Ardent Music Forums

Carter you helped reformat that demo for me the past Wed. and basically ended up making most of it sound as it did from tape(kind of a necessity given some points on it where the original eng. fattened sound to hide some overplay by a guitarist).


I got in touch w/the drummer. He toured several times nationally as an opener has done other work with a band that had several indy items done and was flirted with signing by a major.

"...after a while lugging your drums in and out of bars at 3am and listening to yet another bar fly tell you how great you are gets kind of old."

So now he directs theater in Austin. He's lived there for a decade. He potentially has copies of the other material I thought would never be found as well, has all of it. He likes the idea of going forward with it just to get the music out there. Money would be nice as well but he likes the idea of just getting that out.

Lead singer/rythm is a photographer in HI, good luck ever convincing him to leave such a gig.

Lead guitarist played in a cover band, he hasn't heard from Rodney in years. Says what we recorded then is "way too heavy for what he does now."

Bass player had lived in Memphis and the drummer got a job through him over a decade ago. Nobody has heard from him though. Stand up guy, very even keeled and low key type.

Anyways back to the reformat, what would you have done differently to re-master it? One of the final two tracks(cover tunes that were done to get gigs on the bar circuit at the time) has a spot the stuff is getting mashed but there are no vocals for that part of the song. Bass notes sound like they got a lot of technique going to them but from pressing it there's not a lot of power to it and it clearly needs some there(or at least would need a way to see why it got pressed as much/more than other parts in it).

Got the engineer's name as well, let me go back through mail from my drummer. The guy was a believer in what he was hearing like me and even put some of his own time into it to try and get stuff working best for the music. He was supposed to have brought or tried to bring some to senior people there at one time.


It was cut in '92 @ Skeeter Tracks Studio(think it is called Southern Knights now or thelast I drove through town at the millenium's start?) because our drummer 'got his first tatt the night before in Memphis and was extremely hung over.'

What else could have pulled that through? There's a cassette wheel hiss in the first song now(never heard it before, think it's part of the repair we tried on it) so it would need true mastering instead of just a dub session like we did after repairing it, were anyone to decide they wanted to go forward on it.

"The engineer on that was a guy named Scott Wallis."

He's familiar with one of your senior proudcers there, isn't he?

Anyways I was planning on trying to visit Sherman down that ways this Saturday and get some kind of joint venture going, perhaps.

He's interested enough to consider it. I'm looking for the instrumental orig. track to be used for gaming or theme music of some sort and the first one to accompany game apps and maybe sell to an extent if it ever caught on it could drive others(more polished, better songs, bands,labels). It was nice to hear one of your people say the same thing on me commenting your WWA award on the wall....

All great needs music is exposure, all good music needs is a vehicle to get it out, if this was to ever work to the point it could do that for two of the best emerging labels, yaaay! It would be satisfying to the extent we did something that made due notice and helped people who had similar ambitions to get through a phase we didn't.

His advice was on going through itunes and cdbaby and if it gets traction past that to go through traditional channels.

Happen to agree at this time.

A friend I recommended a visit here says Pro tools is what he needs and uses now. He could learn a lot from your technical talk here, I think digital enhancement still lacks actual nailing it with the sound you originally want to capture.

It seems like the more you add to a song the more likely it dilutes and sounds like everything else out there. Does Pro Tools have a "MORE COWBELL" button on it?

Hopefully he will browse around and learn. There's a lot of good stuff he can add with years of playing, he is pretty assured with want he wants in a sound(that is good) but it never hurts to expand perspectives.

Okay Rev. remember on fixing the tape and my description of the problem behind that break to the front of the Demo?

Found a story that correlates, from one of the legendary bands, and eras, of rock music. Additionally, the great Muscle Shoals studio is the setting where this story took place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRuAxmhRXS8&NR=1
:31 sec mark

Their tape folded over, on demo playing. Same thing mine did. Although, theirs was in cueing to play for studio bosses, mine was in traffic, while cruising here, or going to/from work a town over on Hwy61 at the time.

Theirs was some heavy duty material, probably on a 2 inch tape for 32 or 16 heads. Mine was on a broken, battered, weather beaten cassette head that made its path to tommorrow through two wrecked, totalled out vehicles.

Anyways it gets a spooky kind of reminiscence about it. The fold was still visible in the tape to the front(you recall seeing that too), the tape break came at a later time off the clear feeder tape to the very front of the reel. Lucky as could be to have unwound the thing immediately at the time and got the fold to crease back well enough to play though it. Being able to do that was part of the continued fate of this thing.

Glad both tapes were still playable. Of course, one is a pillar of music history.

Remind me on future visits to enhance the material digitally, or on redoing a dub of the tape. There is a need to go through the rest of that length and see if the stuff we did in studio on a 16 channel board is there. Really rough stuff, Hatcher can tell you about the acoustics there and the excuse of a drum trap several bands helped erect.

That would be for a later time, but it could be fun in retrospect. There are several people here with music off older mediums and formats who could make old original music of theirs come back to life. That would be at a later time, but it is something worth a look into.

One of the best BBQ stands in town has an axe player that visited there once for a rate quote. He's aware of fees and rates for that time and can't imagine the rate they have increased. He spoke with a lady at Ardent during that time. He knows the studio works with local musicians on an affordable basis and if you think about that fact it reveals the true value of Ardent to Memphis and its great music.

My point to make then dealt with the fact that he has some material already recorded. Instead of studio time, he could try getting that recorded material elevated to a digital medium. Then if good things result from that he could put the kind of attention he wants there into new ideas with his present band.

In any event it would be a great learning experience for him. One of those circuit guys who plays a bit of everything, but has found a range of music he's most comfortable with.

It could be a lot of fun to see him develop response to new ideas. All of that in time.