Digital Portastud

Raiding The Vaults

2008-07-05T16:26:00.000-07:00

***Gone***
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***Good 4 U***
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***The Call***
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***Mary Ellen Avenue***
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***Taken Aback***
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***Absconder***
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***Talk About The Rain***
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More 4

2008-04-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

Expanded this out to 12 tracks mainly out of sheer boredom. Don't know if it is much of an improvement.

Got a hold of some NOS Casio drum triggers and re-cut the hand claps and vox. A tad too much reverb overall methinks. Ran the triggered snare thru an Ibazez Bass Synth pedal just for laughs...

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All Muxed Up

2008-03-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

Please to enjoy a "Muxtape" of my favorite instruments slow jams...

4/4

2008-03-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

A tribute to my favorite time signature.

Apologizing in advance for the unfortunate turn my songwriting has taken as of late. Feel like burying my guitars in the backyard and taking up photography or something.

P.S.--The beginning is an approximation of the first real song I ever learned. I think it was supposed to be "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles. Was taught to me in 1978 by a guy who looked like Santa Claus who used to drive to my house in a yellow Chevette and give me guitar lessons once a week. Wonder if he'd be impressed by my progress now?

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Snocap Store Now Open For Biznuts

2008-03-22T04:12:00.001-07:00

Join Me @ The "61!"

2008-03-21T05:58:00.001-07:00

57 Channels & Nothing On...

2008-03-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

My Dream Song

2008-03-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

Had a dream the other night that I was hanging out with Lionel Richie at a party in someone's apartment. All of a sudden, a fire broke out on the stairway, and we all had to leave quickly. As I passed Lionel, I saw him calmly sitting in a chair with a pad of paper in his hands. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me that he had just come up with a great idea for a song, and that he had to write it down before it got away from him.

Here is the song that was running through my head when I woke up the next morning:

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In other news, CD saled have doubled since last week. Thanks for your support--means a lot to me.

We Get Press!

2008-03-06T03:06:00.000-08:00

Extensive info on my "new" side project can be found here.

A Brief History of "Sunday Songs"

2008-02-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

--The "Sunday Songs" CD was recorded in the studio pictured above between December, 2007 and February, 2008. A total of 11 songs were recorded, and all were used for the CD. Two songs were previously written and demoed, and nine were new compositions.

--The CD was recorded on a Tascam DP-02 CF Portastudio, which was purchased after the above picture was taken. The songs were transferred from Compact Flash memory cards into my computer, and then edited using Audacity.

--All new songs were written on a $249.00 Yamaha acoustic guitar. Most drums came from a vintage Casiotone keyboard. Other were "borrowed" from various sample patterns from online drum machines etc. Other instruments used included an autoharp, mandolin, harmonica, MusicMan bass, and Fender, Danelectro and custom-built electric guitars. Some songs also featured shakers, hand claps, and a shoe box with a shirt draped over it that I pounded on with drumsticks.

I Don't Wanna

2008-02-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

Finished off the record with a tune I have been kicking around for years. Knocked this out really quickly after band practice today. Wanted to get the harmonica on something, although I must admit that this is one instrument I find totally baffling for the most part. Think a lot of people look at the harmonica as being one step up from the kazoo, but try as I might, I just can't get much to come out of it that makes any sense.

Made my first CD sale already to somebody I don't even know this morning! I feel like a rockstar today or something.

Have really enjoyed this creative period of my life, but I will probably take a break for a while. I'll try to keep this site updated as often as I can, and maybe try uploading some of my older stuff from the archives that I can stand to revisit..

-The Dandy Highwayman

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Cover Photo

2008-02-23T05:16:00.000-08:00

From a scan of one of my grandfather's fantastic slides. A picture of yours truly huddled around the General Electric Show'n Tell with his family (and cousin Marcie). Wish my dad had hung on to that pink cardigan--would be quite hip today.

Here, Try These Drugs

2008-02-17T14:04:00.001-08:00

During my student teaching assignment, I had to write an anti-drug skit to perform with my students. One of my kids was an actor, so he got to play the part of the dealer. After each kid got up and said what they wanted to do when they grew up, the dealer said "here, try these drugs." After they tried drugs, of course, their lives were ruined and their dreams were destroyed.

Just for fun, I tried to turn that play into a song this weekend, but the only thing that really worked over the music was the tagline. Pretty sure this is the only song I have ever written with a comma in the title.

Ordered a stamp with the project name and some blank cardboard CD sleeves this weekend. Figured that was the cheapest way to "release" this collection of songs for the time being.

If you'd like a copy, just click the "Buy Now" button on the right side of the page, and you will be magically transported to PayPal. I'd love to give them away for free, but even burning them at home and printing out the inserts on my HP Officejet ends up running me a few bucks per copy. I've decided to call the CD "Sunday Songs," and also to go back to using the name The Dandy Highwaymen as my artist's alias.

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Get To Know Me!

