I captured this Minneapolis skyway busking regular playing a mean version of Moonshadow by Cat Stevens on his accordion today during my lunch break.
Sadly it is approaching that time of year when Minnesotans start to abandon the sidewalks in favor of walking between buildings in rectangular tubes suspended above the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Moonshadow
A restaurant named Adelita’s near my house has one dollar ninety nine cent twenty five Ounce Bud Light taps on Thursday nights. They also have great food. Tonight I met a few mates there including Kevin, Justin, Nils and his wife Sarah for seventy five or so ounces of um… “beer” with delicious tacos and tamals (flautas shown).
Here’s a recording of us all cheersing each other. Since the glasses clinking had a serious transient I added some compression, which brought up the background sounds of Mexican music and soccer announcers.
Frosty Goodness
I programmed this beat and ran it through some pretty thick filtering followed by compression with a touch of delay automated in here and there for a few dub effects. Another technique I used to get some different fills going in the pattern was to add a MIDI arpeggiator and turn it on at certain moments to change the feel. The arpeggiator was programmed to randomize the notes in the sequence using specific note durations. I alternated between eighth notes and thirty-second notes.
Arpeggiating at eighth notes slowed down the feel of the beat since the high hat pattern was programmed in sixteenths, while arpeggiating the pattern to thirty-seconds created some simulated fancy fill work. These techniques can be hit or miss, so whenever I use them to produce I generally render the track several times with the random behaviors enabled then scour the output for “gems”. Finally I collect the “gems” and use them as fills selectively. Another example of unnatural selection at work.
Filtered Synth Drums at 125bpm
Subconsciously fulfilling the ACB metaphor, I recorded these sounds as I was preparing a spaghetti dinner in my kitchen tonight. I used my Audio Technica AT822 stereo condenser running straight into the MacBook Pro line in port. To my surprise I managed to get levels, but had to turn up the input volume in the preferences almost all the way up to get a good strong signal. In the preferences you can adjust the input volume, so the signal is running through some sort of pre-amplification.
Getting signal is probably the result of the condenser mic having a fresh battery, high sensitivity, and a short cord built specifically for the mic. It would probably not work as well with a dynamic mic. I wouldn’t recommend recording this way (without running the mic through a preamp), but I would be interested in knowing the specs on how the input volume is being powered on the MacBook Pro. Any Apple experts out there have any inside info?
Filling the Pot
As the sound of the freight train faded off into the distance and the railroad crossing bells came into view, I continued recording while deliberately walking on top of the large gravel that surrounded the train tracks. I particularly like the course crunching sound my footsteps made on the large gravel in contrast to the the softer sound of the finer gravel path leading away from the tracks. The wind screen helped but you can still hear some of it on the diaphragm giving the recording some lackluster, non-technical characteristics.
Post Train Gravel Foot Stomp