freddie in Salzburg

Freddie at Salzburg Airport...nah, not really but the Convair Metropolitan and stairs are real (at Finnish Aviation Museum).

Photomontage base photo by flightlog

valse yeux noirs

Testing a "new" microphone, Tandberg TM 6. A bit old-fashioned sound but yet in a pleasant way, clearly better than I expected from a 60's-70's Norwegian design. Not bad at all!

Les Yeux Noirs is an old traditional gypsy tune, and it can be played as a valse too. This is how my daughters like it when we play together.

la valse yeux noirs (.flac)

Effects chain backup

before I forget again, here's the DI FX chain used in earlier Strat DI tunes:

Kjaerhus classic eq

preset: Warm vocal

input level: +20db

left & right eq:

20Hz: -10dB
63Hz: -2dB
200Hz: -0.5dB
630Hz: 0dB
2kHz: -2dB
6.3kHz: 0dB
20kHz: -5dB

output level: -14dB

warm: on
sat: on
link: on

Kjaerhus classic chorus

preset: fat on rhodes

delay time: 40ms
fine: 0.75x
rate: 0.4Hz
spread: on
depth: 20%
mix: dir./eff. 1:2
level: +4dB

PSP Pianoverb

from default

decay time: 75%
mix: 26%
tune: 31c
transpose: b17
detune: 65%
damping: 10%
output: 0.0dB

Strollin'

Here's my interpretation of the famous "Rhythm changes", I tried to inject some more blues into them yet keeping it simple.

Strollin' (.mp3)

Same setup as River Moon: Fender Strat D.I. guitar, single overdub.

River Moon

Here's a quick sketch for a new tune, the chord progression is final-ish but the melody is just a "ipsum lorem" thing for now. Might recycle some good parts, though. Played with a Fender Strat direct into audio interface, PSP PianoVerb and some Kjaerhus Classic VST effects.

river moon.mp3

Freddie's Cat

Django had his famous "Tiger", so Freddie's got a "Cat". Django's favourite chord progression was "Tiger Rag", but there isn't much left of it in here and besides it's in minor key now. It's all clichés - true, but they are all my personal clichés!

Nylon string acoustic, bronze string archtop into Sennheiser condenser microphone and fretless electric bass direct into ART Tube MP, mastered on Technics RS-AZ6 cassette deck with Fostex 3180 spring reverb. No other fx except Reaper EQ plug-in.

Freddie's Cat

Le Caravan

Ellington classic: le caravan [mp.3]
Played with overcoat buttons as guitar picks. The guitar is also tuned down a semitone to E flat, maybe brings the overall loudness down a bit but sounds better to me. And the maximum acoustic volume doesn't really matter when recording.