Winds of Time

It was the late 80’s and an exciting new synthesizer had been released by Korg: the M1! I had been reading about it and was itching to get my hands on it when lo and behold my friend Elmo the Hammer bought one. He kindly lent it to me for an afternoon, and I was so wowed by the presets that I was inspired to turn on my recorder, an Otari 8 track 1/2” reel to reel, and lay down some tracks. He was pacing nervously by 4pm as I finished up, as he was taking it to a gig. Here’s the resulting track, it was totally improvised, every note played by hand. I did a rough mix, named it Winds of Time, and used parts of it in theater productions for a few years, but pretty much forgot all about it for decades until I pulled some old stuff off ancient reels.

It’s difficult to describe the feeling of awe when you play a new synthesizer with sounds you never thought possible, or humans had never heard before. It sounds dated now, you couldn’t escape these presets for a long time, but it was the OG of affordable workstations and you can hear its influence echoing down the years.

Show and Tell, Key West, 1984 @ Private Ear Recording Studio

In 1984, my music production partner Edward “Woody” Allen wrote lyrics about exploitation in the media inspired by the Vanessa Williams Miss America debacle. We laid down a simple synth pop track for a demo, but the question was: who to sing it? We came up with the idea to ask Bill Blue, an amazing Rockin’ Blues singer and slide player who had recently moved to Key West. Although he was a bit put off by the sparse electronic vibe of the song he took it on. It’s a great blending of genres, particularly when he cuts loose on the second verse! The final touch was versatile vocalist Mike McCloud on the chorus.

It was my first experience with Bill in the studio. We went on to become good friends and played music around the Keys for decades in a band called Bill Blue and the Nervous Guys.

I had lost all copies of the song… Woody had a mono cassette version that he dug up and digitized for me.

Here’s an equipment list:

  • Recorder: Otari MX5050 1/2” 8 track reel to reel with meter bridge, outboard DBX NR, Ampex tape

  • Mixer: Allen Heath CMC 24

  • Mixdown: Revox PR99 2 track, Ampex tape

  • Mic: AKG 414

  • EFX: Orban 111B spring reverb (sproing drums!), Boss DE-200 digital delay used for camera samples and reverb pre-delay

  • Synth: Roland JX-3P

  • Drum Machine: Emu Drumulator and live cymbal crash

Featured Artist for October 2019

This month I’m featured artist at Trackside Studio, 375 Depot St, Asheville. This means I have the atrium wall to play with, and I’ve put up seven photographs from my Swannanoa River Study. I’ll be taking it down on Halloween, but there will still be plenty to see at my regular space inside. The gallery is open 7 days a week 10AM to 5PM.

Dan exhibit.jpg

New compositions for electro-music Asheville 2018

I was excited to open the 2018 Asheville Electro Music Fest with two new musical compositions and a video. Many thanks to Greg and Hong Waltzer for your hard work putting together the festival!

I was inspired to write the music and narrative for this piece after listening to 99% Invisible's podcast on Fordlandia. Melody Cooper performed the narration.

Tech details:
The LinnStrument 128 is now my main midi controller, and was used exclusively for these compositions. I used an iConnectivity 4+ with an iPad Pro2 utilizing AUM as the hub and recorder with Jubal flute, Yonac's Kauldron and  Kaspar,  and Moog Model 15 synths. My Waldorf blofeld was brought in through the audio inputs of the iC4+. I recorded the three improvisational sections live, though it took a few takes... The piano is The Gentleman from Native Instruments.

It was great to dig up some old work and include it in this piece. The dense swampy sound is a Micromoog recorded on a 4 track reel to reel in the 1980s. Additional jungle sounds are from a Handsonic HPD-15 circa 2000. The riot rhythm section was a part of a piece called Oscillator I wrote in 2001 using Acid.

For recording narration and mixdown I used Samplitude, which I have used for more than 20 years, utilizing its native processing and NI, PSP, EIOS, Soundtoys, and Exponential Audio Nimbus plugins.

 

This is the ambient piece I opened with. The environments were recorded on my Nexus 6 (!) Great to have a decent recorder, camera, etc. in your pocket all the time. Oh, and a phone.

Tech details:
The opening prelude horns are from Motu Ethno recorded long ago. The nice little loop under the first part was from some bit of fun I was having with new software last winter. The beautiful and eerie second part is an acoustic guitar that was left plugged in and volume up onstage at a festival I was engineering. I came across it at mixdown and gave it a bit of noise reduction and efx with Soundtoys and PSP plugins. I guess it's truly a solo performance by the guitar itself. The improv is Moog Animoog and blofeld synths looping through Kosmonaut. AUM was used as a hub for the synths, Kosmonaut plugin, and file launching.