MD8 — mid-April untitled (an exploratory reset)
instrumental in open C
This instrumental track began with setting up the Yamaha MD8 again after years in suitcase storage. It’s the machine that birthed my 2000 album The Hill. I had to dig up the owner’s manual for occasional refreshers. I thought of it as an exploratory reset. It’s a no-frills recorder that is there just to fundamentally capture a moment in blunt 24 bits. I wanted to have it plugged in & ready for quick recording, ideal when an aimless rough draft drifts in unexpectedly & needs to be immediately exorcised. Like the earlier cassette four-tracks, the limited options strip down ideas, exposing other possibilities framed by the MD8’s innate sound. It discourages tinkering, creating a situational completion.
A carpe diem rough mix to CD seals the closure-panic like a fugitive one-off fossilized in resin.
I was intending to use the same mic pre as in 2000, my ART Tube MP, but it no longer works — &, of course, I can’t throw it out, so it sits in a closet as a souvenir.
I dug out this Tube Works direct box from gear retirement, instead. It was a late-night impulse buy in an Alabama motel room decades ago from someone who is now dead.
The Harmony Hollywood 3 is the last one of this model I acquired. It was found on eBay & came by mail with a loose piece of bracing, or something, that fell out of an f-hole when I unpacked it. One of the tuners is bent & another three can be intermittently tight, but it holds any tuning. It’s why I like this model of Harmony. The neck is like a split baseball bat. It came with a thin, fifties western-style leather strap, close to a dog collar. I took off the long part, leaving the buckle loose to conjure an escaped pet.
The pick guard rattled, so I took it off as well, leaving a piece of hardware that gives a snaggletooth look. The action is a little tough, but it’s good for exercising the fingers. The pickup sings a pure grain of birch & wire which reverberates a beautifully honest tone whether through an amp or plugged directly in a board. & they’re cheap . . .
I tuned snaggletooth down to an open-C tuning I’d been screwing with for a few days, finally landing on an arrangement this week that fit — meaning easiest to play . . . The resulting strain seemed to be right for an initial reunion with the MD8. I last recorded the Electro-Harmonix Mel9 pedal's flute setting on a demo called Meaning (lost-&-found home recording #2), released on EXTRACTIONS last year. The device seems to choose what it gets from the guitar pickup, sometimes creating ulterior melodies or harmonics like rogue flavoring.
Almost lastly, I half-anchored guessed chords & tinkles from a Yamaha CP keyboard I got on-sale a few years ago after I liquidated my Wurlitzer electric piano.
I added a fruitless overdub of Mel9 guitar in the middle section, then backpedaled. Reset complete: a healthy intervention of overthinking a fleeting exploration.
