Boston, MA

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Zach

Boston! Home of roughly 3.2 billion universities, the city is basically a giant college campus with occasional children.

“Haha!” laughs Attractive Girl, revealing some very attractive creases at the corners of her mouth. “I bet you met many musicians to record there, eh?”

Hey Attractive Girl, are you by chance from Minnesota?

“No, I’m from Tennessee. But I have been to Minneapolis several times.”

Oh, OK. The ‘eh?’ threw me off. Anyway, I have begun to notice an odd phenomenon — the larger the music scene in a city, the more silent its musicians. I have gotten more responses from smaller cities than I have from larger cities — perhaps because the musicians are busy working in larger towns and aren’t looking for more gigs. Or perhaps it’s been just pure chance.

So, I didn’t find many musicians to record in Boston. In this paper I will discuss the trip to Boston, recording in Boston, sightseeing in Boston, and my noise-finding expedition in Boston.

I. The Trip to Boston

The trip to Boston was very scenic, as the highway we followed was very near the coast (see Figure A).

II. Recording in Boston

When we arrived in Boston, I met fellow Couchsurfer and guitarist Chris Hughes. He plays guitar, and his roommate is from Omaha.

Chris recorded some guitar for me for a tune, then we had to be off to meet our host, a very fun girl who goes by the name of Liz Pratt. Probably because that is really her name. Her father’s name is Lance. She lives with a handful of others in a long, narrow, tall house.

They were all of them fun and gracious hosts, and we had a great time chatting with them before we all hit the hay.*

III. Sightseeing in Boston

Next day, I still had no bites from the ads. A whole day in Boston with no one to record — I feel some sightseeing coming on!

We went walking all over Boston. There were buildings there.

There were also some other buildings there.

Not to mention scenic sidewalks.

And parks.

Boston is “America’s Walking City,” and cars everywhere pretty much give pedestrians the right of way. Boston’s streets go every which way, with diagonals and curving streets and train tracks largely interfering with any type of organized grid idea. But, oddly, the alleys were remarkably straight:

I thought perhaps I could find some sweet dudes over at Berklee to record, so we headed in that direction. I chatted up some peeps and talked to some people that looked like they were in charge, but didn’t end up securing any recordings. Part of the problem was that I had somehow managed to get one of the only parking spots in the city remotely near my host, and I was loathe to leave that spot, so we hadn’t driven, just walked, which meant I didn’t have my equipment.

I did buy a Berklee hoodie so I could spy around the school better though. I walked around and checked out the equipment, classrooms, and practice rooms. Pretty sweet place. Made me want to go back to music school again.

IV. My Noise-Finding Expedition in Boston

A delightful girl named Alisa Rutherford-Fortunati had contacted me earlier about finding noises in Boston, and I was all about that. So we arranged to meet up that evening. I couldn’t take all my gear with me, so we used her little handheld voice recorder, for suboptimal but usable results.

We walked all around hunting for noises to record. First: the subway station!

“Oh, that’s a great idea!” says Attractive Girl. “Trains and whistles and air brakes and announcements!”

Are you really from Tennessee? You don’t really have an accent.

“I sometimes say ‘y’all.'”

Hmm. Anyway, yes, but we actually didn’t go for those. See, we didn’t go to just any subway station. We went to a special station with fun interactive noisemaking devices. Evidently a project by students at MIT or some such, some of the stations have levers on the walls which operate various devices, all of which make various interesting noises. There was one that flexed a giant sheet of metal, yielding a big wobbly wowowow sound. There was also this:

Alisa had to be careful to retract her arm before the next train, which she fortunately managed just fine.

Then we surfaced and went about recording city noises like trains, traffic, that little beeping sound the crosswalks made, car horns, etc.

(I’d give a dollar to someone who makes those into a funny animation.)

We also frolicked on a playground in Frog Park! There were many cutesy anthropomorphized frog statues there. There was also a sign, which some clever person had vandalized.

In this paper I have discussed my trip to Boston, recording in Boston, sightseeing in Boston, and my noise-finding expedition in Boston. Thank you.

NEXT: An island that is actually part of a continent! Like, contiguously part of the continental landmass!

* “Hit the hay” is an American idiom meaning “go to sleep”. So far as I know there was no actual hay in their house.

Portland, ME

Posted on August 22, 2008 by Zach

ME! Not to be confused with myself and I, ME is actually the northeastmost state in the Union.

We arrived in Portland to find a pleasant city with a healthy dose of “small bayside shipping town” feel. When we got the the edge of the State, it was our first time seeing the Atlantic Ocean so we found a beautiful spot along the Eastern Promenade to watch the ships come sailing in, etc.

We sat and enjoyed the salty air, cool weather, and the great view for a good while.

In particular, I liked the one with the cool sails.

