This July I finally got a really
good drum machine - a Boss/Roland Dr. Rhythm DR-770.
I played in rock bands growing.
I consider, and so do many others the 1970's one of the most
fertile eras for good music.
Any kind. The 1980's were fairly bland in comparison and the
1990's has gone into the toilet
in ways. Hopefully this new millennium will bring brighter stuff.
I still play, but hardly write.
I'd like to get back into it. I have gotten some new equipment,
but really hardly touch it. Like
a GR-30 (a guitar synthesizer)
I am looking for some kind of recorder
but all these DitDat and micro chip and digital and
funny looking stuff and eight tracks
can be recorded on one channel - it's just all so complicated.
I even have a Cakewalk Guitar studio
that I recorded one song on pretty successfully but haven't
gotten it to work for the past year.
Anything I've done lately I've done
on my (bought used in 1985) TASCAM - TEAC Porta
Studio. This one has VU meters
(you know, the needle that bounces from the left to the right
to show the sound level and if it's
going into the red) instead of the newer LED lights.
I have had a couple things I did
played on WWDB. Although, I made a "theme song" for
John Zeiglar, and two weeks later
he was fired along with Rollye James and that's a
whole other story. And
my Scrapple song did not make the "Scrapple Rocks" CD.
Oh well... Back to the Porta
Studio - - You can do a lot with that little piece
of equipment and the four little
tracks. And I used it for over a year without
the manual back in 1985. How
I ever got it to work, I'll never know.
The number 4 input is the input
for all the channels - and for 1 & 3 you must pan left and
for 2 & 4 you must pan right
and all kinds of things there is no way you would know it without
reading the manual. My brother
(born in the 1960's, and equipment man for the band "Yumm"
do a word search and you can find
their web page. He also hosts a web site called wombat's
web. He just got a new/used
truck/jeep after his wife got hit in the side by a drunk driver in
their Bronco. Had the guy
been a foot "earlier", it could have been a very bad accident -
besides totally the Bronco, his
wife could have been fatally injured. My brother's name -
and the reason for all of this -
as previously, all I had was "my brother" and he complained,
couldn't I put "my brother, comma,
'Dave'" so I guess he won't have to go to therapy now)
got a manual when he bought a new
Porta Studio around 1986.
He then got a reel to reel 8 track
ages ago and now he just does sound for bands. He knows
guys that use computers and other
types of consoles. The eight track has been living in a
closet for about eight years.
So it's not gathering a lot of dust, but it majors in down time.
Anyway, musically, I got ideas and
statements to say, such as
discussing the use of the open A
string on the electric guitar. And did you know, and this is
minutia, and I'd have to check to
be exact, but almost every Todd Rundgren album has a song
on it where he simply pounds away
at the open A string. And that includes Bat Out of Hell.
(the Overture) And "You Took the
Words Right Out of My Mouth"