►100% Analog Madness: A Look at The Ex-Bombers “Five Star Night” Vinyl LP

With the semi-recent boom of vinyl, many artists have opted to combine 12 inches of wax with a digital download of the album.

Financially this makes sense, but the analog and digital worlds of audio differ greatly from one another and thus leads to some sort of compromise on either or both of the releases. However, we recently heard about the label Cavetone Records who only releases vinyl (with no digital component) and who keeps the process 100% analog.

We picked up a copy of The Ex-Bombers “Five Star Night” LP and when we looked inside at the dead wax we were met with the message “100% Analog Madness.” The grooves themselves contain the surprisingly giant sounds of a film noir pop duo, who only use an 8-string bass, drums, and vocals.

We reached out to Scott Walus, the producer of the record and half of The Ex-Bombers, to discuss the analog process, the philosophy of maximum minimalism, and some pieces of gear that made the record.

The first thing to understand about the analog process, is that music making is a very human experience. There is tension, release, rage, and love, and the only way to get at that is to put the band in a room together and play the song all the way through,” said Walus. All of the tracks on the record were recorded without punch-ins directly to an Otari 8 track deck.

The second element of the analog process, is the importance of capturing every piece of sonic material in a basic track. For example, Walus paired some interesting gear for the signature sound of his Hagstrom HB8 bass. He opted for guitar amps like (Ex: Sound City 50 Plus, Ampeg Gemini II) out of bass cabs with 15s.

Guitar amps have an excitement and the natural low roll-off is just made for vinyl, but the 15s just move air and sound huge,” said Walus, “I mic’d it up with a vintage Sennheiser, because the vintage ones are lower gain and just magic, into an EF86 preamp, because pentodes are spectacular in the top end, and you’ve got a full bass sound that has chime and presence.”

The other instruments and vocals on the record follow a similar story of analog care, like the calfskin head on the snare drum, the 1953 Hammond M2 organ, or the 1960s Electro-Voice crystal mic through the Sound City Fuzz Wah face heard on “Oh. Wow.” Every track has a lesser-known microphone on it, like the original Audix OM-1 heard on organ overdubs or the Shure 330 unidirectional ribbon throughout.

The 100% analog madness continues into mixing as the mixes are done onto a half-track Tascam deck into mono using a tube mixer loaded with 6DJ8 tubes and a bunch of esoteric EQs (mainly passive White EQs), limiters, and reverb. Several of these units were prototypes, built point to point and with military-grade parts by Lancaster Amplification. “That’s the great thing about Dave (Lancaster Amplification), if you can dream it up, you can call him and he’ll have a schematic for it in his head from 30 years ago. He even mated a Fairchild and a Urei for me in a 4 tube pre channel peak limiter,” said Walus.

Thinking monaurally has two purposes for Walus. “Records sound best in mono. Stereo is actually an afterthought and a trick to keep up with tape, but record grooves are at their best in mono. Second, mono really hits and tells a singular story, where if you’re pulling from hot jazz and 60s rock/pop like we were, it’s the story that you want to tell,” said Walus.

The record is an intriguing and enjoyable listening experience with multiple layers. We seem to catch something new every time we spin it. The Ex-Bombers are hitting the road this summer in support of the record and touring with many of the same instruments from the album. They have also recently released a 60 second sound sampler video to provide a taste of the sounds of the album here: https://youtu.be/-jRcWYEh_vI

►Get Attention For Your Band With Instagram

Get Attention For Your Band With Instagram

Instagram has become increasingly popular over the past few years. If you are in a band, you’d be missing a great opportunity if you chose not to set up an account. The following tips will help you get more attention for your band through Instagram.

Captions

Captions can help viewers figure out what is happening in your picture. You don’t have to worry that much about being clever or writing a full paragraph. You simply have to jot down something about your picture that helps others to understand it a little more. It’s fine if you are funny in your text, but make sure that people understand the humor and it is not some inside joke. Basically, you want to write something that is interesting and informative.

Hashtags

If you have an Instagram account, you need to use hashtags. Hashtags are a short and simple way of letting others know what is going on in your picture. You can put a series of words together (no spaces) that describe the picture or make a statement about what is happening. When you use a hashtag, you want people to understand what your words mean even if they were not looking at your picture.

That said, you need to make sure that you don’t have too many hashtags going on. They all need to make sense for your picture and/or your band. If you put up a bunch of unrelated hashtags, you are likely going to turn people off. Try and be a little funny or witty with your words, but ultimately, as long as the hashtag has to do with your band or your picture, you are fine.

