Kingsley & Friends
The Girl from Ipanema, composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim, is here performed by Marty Thenell on percussion, Ian Taylor on bass, Michael Stubblefield on acoustic rhythm and solo electric guitar, and Alan Kingsley on flute and percussion. This mix was created from tracks recorded at the recording studios of Los Medanos College in Summer 2011. Drum kit and rhythm guitar were recorded on separate tracks in isolation at the same time. The flute melody and solos, the additional percussion and solo guitar were then recorded as additional tracks. A preliminary mix was created and evaluated by several jazzers and because of their feedback, a bass track was recorded in May 2012 and added to the current mix. It is an example of tracking, pre-mastering, mastering and duplication into CD, mp3 and ogg formats.
The Kingsley & Friends project highlights a wide variety of jazz, classical, solo and ensemble work of Alan Kingsley and the many musicians and other friends who have played with and supported him throughout the last several years.
DVC Night Jazz Band
The DVC Night Jazz Band with Special Guest Chuck MacKinnon on trumpet was recorded in live concert at Diablo Valley College. Using a remote recording rig, approximately 15 individual microphones plus a stereo pair were used to capture the raw tracks. Music Director and Producer Rory Snyder provided valuable mixing input during the sessions that preceded final pre-mastering and mastering. The finished masters, along with album art, were submitted to a duplication company who produced a short run of 100 copies for the musicians and others close to the band to have as an archival recording, a keepsake and for study purposes. The track presented here is entitled: “Make ‘Em Wait”.
CityCorpCrap
I was employed for many years as a corporate executive who worked and commuted long hours by train to “The City” from “The Suburbs”. Toward the end of my corporate tenure, I noticed a rapidly increasing trend for meetings to be held at which the participants competed for “air time” while using a sort of unintelligible language that has now become known as corp-speak. Fed up with commuting, corporate life, city noise and the ridiculousness of the meaningless meetings for which everyone heartily congratulated themselves, I set out to capture my displeasure by creating this project. It includes tracks of a cityscape that I recorded both in train stations and on the city streets as well as voiceover text that was generated by an online corporate bullshit generator. The bass track was created with pre-recorded loops. The chord progressions were created by recording individual flute notes which were each turned into samples that could be played on a midi keyboard.
Latalan
Latalan is a self-produced project that combines environmental recordings that I made in the Sierras of several species of birds. During editing, the bird songs (or screeches!) were placed precisely in time with the music. The backing band and guitar solo were constructed of pre-recorded audio. With the rhythm in place, I recorded flute solos and processed the signal to create a bit of “dirtiness” to the sound.