Jim Alfredson

And yes, thank you very much for the donation... even if it has strings attached.

But of course.

Tom, you're funny! Today we finished up day four. It was a productive day in that we finally tackled a tune that we've affectionately nicknamed "The Bastard Songo", a tune that Joe and I started writing at least four years ago and that we just began playing live in February. It's a mother of a tune. But we got a really good take of it and I think it sounds sweet! Some more pictures for you're viewing pleasure (maybe). Smilin' Randy, behind the kit, ready to work his butt off. It was a tough four days for me and I'm sure for Randy and Joe, too. Randy had a gig last night. He stayed in town Thursday and Friday nights as we worked full days in the studio, tearing our tunes apart and rebuilding them. What a trooper! A Fender Vibroverb Re-issue, courtesy of Greg Nagy. Joe played through this for Groovadelphia and Bleeker, the two "funkers" so far in the can. It's mic'd with a vintage Shure 330 and a Shure Beta87a on the grill and an EV RE20 on the back. Sitting at the mixer, messing with the computer. Just making sure everything is recording right and sounding tight! Ladies and gents, The Gomer Bros. Joe practicing a part before we take. Uh-oh, Joe's secret weapon!!! A Peavey Classic 50 2x12. Joe used this for most of the other tunes, except one song in which he played acoustic. Damn good sounding amp. It's mic'd the same way as the Vibroverb and is graciously on loan from Glenn Brown, who engineered our last two albums. We're letting all the secrets out. organissimo.... SECRETS!!! Yep, I'm playing a Fender Rhodes. I played it on the intro to "The Bastard Songo". I ran it through Joe's Peavey Delta Blues (Peavey - Sound Of The Ghetto ®) and mic'd it with another Shure 330 ribbon. After the intro I switch to organ, with an electric piano patch from my Yamaha Motif layered in for the head. Shhhhhh! Don't tell anyone! There's the rig. Hammond XK System with the XK3, mint vintage Leslie 122, Yamaha Motif. Oooo! Even Joe's getting into the act!!! Randy behind the kit. He played his butt off this weekend. So we tracked 7 tunes, which is one more than I was hoping for. We need to re-track one of them, however, due to some arrangement changes (and needing to shed over the actual changes). Hopefully we can accomplish that next weekend. The clock is ticking. We also have two or three other tunes we'd like to get to but we're already getting close to an hour's worth of music as is (I like the albums to be around 60 minutes long). It's always good to have more than you need. That's it for now. We've got two gigs this week, so that will be a good opportunity to tighten some other things up live.

You guys must be fun at parties.

Yes indeed!

Here's a blog where somebody did a blind listening test with some audio lovers where he used hi-end speaker cables and then coat hangers and nobody could tell the difference. High quality cable usually only makes a difference if you're dealing with long lengths. I went through the whole expensive cable phase and I even still have some RCA interconnects that cost $150 for a 3m pair. They honestly don't sound any "better" than your standard Radio Shack cable.

I love the way Brian Blade plays. The trio records with Yahel, Blade, and Redman (like Yaya3) are some of my favorite modern "organ" records. Even if the music completely dies, at least we'll still have the critics!

Yeah, we'll be setting something up like that soon. We did a full day today and got two or three more tunes tracked (we'll probably re-do the last one we cut, but it's a good take). That makes four in the can. Tomorrow we'll be working on an original that has been kickin' our butts! I think we're ready to nail it, though. We did a couple of takes this evening that we very close. It's a tough tune to play! I'll probably post samples after the sessions are complete. My goal is to track six to seven tunes. We'll have to schedule a couple more sessions once we figure out where we're at with the material.

How about a cover of "Backstabbers" dedicated to Ben Wallace?

We have a lot of live stuff accumulated from various gigs throughout the years, but we wanted to do another "studio" album for a variety of reasons. One thing I would like to do in the future is a DVD with footage from Baker's and/or the Firefly. The Leslie is so mint I just never thought to take the louvre off! That's probably not a bad idea. I'm using the XK because it gives me a lot more options as far as control and using external sound sources. And I have mine sounding really, really good.

After last night's lost to the Cavs, in which the Pistons got to the freethrow line a grand total of three times for the whole game (yes... three times), you may be right.