2008-02-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

Please head on over to Mishaps, Mayhem and Merriment and check out an interview with yours truly on songwriting, blogging, and the state of religion in the North Carolina school system.

Sunday Song

2008-02-11T02:33:00.001-08:00

Kind of snuck this in last weekend and didn't say much about it. I really like this one. Guess this is the result of spending 4 hours last weekend watch the new Tom Petty documentary.

If you haven't seen it, I'd say it was worth your while to seek it out. Wonder how many other bands that packed themselves into a station wagon and headed out to Hollywood to seek their fame and fortune never even made the cross-country trip, let alone established themselves as one of rock's top acts for the last three-plus decades.

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Taillights

2008-02-09T06:44:00.000-08:00

This week's song seems like a bit of a throwaway to me. I tend to write mostly mid-tempo stuff, so at least this one is much more uptempo. Since I am using pre-recorded drum machine patterns for this project, I am kind of locked in to the tempos anyway one I choose a pattern.

Was working on another song and not getting anywhere with it when this one popped out instead. Maybe I'll get back to the other one this week...

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Devil Never Even Lived

2008-02-02T07:07:00.000-08:00

We were talking about the concept of palindromes in school this week when I came up with the idea for this one. The rain you hear in the background is a combination of four different thunderstorms playing at once.

Everything just seemed to come together on this one. I like how everything has its own space in the mix. Having some trouble with the Portastud lately, as it seems to want to freeze up now in the middle of recording a take. The only solution is to pull the plug, which wipes out everything that hasn't been saved. Had to re-do the bass and vocals on this, and now I am sufficiently paranoid enough to save everything right after it is recorded, which I guess is a good practice anyway on these types of machines.

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Nothing More

2008-01-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Another week, another song!

Have a songwriting strategy in place now that I am trying to stick to. First, I record a couple nice-sounding chord progressions into my nifty Olympus digital voice-recorder (the kind you use to record business meetings). I find this to be a big help, because if I happen to come up with a decent melody or a catchy guitar line when I am beginning to write, I always immediately forget it unless I get it recorded right away.

After that, I figure out the basic structure of the song, and then begin laying down rhythm loops and guitar tracks on the Tascam. At this point, I don't even know what the song is about, or how long the verses should be etc. Nevertheless, nailing down a structure early on seems to give me some sort of framework to hang the lyrics on, although sometimes I paint myself into a corner working this way.

The last thing that I figure out are the lyrics, and they are usually inspired by some of the nonsense lines that I sing just to remember the shape of the melody. If I happen to get hung up, I find it helps just to put the lyric sheet away for a while, and they seem to somehow work themselves out in my brain while I am busy doing laundry and other mundane tasks around the house.

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5135

2008-01-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1989, I went out and bought a Fostex 4-track cassette recorder and started to mess around with it in my crappy apartment. I liked the Tascam I had way better, but for some reason I sold it before I left school.

The Fostex at least had an effect send, so my demos sounded a little more polished from this point on. This was the first song I recorded over the Thanksgiving holiday that year, when I was contemplating calling about a personal ad I had seen in the paper...

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Workin' at the Wal-Mart

2008-01-21T10:27:00.000-08:00

If you live in a small town, or any town for that matter really, you begin to cultivate a love/hate relationship with Wal-Mart. You hate them for everything they stand for, and everything they are doing to small businesses and minimum-wage workers across America. Yet, you have to admit, they pretty much have everything there you could possibly ever need, and for prices that are often shockingly low.

I think if you work at Wal-Mart however, there probably ain't much to chalk up in the "love" column. At least that was the case for Barbara Ehrenreich, who spent a few weeks working there while conducting research for her book Nickel & Dimed . I highly recommend avoiding that book, unless you really want to see how difficult it is to make it in America these days without a college degree and a significant income.

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Sitting Backwards

2008-01-19T18:34:00.000-08:00

Just re-acquired my trusty old Yamaha SPX 90 from a friend and thought I would give it a workout this weekend. Nice to finally have a dedicated reverb unit for my studio setup, though I am still using effects from my Roland amp to record electric guitar into the Portastud as well.

Been having a pretty productive month as far as songs go. Not really sure what inspired this one, besides the fact that I have spent a lot of time flying back and forth across the country since last summer.

I often don't have anything in mind when I put a song together, and just kind of hope the song "finds itself" somewhere along the way. Once I get a couple lines, or a basic concept together, I just kind of build it up from there, and see where it takes me. Lately I've been trying to get away from the basic "boy meets girl" stuff, as it seems kind of silly and insincere from the perspective of a married person.

Besides, as Joe Strummer once noted, "the subject's been covered."

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Almost Summer

2008-01-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

Thought this would be appropriate today--we had freezing rain and snow, and a two-hour "delay" for school this morning. I was afraid that they would tack those two hours on to the end of the day, but thankfully that wasn't the case.

This song was recording on my original Porta One back in 1988 in Ann Arbor, MI. It annoys the hell out of me now, but at the time I thought it was pretty good. I remember my grandmother liked it as well.

