Don’t get wrapped up in the technology

A better title might have been "Don't throw away that cardboard box"

My wife Tammy and I wrote a song recently called "I See It All". Being a music technology burn out, I decided the simple approach to be the best. Using my Korg D1600 (Thanks Vadim), and with incredible disdain for drum machines (and this tune needed some drums), I used a cardboard box for the kick drum, a snare sample, and an egg shaker. I stuck a large diaphragm condenser microphone down in the box, and lightly tapped on the side of the box. Boom, Boom baby! For the snare drum, I triggered a snare sample with the space bar on my computer, and held the microphone (The same mic...Hey, it was already plugged in!) up to the computer speakers. Next was the egg shaker, and for that track I decided to use...the same mic for the same reason. The whole deal took 10 minutes tops.

The point being, I didn't lose track of the initial enthusiasm, and spirit of the song tweaking hi-hat velocities! The drums sound great. As a matter of fact, I didn't win a contest for free studio time because they said I already had a professional demo of the song... go figure.

Keepin' it real can be easy, fun, and very effective.

Joe White

No More War Songs?

It seems here in Nashville, the word on the street from all of the publishers is, "No more war songs". The company line seems to be, " ...we don't want to seem as though we are capitalizing off of the pain of our soldiers" (paraphrased)

I'm of the ilk that believes that this is a bunch of crap! What if the record industry had that sort of colusive brick wall in the 1960's? - It's time for songs that take the high ground. Songs that hold Christians and Muslims to their core moral values. Time for songs of humble healing. We don't need anymore "Boot in the ass" tunes for sure, but let's not stifle the necessary evolution of thought. Is it just me?

Joe White