Musical/Technical Notes

This recording was done at home, on a Roland VS840-EX digital workstation. This unit records 8 tracks onto 250MB Zip disks. To ensure that I would have enough time, I used one disk per tune.

The piano is a Yamaha baby grand, which was miked with two microphones. Since I only owned one at the time, I was grateful to the help provided by Candyman music store in Santa Fe, where I was able to rent additional mics, stands, headphone mixer, transformers etc.

The drums are 1978 Gretsch, natural wood. Along with these are 70 year old Zildjian cymbals. Percussion includes a Gato drum (a modern version of the African slit drum), Brazilian a-go-go bells, Pro-Mark Rods, as well as the traditional sticks and brushes. The drums had one mic on the bass drum and one overhead. Next time, more mics and the drums get recorded first!

The flute is an Armstrong Alto, which I got second hand over the Internet.

The bass I play is a D'Armond Ashbory, which is tiny and uses silicon strings made from the same material as space shuttle O-rings. It produces an enormous amount of bass, and has fooled more than one recording engineer into asking "where's that acoustic bass coming from?" The bass my son plays is a fretless Fender Jazz Bass. Both basses were recorded direct into the machine.

Recording, even digital recording, is not for the feint of heart. Like all technology, having enough time to learn the gear is not a luxury, it is a necessity. In our case, we recorded our mystery guest pianist only to find that we'd created a really great one track recording. This meant we had to redo the entire session.

Our pianist, Ms. Teri Oso, has asked that her identity remain secret. This is because it is hard enough to eke out a living, and she has a new record coming out under her name and didn't want to cause confusion in the marketplace when folks go to buy her record. I'm nonetheless indebted to her for her artistry, in awe of her talent, and respectful of her business acumen. If you get to hear us at the CD Launch parties, make sure you don't tell anyone her name, OK?

Our recording/producer, Jack Fischman, is responsible for whatever quality you hear. I brought him the digital recording unit, and he said "what you have here is acceptable. If we work with it, it can become releasable." A week and a half later of studio mixing/mastering time, I'd learned a lot more about EQ, pan and waveforms than I'd ever imagined possible. Jack's standards challenged me to reach beyond my comfort level, and even beyond my ability level to bring up the consistency of my performance to match the occasional bright moments that sometimes grace those whose love of music exceeds the time investments required to play at a high level.

When asked if I'm a professional musician, I reply "I'm a world class amateur" because I don't feed my family from gigs (lucky for them!). When I was once asked by an elementary student following a performance, "are you famous?" I said "famous is when lots of people you've never met have already formed an opinion about you." The Internet has changed that, since any of us can share our thoughts, spirit, humor, soul and many people we've not met yet are well on the way to forming relationships that blossom into friendship when we finally do meet.

I hope this project is a first step for many of us to begin such relationships, and deepen the channels through which our understanding may flow.