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The Sixty One

2008-01-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

Just uploaded the new songs to this site. Lets you hear and promote new music from a variety of artists. Worth checking out for sure!

the sixtyone.

More Ants

2008-01-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

Pulled out the ART TubeMP, and then ran the vox through a stompbox compressor and the Roland Cube for effects. Backed off the bass and drums even more, and I am gonna leave well enough alone on this one...

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Ants

2008-01-13T05:50:00.000-08:00

This is a song I already demoed a few years back with a free version Pro Tools I had on my iMac, but never bothered to finish. Found a better key for it, so thought I would give it another shot. Used my "new" Casio MT-205 for drums and a keyboard line on this.

Having the same problem with bass build-up in the mix, so this one was run thru a compression and EQ plug-in from Audacity. Still not happy with the singing, so I'm gonna re-record the vocals today and mix it down one more time. The Tascam will only save a single master mixdown of your song, so ya gotta commit if you decide to change anything.

Used a beat-up Autoharp for the intro on this that is in severe need of tuning. I was thinking of the New Radicals hit when I played it.

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Rockin' GTI

2008-01-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

A fitting tribute to my favorite pocket rocket. Featuring Bill Fate on Candy Apple Red Fender Jag and backing vox.

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Finishing Seventh Grade

2008-01-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

Think this all came together nicely. Re-did the vocals and main guitar track, and fixed everything else "in the mix" Kept the mandolin solo just like it was 'cause that took forever to get right!

Really tough to mix your demos when you know the final version will be squeezed down onto an MP3. All the effects tend to get lost somewhere along the way, and you always get weird resonances that are hard to predict ahead of time.

Could really used a compressor for the vocals, but at least the thirty-dollar pop screen I picked up last week made a big difference. Gonna try to write a few more songs with this basic set-up and see what I end up with.

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2 The Dentist

2008-01-07T05:37:00.000-08:00

This one goes back...wayyyyy back. Probably one of the first real attempts at songwriting. Guessing this was from around 1980, right before high school. Sad to think I entered high school in this highly uncool frame of mind.

Recorded with a Radio Shack dictation mic into my 1979 Yorx 8-track bar mitzvah stereo. People can say what they want about 8-tracks, but the tape I recorded these early songs on 27 years ago still plays fine in my player.

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7th Grade

2008-01-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

Stayed up late last night finishing my first demo on the recently acquired Tascam dp-02cf compact flash multitrack recorder (actually arrived in the mail yesterday morning). Very nice piece of kit for under than three hundred bucks ($260 with a 1 GB Compact Flash card & free shipping on eBay), which is probably less than I paid for my original Porta One cassette multitrack over twenty years ago.

This thing is built like a tank with a solid metal housing, and is extremely user-friendly. I was able to knock out the demo at the bottom of this post in a couple hours, though it clearly needs a lot of polishing. In fact, I think I will probably re-record the whole thing again, since this was mainly an experimental session, and I've got a cold which you can clearly hear in the vocals. Another problem I am having is the fact that this is my only effects processor at the present time!

They make a version with built-in reverb, but that one records to an internal hard drive, which of course will eventuall die, not to mention the fact that it has to make some noise as it spins around furiously trying to record your demo.

My previous multitrack recorder, the Zoom MRS-8, had way more bells and whistles, including multi-effects and a built-in drum machine, but I was constantly baffled by it. I found myself pulling out the manual and pretty much starting from scratch every time I wanted to use it, thought I was happy with the ultimate quality of what I produced with it.

My original plan was to find an interface to record to my laptop, but I spent a day with the Line 6 UX2 Toneport, and quickly realized it was not the way to go for me. The thing even comes bundled with their Gearbox guitar processing software, and a stripped-down version of the Abelton Live recording program for less than two hundred bucks. Nevertheless, I found that I had very little patience to deal with the choppy playback and latency issues I was having, so I boxed it up and sent it right back to Amazon. Unfortunately, by this time, the Zoom that it was supposed to replace had already sold on eBay, and I just felt silly going out and buying another.

Besides, I think I got a great deal on the Tascam, due to a printing error on the unit which inspired me to start this blog in the first place:

No idea how they managed to miss a typo like this! it even says "Portastud" in a few places on the box, though it just has to be an error. The whole manual is filled with glaring mistakes as well...

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Welcome 2 Digital Portastud!

2008-01-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

Hiya! Thanks for stopping in. This is a blog about music, home recording and songwriting--three things I've been obsessed with for the better part of three decades, though I have to admit I am much more of a enthusiast than a craftsman.

Les Paul once said that "just because you love something, doesn't mean you are any good at it." While this quote has a particular resonance with me, I guess the trick is to keep trying regardless, and hope you will eventually stumble on something through sheer force of will...
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(one of my favorite home recordings from the mid-'90s. Back when I had a full MIDI set up--Alesis MMT8 sequencer, Roland JX8P, Casio CZ-101, and an Emu Proteus sound module. Recorded to cassette 4-track.)