beautiful question (lost-&-found home recording #8)

. . . continued from freedom (lost-&-found home recording #7)

	About 2011, I was asked to do incidental music that would score a trailer for a craft workshop video with designer Jill Draper. This melody came right away, along with the phrase “beautiful question.” After I turned in the instrumental, the lyrics followed the initial phrase like a prompt & I re-recorded it for my 2013 release, Surrounded. Jill designed the album artwork.

marking my first music video featuring sheep

1.cylinder shaker/at4033/grace
2.slicer/piano bass/superchorus/direct stereo/roland
3.slicer/piano bass/superchorus/direct stereo/roland
4.piano bass/slicer-off-stereo marching drum/at4033/grace/white line mallet
5.piano bass/slicer-off-stereo
6.wurlitzer/lafayette/oktava mc012/grace-chords
7.wurlitzer/lafayette/oktava mc012/grace-high line
8.wurlitzer-vibrato/lafayette/oktava mc012/grace-low line
9.kay-standard6/shure sm81/grace
10.kay-standard6/shure sm81/grace
11.nn nylon-standard6/shure sm81/grace
12.nn nylon-standard6/shure sm81/grace
13.bronson squareneck/bebebe/shure sm81/grace 
14.bronson squareneck/bebebe/shure sm81/grace-double
15.bronson squareneck/bebebe/shure sm81/grace
16.bronson squareneck/bebebe/shure sm81/grace-double
17.tres/g#c#a/at4033/grace
18.tres/g#c#a/at4033/grace
19.casio cz101-flute/vibrato/leslie-low/at4033/grace
20.metal slappers/at4033/grace
21.X
22.squareneck/cecece/at4033/grace-2
23.squareneck/cecece/at4033/grace-2 copy of track 18-tres
24.harmony bender/capo7/fender champ 600/shure sm57/grace-bends-2

	I must’ve started off with the Boss Slicer pedal on tracks 2 & 3 to set up a rhythm pattern to pick against, just as a reference. It was left off the final mix. 

	The “nn nylon” is a no-name nylon string guitar that I picked up in a thrift store — couldn’t’ve been more than fifty bucks. There’s no maker’s label inside, but I was captured by the beautiful neck/soundhole construction — &, even better, it has a unique tone. As with all recent acquisitions, this instrument came with songs. One was the title track from Surrounded. This instrumental of Beautiful Question was next. Portrait was written on it, as well. The “nn” itself ended being actually recorded on only one song ultimately, When You Tell Me How It Is. 

After getting the guitars in place, I peppered the sections with the Wurlitzer electric piano recorded through a tubed Lafayette tape machine.

	The Bronson squareneck uses two different tunings probably because I needed one, “bebebe,” to play the melody & another, “cecece,” for swipes. 

	I originally had two tracks of tres, then changed my mind. The specific chord formations from the tres leave more of an unattached tickle than the high-strung-six or twelve-string bursts. 

Later, I wanted to lighten it up without thinning out, so I erased one of the “cecece” sweeps & changed my mind back to replace it with a copied tres track from before. 

It’s like blindfolded weeding.

	Next, I sent my Casio through a Leslie I’ve had for years. Solid state. They were made in the 70s for guitar players, specifically. It’s been on a bunch of my home recordings. I lucked onto it for cheap in Ottawa ON a lifetime ago. 

	Lastly, track 24's “harmony bender” is vibrato-bar Harmony Rebel strung as a 1/2 high-string. This guitar ended up on the song Cut as well. 

beautiful question (lost-&-found home recording #8) :