Showing posts with label BLAST FROM THE PAST. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BLAST FROM THE PAST. Show all posts

Tuesday 19 January 2021

OLD FRIENDS



four and forty blackbirds, singing daydreams

volume up, 720p













old friends
the story behind the song


home - homeland
throw your worthless coins into my case



The title track from the album that was never released commercially.  Old Friends (the song) was recorded after I moved to Toronto in January 1980 after a 2 year hiatus from the studio. I was 23.  Acoustic ballads had no appeal to record companies back then, so it wasn't submitted as a possibility for my first album (later on) but I always liked it. No synths/samplers, computers or drum machines back in those days - just my guitars and now a recording studio at my disposal.  I barely slept in the 16 weeks that I was on that government grant.

I got into Kensington Sound, Toronto as an intern of sorts, through a program called OCAP which allowed me a short window to do something in the field in which I was educated.  Best part, is that I was given keys and security clearance, so I went in at night and spent several weeks playing with ideas on my own and this was the first song I recorded.


 

 







One thing that's really cool about being in a studio at 4 am, during yet another cold, late Canadian winter storm in Toronto recording voices when everyone else is asleep, stumbling home at 6 (sun rising) - for a noon callback - beyond that?  ... is that one comes up with ideas that would never have appeared if others were present - making it all more intimate. 

The high voices were recorded at half speed (15ips) on the 24 track analog recorder and then I put them through a Marshall Time Modulator (the vibrato effect), after bumping the speed back to 30ips.  This song was remastered in 2010 with Wave plug-ins and pulling it up recently, inspired to put some pictures to it in October 2015 - 35 years later.  

My best work has always been done in a relatively short period of time.  I wrote this song in a couple of hours before recording it that night in 6 hours (Feb 1980) and mixed it the following night in 2 hours.  This clip was assembled here in Final Cut on October 06, 2015 in 4 hours.  

A 12 hour project front to back.

Turns out I was hired on at Kensington Sound that April, where I continued as an engineer until that June before moving on to another studio ... Captain Audio in Yorkville, freelancing Eastern Sound then Amber Studios on Queen West.  













jimlamarche.ca




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