Finally, keep in mind that recurring hashtags are currently a huge trend. That could end one day, but for now, you need to get in on the action. For example, “#tbt” means “throwback Thursday.” Pick the day of the week that you want to focus on, and make sure you put up a picture on that day with the corresponding hashtag. Your followers will start to look forward to your posts and will search for your images at least once a week.

Another good way to get followers is to make posts look popular by buying Instagram likes for your account or a specific pic. It will have a positive psychological impact on people and is very beneficial.

Mix It Up

Don’t put up the same type of pictures all the time. Get creative and be unique! You don’t just have to put up images of the band posing. You can do some action shots of you in concert or post a picture of the group brainstorming. You’ll keep interest going if you mix it up.

Clarity

The images that you put up on your account should be clear and bright. Dark images that are hard to decipher won’t get you very far. Your followers probably will not take the time to figure out what is happening in them. Not only that, but dark pictures aren’t very uplifting. Make sure you also take advantage of some of Instagram’s filters!

►A very strategical method for practicing new music

Today, I’d like to share with my readers a text written by american classical guitarist and music teacher Louis Gehring in which he describes very precisely an interesting alternative approach to learning new repertoire on your instrument (a method focused on a phrase-to-phrase-approach as opposed to the more common “step-by-step-improvement on the whole piece”). Don’t get me wrong: all good musicians will learn a new piece dividing it into as small and as much phrases as necessary to musically understand and technically master all of them so to eventually be able to play the whole piece without sectioning. But what normally happens is, that you get to learn all of these phrases more or less at the same pace, some difficult ones might take longer, but anyway, when you’re at the point starting to practice performance, for example, you normally have all phrases more or less perfect. And here is where this method is different, come and read on (in the beginning of the text you probably won’t see anything new, but still is very well written. Step 3 is where it gets interesting.):

Step 1: ANALYSIS
Divide the piece first into main sections, and then subdivide these sections into phrases. The phrase is the basic musical and expressive unit of any piece, and therefore should also be used as the basic learning unit.
Step 2: FINGERING
Mark all of the fingerings for both hands. Since left hand fingering is included in most editions (but should, nonetheless, be carefully examined for possible improvements), this will entail more work on right hand fingering. Careful consideration should be given to finding the easiest possible fingering with the best musical effect. It is important to practice a given passage with the same fingering each time in order to learn more quickly and to produce an accurate, consistent performance.
Step 3: PRACTICE
Begin practice, starting with the first phrase only, carefully avoiding any mistakes. Study should begin by using the metronome set at approximately one half the future performance tempo (this initial speed will depend greatly on the difficulty of the composition). When playing at this speed is mastered with appropriate dynamics, articulations, and timbre, the metronome should be moved up one notch. After this speed is mastered, then one more notch, etc.
When the player has achieved three fourths of the performance tempo, he should go on to the next phrase in the same manner, and so on. After a section has been learned with this method, the whole section should be practiced with three metronome speeds: slow, medium, and fast (the performance tempo). This is the way the section will be studied from now on in order to maintain and perfect it.
Step 4: MEMORIZATION
Using the above method, memorization can quickly take place, again using this phrase by phrase approach.
Step 5: PRACTICE PHRASES OUT OF CONTEXT
After the entire work has been learned thoroughly and memorized, phrases should be practised out of the context of the piece (this is especially useful for compositions that do not lend themselves to easy division into phrases, e.g., fugal writing). Practice the last phrase of the piece (or of a major section) by memory, then the next to the last, and so on, moving from the end forward. Practice similar phrases together so that there will be no confusion under the pressure of public performance.
Step 6: ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES
Practice without looking at the fingerboard.
Study away from the instrument by mentally recalling all movements of the hands (left hand positions, bar chords, fingerings; and right hand strokes, fingerings, string changes).

►The Alternative Music Lounge: Daniel Mille Quintet

Finally a new episode for this series =)… This one is about french Jazz Accordionist Daniel Mille who I happened to “discover” while listening to a radio program that was transmitting a recording of a live concert at OndaJazz Bar.

I really enjoyed his tunes… dreamy and inspiring, very melodic and showing great musicianship of him and also all other members of the quintet (Alfio Origlio – piano, Jérome Regard – double bass, Julien Alour – flugelhorn, Pascal Rey – drums).