Yep. That's the plan. Hit the tunes for a couple takes and if it's not happening, move on!

Oh boy! Tomorrow organissimo begins tracking of our next CD. It has been almost three years since we last headed into the studio. We tracked most of "This Is The Place" at the beginning of April, 2005. Wow! We're long overdue for another album and I'm very excited about the tunes we've been working on this time around. The biggest change from 2005 (and 2003's Waiting For The Boogaloo Sisters... for that matter) is that we've decided to track the songs ourselves. I'm sure by now almost everyone knows about the "home studio revolution". I've been recording since I was six years old, starting with taping my own songs on a portable cassette deck (mono, baby!) plugged into a Yamaha organ. Through the next 25 years, I had the opportunity to play with a Fostex 4-track cassette recorder, a Teac reel-to-reel 1/4" tape recorder, an Alesis ADAT (the original blackface), an AKAI DPS-16 harddisk recorder, MOTU interfaces on a PC, and finally to my current setup, which consists of three Presonus Firepods and Cubase 4 on a dual-core AMD based PC for up to 24 track recording at 24bit / 48kHz. Phew! In fact, a little known tidbit is that I tracked "Life Wish" from our first CD (Waiting For The Boogaloo Sisters...) in my dad's basement, using 8 tracks, a Presonus M80 mic preamp, and the AKAI. Glenn Brown mixed those rough tracks and made them sit right in with the tracks we recorded at his studio. Also, on the latest award-winning and award-nominated Root Doctor CD (Change Our Ways), I tracked most of the guitars, some backing vocals, some of the lead vocals, and a couple Rhodes, glockenspiel, and miscellaneous parts myself. I've always loved the art of recording. But this will be my first attempt at tracking a full record with a band. I've been slowly building up my skills and my gear and I'm very happy with the sounds I'm getting. Of course, recording excellent musicians like Randy and Joe make it easy! For the sessions, we are all playing in the same room. There is no isolation, which means if we mess up, we need to start over. We can't overdub any parts in order to fix a flub. We're also tracking mostly without headphones, and balancing ourselves in the room. In the test recordings we've done, this creates a more dynamic and energetic vibe. It's easy to go into your own "space" when you're under headphones. You tend to listen to yourself and forget about the other players. Playing without headphones and balancing ourselves with each other in the same room results in more of a "live" feel. Except unlike a live performance, if we screw up, we can start over! We have four days scheduled at the moment and we're planning on getting the majority of the songs tracked. A few tunes are probably going to be built up "in the studio", meaning they will take more time to get right, since we haven't had an opportunity to play them live. But with my wife and I expecting a new baby (April 19th!), we're kinda under the gun. We need to get these tunes tracked and ready to mix before the new arrival. For the curious, here are some shots of the current setup. First, the organ and Leslie. I'm using my Hammond-Suzuki XK3 / XK System and a beautiful, mint early 1970s Leslie 122 that I found last year with the original, beautiful sounding Leslie branded tubes (aka, Tung Sols). I decided to use the XK System instead of my 1958 B3 because it sounds great and it gives me a lot of possibilities to use other sounds along with the organ. I have it MIDI'd to a Yamaha Motif ES Rack module, which I'll be using for electric piano sounds, some analog-esque lead sounds, and other wackiness. The Leslie is mic'd with two modified MXL 603s condensers on the top and an MXL 2001 condenser with the Royer tube mod on the bottom. The top mics are running through the preamps of my Soundtracs Topaz board. The bottom mic is going through my Quad Eight mic preamps. The sound is thick and creamy! The Royer tube mod makes the 2001 a serious mic. I used one for a couple of Freddie's lead vocals and my lead vocal on the last Root Doctor CD. A drumset is one of the hardest instruments to capture. Not only do you have multiple sound sources throwing sound out all over the room, but the drum kit covers the entire frequency band, from the lows of the kick, to the high sizzle of the cymbals. The kit is a Yamaha Beech Custom with Evans Coated Ambassador heads. Randy has it tuned up and sounding great. The snare is an old Yamaha snare (not sure the model) and then Randy brought in his little popcorn snare to use on a few tunes. For the overheads, I'm using a pair of Audio Technica ATM450 condenser mics. I'm also using one on the snare. I really love these mics. They are inexpensive and sound fantastic on drums either as overheads or for mic'ing individual drums (snare, toms, etc.) The overheads are going through a custom-made JLM Audio Dual 99V stereo mic preamp that I just finished building this week! It's a pretty amazing preamp based on the Jensen Dual Servo designs of the 70s, but updated. Rack tom #1 has an old Shure SM58 on it with the grill removed. Rack tom #2 is mic'd with an Audio Technica ATM650 (AT's answer to the venerable SM57). The floor tom is mic'd with an Audio Technica ATM25. All toms are going through the Quad Eight mic preamps. If you couldn't tell, I really like Audio Technica's mics (and headphones for that matter). The kick is mic'd with a really inexpensive, Chinese dynamic mic from Superlux, the PRA-218B. I bought one off eBay a few years back on a whim and was completely surprised to find out that it sounded far superior to the Shure Beta52 kick mic I had been using. I sold the Beta52 and bought another Superlux for dirt cheap. Unfortunately, the model is discontinued. I can't speak to the sound of the new models except to say I was using one for my Leslie's bottom rotor on live gigs and it recently died. The hi-hats are mic'd with an MXL 603s that has been modified with the Royer tube mod. However, I'm getting enough hi-hat from the snare mic, so I'll probably put that mic and it's twin on the Leslie. The MXL 603s is a nice mic stock, but doing the Royer tube mod to one takes it from good to outstanding. I mic'd the popcorn snare with another ATM650, going through a racked Yamaha PM1000 channel strip. Joe had some problems with his amp during our rehearsal Sunday, so I don't have pictures. He's using his beautiful Stromberg Monterey guitar and a Peavey Delta Blues tube amp along with some pedals. I'm mic'ing the amp with an old Shure 330 ribbon mic and an EV RE20 dynamic. The ribbon is going through another Yamaha PM1000 channel strip and the RE20 is going through the Topaz. I'm also running a direct line from the guitar, through a Little Labs Red-Eye, and into the Topaz. He'll probably play acoustic on a few tunes as well. Of course, all that gear doesn't mean a thing if we don't have good tunes and we don't play the tunes with energy and fire! I'm very proud of the songs we have and the test recordings have sounded great! I think this will be our best record yet! I'll post some sound samples as the sessions progress and more photos!

