THE LAND

A luddite defends pitch correction

March 29, 2015

Here’s the thing: I’ve got this great electric chord organ down in the basement, and with the right arrangement it sounds awesome on recordings. Except for the fact that it’s about a 1/4 tone sharp from A440. So… what’s a poor boy to do? Tonight I was recording multiple layers of electric guitar into this kind of wall of sound thing, and decided that the organ was just the thing. Except that it isn’t if I just use it “as is” – so, the only real solution is to use a pitch shifting tool on the track after its recorded.

This works great, except for the one main drawback: I have to record the track in all its out-of-tune awfulness… but if I can grit my teeth and power through, true beauty can be created. Through the Wonders of Technology.

The Vinyl Records: Arlo Guthrie/Pete Seeger, Precious Friend

March 4, 2015

Artist: Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger, with Shenandoah
Album: Precious Friend
Label: Warner Bros. Records, Inc.
Year: ca. 1982
Cat.: 2BSK 3644

Back when I was a young lad of… I’d say around 8… I had two tapes that I listened to on stay-home-sick days. At least, I remember it happening as a regular thing (as in, as regularly as I was home sick). The first tape was the soundtrack to Local Hero, which I have to say is a really good album by Mark Knopfler (and a great movie in general). The second was a dubbed version of Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie singing together in some kind of concert setting.

This album, titled Precious Friend, was evocative to my young impressionable imagination. When Guthrie invites the crowd to join him on stage and everyone cheers, I imagine them all getting up and actually fitting under the tent. Or whatever sort of stage set-up is involved in this concert. When Seeger sings about compost (“In dead earnest”) my mind was blown. In fact, I might trace my current job as an organic agronomist to that song’s lyrics. Guthrie’s ruminations on the “un-neutron bomb” were hilarious in a vaguely pre-pubescent sort of way.

So, to my surprise a copy of this double LP appeared at my local record store and I snapped it up right away. Took a listen to it this morning, and here is what I have to report:

Arlo Guthrie is better when he’s yakking between tunes than when he’s actually playing the songs – especially when it’s a sort of rag-timey kind of instrumental number using an electrical honkey-tonk piano.
Pete Seeger can just about do no wrong.
Old Time Religion is a funny song when it’s about all the “old time religions” other than the one we all think of when it comes to Spiritual music.

The thing has stood up to the test of time. I enjoyed it now as much (I think) as I enjoyed it as a child. Good job Arlo and Pete!

(Thanks Billboard.com!)

The Vinyl Records: Philippe Lapointe, Transcription

October 31, 2014

Artist: Philippe Lapointe
Album: Transcription
Label: Radio Canada International
Year: ca. 1980
Cat.: RCI 509

I bought this album in downtown Ottawa from the tiny classical music section of a hip record store. I bought it mostly because I’m always interested in obscure corners of Canadian music, and because the artist portrait on the back jacket was awesome.

Anyway, it turns out that this album is a little piece of behind-the-scenes radio magic, not intended for public consumption. The CBC has apparently maintained their own internal catalogue of “library music“, producing albums for use on CBC productions. These albums are released under the series title Transcriptions. Philippe Lapointe is a jazz man – at the time he recorded this record (his first) he was living in Vancouver and playing “a form of jazz with a richness and power that is inviting” (from the liner notes). What does this kind of jazz sound like? The very first track, “Hay Fever” is definitely busy and even frenetic. Synthesizers, saxophones, and electric piano dominate. Not much of a fan. I can say that my taste in jazz leans towards the more relaxed, and this song and the others that make up the A-side are not really that relaxed.

It’s on the B-side that things enter a more interesting territory. On our first listen, J. remarked that the music sounded like the soundtrack to a 1980s cop show. That wouldn’t be much of a stretch, since CBC-produced cop shows in that decade would have had access to this album for their production. Perhaps we have heard this music on TV without realizing it? This side is definitely more atmospheric, less dynamic, and easier (for me) to listen to. There are elements of Eno and Biosphere. Maybe even some elements of Sting’s “Englishman in New York” (you know that end part when things kind of mellow out and drift into the ether of your mind). I would say the highlight track from the second side is “Touak”, a song that hangs out in a very spacey zone with contrapuntal sliding synths, moaning fretless bass accents, and very little percussion (mostly a bass drum heartbeat keeping a slightly nervous tempo in keeping with the cop show aesthetic). I particularly enjoy the opening, as the instruments gradually stumble into their groove as though they were still finding their seats when the studio engineer pressed “Record.”

I can’t find a recording of Touak online for you to listen to. So for your listening pleasure I present to you the only track from this album that has been uploaded by anyone so far, “Hay Fever”: http://youtu.be/zTP3ICnm7O8