Week 6 - Monday 4/15/1991

Recording 'You Don't Know Me'.

We arrived at the studio around 10:30. Winegar had spent the weekend singing background vocals on the upcoming debut album for Fungo Mungo. His first task was to record the piano parts, miked with an SM-57 and compressed through his Alesis Micro Limiter with the gain reduction set to near maximum.

Next up on the task list was adding more sound effects to the song's freakout section. I contributed short segments from two cassette 4-track recordings I had made earlier. The effect of howling, screaming children was taken from 'Children in my Head' and a loop was made from a 1987 recording made with Gates called 'Raccoon Boy'.

To create a strange vocal effect, Wallace had me speak nonsensical phrases into his sampler, reversed them, and dumped the results to a cassette tape. I wrote out the reversed phrases in phonetic notation and recited them once again into the sampler, which Wallace again reversed and dropped onto the 24-track tape. The result was recognizable as spoken English, yet the reversal process had given it a weird acoustic envelope.

After a short break, the session resumed at 3:00 P.M. The plan was to record the lead vocals, only this time following the recording procedure Gates had recommended: record everything in the control room with only Wallace, Puig and Winegar present, using headphones for monitoring the backing tracks. Four hours later, the band gathered in the control room to hear the playback. The vocals were out of tune, much to everybody's surprise. Puig explained that Gates' monitor mix should have had more bass guitar in it, since bass instruments help singers find the song's pitch center. We decided to re-record all vocals the following day.

Berg appeared at the studio at 7:30 P.M. with his recently purchased Fender Rhodes Electric Piano. Once the amplifier's output is repaired, we will use the instrument on future recordings.