Then it was time to find the house of Phil James, shakuhachist. A shakuhachist is a person who plays the shakuhachi.

“Didn’t you, in fact, make up the word ‘shakuhachist’?” asks Mr. Yerfulovit.

Yes. Anyway, more information on shakuhachi can be found on Phil’s site. It’s a cool instrument, and Phil is quite skilled at playing it.

By the way, we saw this great sign while trying to find Phil’s house.

Now back to Phil. We recorded some shakuhachi on several tunes, as well as some solo shakuhachi, using a larger, lower-piched one.

Phil was a great guy and a pleasure to work with. Then, after packing everything up, we were on our way out when I saw something that looked like an instrument sitting near the door.

“What’s that?”
“A harmonium.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“…”

So we set all the stuff back up and got him on harmonium for a couple tunes.

Then we packed everything up again, and suddenly on our way out I noticed something resembling a piano just sitting there by the door.

“What’s that?”
“A piano.”
“Really?”
“No, it’s actually nothing.”
“Oh okay then. Take care!”
“…”

After recording Phil, we were off to dinner with fellow Couchsurfer Alissa Greenberg, who was in Maine for a bit before returning to her home in Boston. She recommended a place on the coast called the Lobster Shack. I was the only one of the three of us who had lobster. It was incredibly fresh and delicious. Also expensive, but I figured it was probably my only chance to try Maine lobster in Maine.

It was dusk. It was also beautiful.

Then we made a short drive to the place she was staying, which happened to be private property very close to the sea. Evidently due to some sweet familial hookups she can sometimes live at this amazing house on this amazing location. More stunning views ensued.

The mosquitos were feasting on our warm flesh, so we couldn’t stay long. But it was lovely.

Then we were off north to a remote place somewhere between Bucksport and Bangor to meet our hosts, Molly and Shawn Mercer (pictured with children and pets):

Their house was off the beaten path. Also, off the power grid. They use solar power, drink well water, keep animals for food, and even made their own house using wood from their property! Don’t worry about deforestation in this instance. They still have far more than their share of trees.

They have chickens, turkeys, cows, and dogs.

Shawn is also a singer/songwriter, and does a bit of traveling to play various places. We had some good discussion about music and teaching (he’s a teacher, and I was before this project).

Next morning, we loaded up,

followed them out on their long, long “driveway,”

and were off to our next stop — Boston!

NEXT: San Fransisco!

Burlington, VT

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Zach

Burlington! Small town or bustling indie music city? Answer: both.

But first, as promised, some beautiful mountainous territory of Vermont.

Now that’s out of the way.

We had a crazy adventure getting there. It took a bit longer than expected to get to Burlington from Buffalo. Then the carputer malfunctioned (cf. the previous post) and the GPS no longer worked. I followed my nose, trusting my instincts. Which were wrong (both the nose and the instincts). We ended up having to drive all the way around Lake Champlain (which is big), and on the way, we were apprehended by the border patrol (yes, we almost went to Canada again). By this point we were already quite late to our host (ETA originally 1:00am; ETA post-“detour”: 2:00am), and the officer had to do a bunch of paperwork and phone calls because of JH’s non-US-citizen-ness.

Finally we were rid of the border guard and we met our hosts, a fun girl named Ali and her happening bf Will Metivier.

“I wish you would stop using ‘happening’ to describe people,” sighs Attractive Girl.

Um… why?

“Events happen; people don’t.”

Dude — people definitely happen. Will was unquestionably happening. I sometimes happen too.

“sigh”

The following day Will showed me around Burlington. That weekend happened to be the Festival of Fools, an outdoor city festival for street performers. We spent some time wandering around, eating, and watching various performances. Unfortunately I forgot my camera but I did snag a few phone pictures.

picture to be inserted here

I saw jugglers, crazy variety sideshow men, plenty of musicians, and even a guy playing The Majestic Bellowphone, which was evidently some amazing handmade musicial machine, with tubes and horns and whistles and bellowses. One of those one-man-band machines. It was awesome and I was sad my recording equipment was not more portable.

picture to be inserted here

Unfortunately I forgot to get an official picture of our hosts, so all you have are the above bad shots of Will.

Speaking of Will, he is also a guitarist, and recorded some guitar for me.

“What about all the contacts I gave you in Chicago?” asks Taylor Brennan.

Sadly all of those people either didn’t respond, or they were ocupado. Which is Spanish for occupied. They were occupied in Spanish!

NEXT: Interest!

P.S. All who think “People Happen” would make a good bumper sticker, please say “Aye.”

Pittsburgh, PA

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Zach

The next stop was Pittsburgh. I promise not to make a single joke in this post about anything being “the pits.”