Yup, unfortunately you're about as sexy as a Fisher Price person. I think Chuck is more this flava...

Depends on the static. If it contains a DC pulse, then yes. But that would probably fry the voice coil and you'd know for sure.

I have Melodyne Cre8. I read and saw video about the Direct Note Access feature last week. Amazing. I have no idea how it could possibly work.

Looks like another good one!

A review of the CD is in the latest Downbeat (with Pat Metheny on the cover). 3 1/2 stars out of 4.

Wow. That's really cheap. Wonder if it is a scam?

We didn't buy it (thankfully) but it was a gift from my wife's sister, who did buy it: The Magic Bullet! If you've ever seen the infomercial, the hosts are just having the grandest time making everything from salsa to iced alcoholic drinks to omelets to stir fry to whatever. My sister-in-law bought it for us thinking we might be able to use it for making baby food (Zora was very young at the time). Well, that's about all it can do is totally puree everything. There is no way in hell you could make chunky salsa. And an omelet? Well, if you like your ham and cheese liquified before it's put into the egg, then sure! Total piece of crap. And loud as hell, too!

For the love of sweet baby Jesus, why do people still use Real Audio files!??! How to make it really hard for people to listen to your product, Rule #1: Use non-standard audio files like Real Audio that require the use of specialized playback software. :angry:

Make sure to check your spam box. I recently had a dispute with a seller and emailed them twice and thought I had gotten no response. I left them a negative because they were pretty unresponsive when I emailed twice to ask for the cost of shipping as well. As soon as I did that I got a feedback reply back that said "check your spam!" I did and sure enough the responses were in there. Oops. I felt like a doof.

My only worry in the East is the Celtics, but I still think they might be a little worn out by the time they face the Pistons due to a shallow bench. Especially if they have to face Cleveland in the second round. The addition of Theo Ratliff and Juan Dixon was a very smart move by Dumars.