On YouTube I was not able to find videos of the same combo (first two videos is Daniel Mille together with André Ceccarelli, Jérôme Regard, Stéphane Belmondo while the third is with Remy Vignolo, Eric Legnini and Pascal Rey and the last features Alfio Origlio, Jérôme Regard, Julien Alour, Andy Barron) but the music is as good as what I heard on radio, so have a listen by yourself right now:

L’Attente

Les Beaux Jours

Ouro Preto (original by Daniel Goyone)

At Montreal Jazz Fest (video is an excerpt)

To finish this post, here are some more links about him:

http://www.myspace.com/danielmille

http://daniel-mille.artiste.universalmusic.fr/

 


About this series:

One of the ideas I have for this blog is to start periodic post series about a few interesting topics. Like one post a week or a month, about the same topic but always bringing you new (or classic but little known) musical discoveries.
This series that I gave the name “The Alternative Music Lounge” is about presenting you bands and projects that I like a lot or respect much because of the quality of their music although they haven’t made it into the so called “main stream” and therefore probably will remain unknown for many people.
Whatever might be the reasons for this (sometimes their creations are just too good, too unique, lacking any “commercial characteristics”, othertimes it’s just another case of being disregarded by the music industry, we all know what’s usual to happen…), I think the’re more people out there who might like their music but just didn’t have a chance to discover it yet, so I hope these publications of mine might be helpful.
By the way, if you’re a musician and think I might like your music and would like to propose your creations for being featured in a post of this series, you’re welcome to comment this post or any other future post of this series, stating your project’s name, a link to where I can listen to some tracks and a way to contact you.
I promise to try and listen to everyone’s tracks and respond, even if I happen to not accept the proposal.

 

 

►Introducing: “Music from my friends”

Finally had the time to finish production of the first track that’s not composed by myself, so it also is the first track to go on the new page I added to my site some time ago and which had been empty until now.

It’s an instrumental track, more precisely classical chamber music (string quartet and flute), with a dreamy, slightly sad but beautiful melody, composed by Rita Faleiro and produced by me (production environment was ReNoise, using samples and the final mix was done in Audacity).

Go to this page to listen to the track, a free download is also available.

Hope you enjoy 🙂

►The Alternative Music Lounge: Jon Gomm

This time, I’d like to present you a musician who until quite recently was almost unknown, the moment that Stephen Fry (an english actor and television presenter) discovered him and decided to share his music to his 4 million twitter followers, saying just one word: “Wow” (read more here). So, by now I might have about 50% of my readers thinking:

« ah, another of those “assisted fame victims”, who raise to world fame and then fall down into the gutter quicker than you can say “G sharp minor seven” and in reality show nothing special »

But the other half of you (hopefully!) waiting with expectation for more details and, obviously, for hearing his music.

Well, if you’re still with me, here we go:

His name is Jon Gomm, he is a guitarist living in Leeds, England and until recently used to do about 200 gigs per year in very small venues or even on the street, just to survive.

Now he is touring Europe and received offers from around the world.

I got to “know” him yesterday, on the portuguese tv talk show “Herman“, where he was guest and played one of his songs.

I was impressed, he manages to combine several special techniques with great virtuosism and musicality, making his guitar sound like three or four instruments at the same time.

This includes complex percussion patterns on the guitar’s body and strings (the drums part), tapping, slurs and harmonics combined with pedal effects and a very neat trick with the tuning pegs, changing forth and back the tuning of the actual note in a way that sounds like a pitch bend (the electric-acoustic guitar part) and adding walking bass lines on the 6th string (the bass part), finishing it all up with his voice, which sounds really nice aswell.

But enough said, have a listen for yourself:

Jon Gomm – Passionflower

Here’s his website: Jon Gomm


About this series:

One of the ideas I have for this blog is to start periodic post series about a few interesting topics. Like one post a week or a month, about the same topic but always bringing you new (or classic but little known) musical discoveries.
This series that I gave the name “The Alternative Music Lounge” is about presenting you bands and projects that I like a lot or respect much because of the quality of their music although they haven’t made it into the so called “main stream” and therefore probably will remain unknown for many people.
Whatever might be the reasons for this (sometimes their creations are just too good, too unique, lacking any “commercial characteristics”, othertimes it’s just another case of being disregarded by the music industry, we all know what’s usual to happen…), I think the’re more people out there who might like their music but just didn’t have a chance to discover it yet, so I hope these publications of mine might be helpful.
By the way, if you’re a musician and think I might like your music and would like to propose your creations for being featured in a post of this series, you’re welcome to comment this post or any other future post of this series, stating your project’s name, a link to where I can listen to some tracks and a way to contact you.
I promise to try and listen to everyone’s tracks and respond, even if I happen to not accept the proposal.