joined. Some lessons from an excellent voice teacher in Seattle, though, improved my technique a lot. I sing all the harmony parts on my recordings, following the lead of singers like Joni Mitchell and Dan Fogelberg.  The round black object is a pop-screen to prevent my p's and b's from popping the sensitive studio microphone.

The vast majority of the recordings I use on stage, as well as the recordings on my CDs, were done on good old-fashioned recording tape, using the Fostex Model 80 eight-track recorder and Yamaha RM-804 studio mixing board pictured here. Actually, most of the songs I've recorded involve more than eight tracks, since I record the drums on at least four tracks and remix them to stereo. Once in a while I do that with other tracks as well, combining a couple of vocal tracks into one, for instance, in a process known as "ping-ponging." The final mix to stereo is an art in itself, since I don’t record the vocal and instrumental parts I perform on stage. But having done several hundred recordings has made it second nature to me.

Few tracks of any song are recorded the best way possible the first time, so I use signal-processing equipment to improve the sound of the mix (top to bottom): an aural exciter to replace some of the frequencies lost in the recording process, a reverb unit to add depth and presence, a compressor/limiter to even out the sound, a digital delay unit to add effects like echo and chorusing. When I find the sound I want, I mix the eight tracks of the master recording down to the stereo signal I use for my backgrounds on stage. At the bottom of the picture is a 31-band stereo equalizer, used live to adjust the signal coming out of my speakers to match the acoustics of virtually any room.

The latest addition to my equipment is a state-of-the-art digital recording work station, a Korg D1600mkII. While some people find the sound of digital recording a bit cold compared to the warmth of tape, the advantages of this new recorder far outweigh any drawbacks. If nothing else, it's compact enough to bring with me on the road. Among its other features: it has an almost unlimited number of tracks, recording digitally introduces no tape hiss or wow and flutter, access to any point in the song is almost instantaneous, and it has a vast array of high-quality effects built into it. It also has a USB port, enabling me to transfer my studio masters directly to the computer hard-drive (see below), so there is no signal loss in the mixing process. Listen for some great new sounds coming from this new system.

The Back-Up Band On Stage

Whether a song was recorded on tape or digitally, it's mixed down to a stereo master recording that I use on stage. That CD-quality track is stored on an external hard-drive that is linked to a laptop computer. Using the same software I used to develop this website, I've constructed a web-type page for each song in my repertoire that looks like the one pictured above. Each page contains a wealth of information that I use while performing on stage:
1. Guitar: either my Telecoustic or one of my electric guitars, in which case the setting on the guitar is specified.
2. Preamp setting: each song calls for a specific setting on my PODxt guitar preamp. I can access each one simply by clicking on the underlined number and name, which instantly resets the preamp to the appropriate sound.
3. Song title and artist: this tells me, obviously, what the song is and who performed it. (In this example, I've used the title cut to my latest CD, "Doin' Time.") But this line does more as well: by clicking on its associated hyperlink, I call up the appropriate song file from the computer, which starts automatically within a couple of seconds, and I also start a well-timed sequencing program that automatically changes the lyrics from one verse to the next.
4. Lyrics: in order to provide print that's easy to see while performing, I've set up the lyrics so that they automatically change at the correct time. (I've performed my repertoire often enough that I rarely need these prompts, but they're very helpful on new or rarely performed songs.)
5. The PODxt has several foot-switchable options. "Comp" stands for "compressor," a device that evens out the sound of the guitar and often provides a volume boost as well, quite useful during guitar solos.
6. I play a couple of different harmonicas on stage for songs in different keys, G and A. I use the harmonica either with a metal holder (+) or I hold it in my hands (-).
7. The "Stomp" switch turns on one of various distortion devices, which gives my electric guitars a growly, nasty sound.
8. The "Modulation" switch activates effects like chorus and flanging and tremolo, which gives the guitar sound a rich, deep sound.
9. I play some songs on my Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer, sometimes in conjunction with a guitar. This specifies which sound I need and which effect I use on it, such as chorus or echo, from my external digital delay.
10. Song duration.
11. Some songs require that I use a capo on my acoustic guitar to raise the pitch  of the strings and to provide better fingering for the chords of the song.
12. This hyperlink changes the page to the master list of songs, which is just the list of categories: Rock, Country, Oldies, etc., each of which hyperlinks to that particular category.
13. This hyperlink sends me back to the same category as the present song, in this case sending me back to the list of my original songs.
14. Chord charts: these tell the chords and the arrangements of all the songs. Again, I rarely need this for songs I play often, but for new material it's very handy.
15. Lights: these symbols tell me which color light to switch on at the beginning of the song. Light changes through the rest of the song are memorized.
16. Effects: I have some short sound bites and brief song slices that I link to with this button.

Equipment List

Studio

Korg D1600mkII 16-Track Digital Work Station
Fostex Model 80 8-Track Recorder
Yamaha RM-804 Recording Mixer
Marshall MXL Studio Condensor Microphones
Alesis SR-16 Drum Machine
Yamaha Stereo 700 Amplifier
Biamp Spring Reverb
Aphex Type C Aural Exciter
Yamaha Stereo Compressor/Limiter
Ovation Glen Campbell Acoustic Guitar
Ludwig Drums
Yamaha Hardware
Zildjian Cymbals
Percussion
Yamaha BB-300 Bass Guitar
Hand-made Dulcimer
LP Conga Drums
Accordion

Stage

Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar
Ovation UK-II Electric Guitar
Gretsch Historic Series Acoustic Guitar
Line 6 PODxt Guitar Preamp
PODxt Foot Controller
Hohner Special 20 Harmonicas
Yamaha DX-7 Synthesizer
Marshall MXL Studio Condensor Microphones
Behinger 14-Channel Mixing Board
Line 6 Space Chorus
2 Bose PS1-Classic 1400 Watt Line Array Amp/Speaker Combos
2 Bose B1 Subwoofers