There was this one week in late 1993 when I would constantly wake up in the morning thinking about mixes of songs I had completed and how cool it would be if I could just somehow change the levels and placement of a few instruments without having to re- mix each entire piece from scratch.
If I could only go back in time and make some fine adjustments... But how? I kept dreaming. Strangely enough toward the end of this week my musical cohort Nick DiMauro and I were introduced to computer genius and soon to be White Noize manager Bob Ball. Bob besides building elaborate computer systems, spent many sleepless days and nights putting noisy, badly mastered CDs on to his hard drive and cleaning them up via a three dimensional visual digital frequency analysis program. He was able to see where the offending noise or bad eq was and reeq
it or filter it out leaving the rest of the mix untouched. This procedure is fairly common place in t o d a y ’s re-mastering industry, however...Bob also painstakingly moved or removed parts from finished 2 track mixes to suit his musical fancy. It took him hours to isolate certain instruments in a
mix and manipulate them in the stereo field. The results were fairly spectacular. Parts you never heard before suddenly stand out and the sound stage is noticeably bigger. There is also a clarity
and freshness brought to the mix which was lacking in the original. In a word “awesome”. The artist or the record company probably doesn’t have a copy that sounds as good! Anyway, Nick and I were to say the least, extremely impressed. Shortly after listening to Bob’s audio magic, Nick tried to use a program we had sitting on our hard drive that apparently allowed us to do the same thing. WRONG! It didn’t really work or maybe our computer couldn’t handle it. Whatever, a week passed by. Bob’s remastering technique is swimming in my mind 24/7. God, I wish I had the tools and know how to re-master on that capacity. In my depression, I pick myself up and head out to a record shop. Not looking for anything in particular I just happen to come across an import CD containing only the bass, drums and vocals on TRANS ISLAND SKYWAY, a tune recorded on
Donald Fagen’s album K a m a k i r i a d. Apparently Mr. Fagen liked this stripped down mix combination and released it in all it’s naked glory. Suddenly, the joke bulb lit up. I bought the disc,rushed back to the studio, dumped Fagen’s song into our computer and began to re-orchestrate
and re-edit it. Too much fun. A couple of days later I drove over to Nick’s house to pick him up for a recording session we booked. As soon as he got in the car and sat down I popped in a cassette of Fagen’s tune with my new arrangement. I told him that I did a little experimenting with the cheap
digital filter program in our computer. “It sort of worked”, I said in a slightly disappointed voice. As soon as the first chord changes came on, Nick listened intensely. Every couple of measures he’d turn his head and stare at me like I’m some sort of possessed computer engineering whiz. He
hears all these obvious Tabacco ideas emerging in this tune and practically none of the original parts Fagen recorded. (Para-phrasing Nick): “This is a far better job than anything Bob played us.” “Holy shit, it’s amazing.” “I can’t hear the original keyboard parts but Fagen’s voice still sounds
perfect!” “What the fuck?” “Jesus!” “This is really incred...”etc. I let this joke play on for a bit, while I soaked up the accolades of my apparent brilliance. Eventually I broke in to a serious laughing spasm and I had no choice but to tell him the god awful truth. Nick breathed a sigh of relief, gave me a smirk and chuckled. YES! This was probably the most successful joke I ever played on a n y b o d y, and considering Nick has pulled a few heavy jokes on me, it felt pretty damn good. Naturally, I had to milk it one more time. I thought of the perfect guy - another big Fagen fan. Nick’s brother Gian. Later that day I asked Gian (who has never played a joke on me), to come down to the studio. In a more refined matter, I went through the whole digital filter spiel and played the new
Fagen. This time I held back the the truth a bit longer than I did with Nick and the results were a little different. Gian and I are no longer on speaking terms and I’m noticing fewer and fewer of my Steely Dan CDs in my CD rack.
- JT/1994
In Adrian Snood’s songs, soulful vocals and slow-moving alt-pop swirl together to create something distinctly moving. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 1, 2023