Pittsburgh has terrible traffic/roads, a great feel, beautiful countryside, and a handful of these cool yellow bridges:

We drove around downtown a little bit looking at stuff.

We saw a huge amout of people hanging around, using public transport, smoking, etc. Pretty cool that a non-huge city would have such a high proportion of foot traffic.

By this point I was becoming accustomed to the hilliness of the terrain, narrowness of the roads, and speed of the traffic on this side of the US. To get to our host I had to experience a considerable bit of all of the above.

Speaking of our host, his name is Andy Lehmann and he’s pretty awesome. He put us up on short notice and let us commandeer his basement for a night. Thanks Andy!

Next morning bright and early (8:15!!!) I was off to record with another old college bud of mine, a multitalented bloke who goes by the name of David Santistevan (because that is really his name). He is working as a music director at a church, so we headed over there to record.

David plays all kinds of instruments with aplomb. I had him lay down some piano for me, then we set up for recording his guitar rig

and recorded Dave’s awesome textural electric guitar playing on several tracks. Dave was pretty easy — I just kind of set him loose and he did his thing and it was good.

Awesome!

NEXT: Something else awesome!

Columbus, OH

Posted on August 11, 2008 by Zach

Christopher Columbus! That intrepid explorer of yore had absolutely nothing to do with the wonderful day I spent in Columbus with some old college pals of mine.

“Who are these pals?” asks AG perfunctorily.

Haha, you’re so cute when you do things perfunctorily, AG. To answer your question, these pals were Nathan and Rachel Laing. Nathan and I were in a healthy smattering of music classes together back at NCU. He enjoys large words (such as “penultimate” and even “perfunctorily”), spelling with z’s (as in, “wazzup friendz?”), and music.

“Is that it?”

I’m sure he also has many other hobbies. I would also like to mention that he got a piano that had been in a fire for dirt cheap just because it had been in a fire, even though it was not damaged at all.

Nice. So Nathan and his hilarious wife Rachel (seriously, she’s great) and JH and I had a delightful dinner (Nathan grilled up some delectable chicken with an equally delectable butter basil sauce), during which we shot many large holes in the breeze, and caught up to the best of our ability.

After that, it was time to record! Nathan is a pianist and guitarist with very clean playing. Seriously, I have always admired the cleanliness of his playing. So I had him lay down some nice guitar parts for several tunes.

One time, he played a wrong note and I had to show him the correct note.

Nathan generously stayed up late to finish up another song, and then it was late. Too late. So, we were done. I was happy and Nathan was really angry because he was tired. Look how angry he is:

And that was my stay in Columbus. Delightfulness all around.

NEXT: The Burgh of Pitts!

Louisville, KY

Posted on August 10, 2008 by Zach

Louisville! Contrary to popular opinion, it is not named after King Louis XIV of France, but rather King Louis XVI. One must also avoid pronouncing it Frenchly. The first (and last) time I said LOO-ee-vil resulted in yours truly being scorned and derided by the otherwise kind people of Louisville.

“How should I then pronounce it?” asks Francis Schaeffer, who happens to be passing.

Nice, Francis. Well, the correct pronunciation happens to be ˈluːǝvǝl.

“Ah.”

We arrived fairly late and spent the evening with our ascerbically-witted host, Josh Mather. He was great — a skilled metalworker with a well-trained Australian cattle dog (a relative rarity).

We had a rollicking good night hitting up a local, and I got to meet many of Josh’s friends and acquaintances, setting up a session for the next day in the process.

The Next Day

You work at a nationally famous restaurant famous for tacky lamps. Your restaurant is having a jingle contest among the employees, with sweet prizes and stuff. You have written a sweet jingle, but you have no idea how to record it so you can enter it in the contest. One night, you’re out at the bar and you meet a dude who is traveling the country with thousands of dollars worth of recording equipment in his trunk.

This story really happened, but in a non-RPG-dialogue kind of way (i.e. to someone else who is not you). So what do you think was the upshot?

This is Isaac Bowman. He wrote a fun little jingle about Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, the restaurant where he works. So, lacking any instruments, we started recording a snappy acapella rendition of his jingle. Singing is not his bag, or at least not one of his major bags, so it was mostly up to me to sing in all the parts to fit with his melody. Together we worked up a pretty sweet arrangement for it. I had a lot of fun.

Then, we were off to West Virginia. On our way there, we saw a lot of horses. Sorry Melissa, I didn’t get any shots of them.

But oh my goodness! This really exists!

You can sate your desire for horse pictures for a mere $10! Also, the word HORSE starts to look really funny after you’ve been googling it for a bit. Also, it kind of looks like if you subscribe they will actually give you a horse.

NEXT: Buddies of olde.

Hit the Road, Zach

Being a recounting of Zach's Recording Tour of Love

Category Archives: Recording Sessions