be my wishfulvalentine

Monza, sopra-elevata
WARNING: Read only at your peril. It can bore you to death, and is, in all honesty, relatively unitersting.
The Wish Talker, or an example of how to screw up a song and its recording
Written and performed by My Dear Killer. The song was originally recorded by Stefano S. (Myself) and Lorenzo T. for the fist session of Clinical Shyness using a TEAC Tascam 80-8 seven-minus-one reel-to-reel recorder. Basically the output from the amplifier (Gibson Mercury II) was collected by two dinamic microphoes and fed directly into the recorder. The background of feedbacks was recored by the two of us simulatenously, one using the Gibson amplifier and the other a Sovtek MIG-100 head, connected to a Fender cabinet and using as much stomp boxes as available, equally slit in number, but not in type, except for the fuzz/distortion units. I played the usual Jolana Proxima II, as I always do. However Lorenzo preferred to use his home-modified Fender Music Master, equipped with a second single coil pick-up and metal head cap. He also came up and recorded the harmonics line. The idea of submerging the track with a heavy load of background noises, hissing and howling was mine instead. This should have marked some form of contrast of the quieter track on the record having the more robust arrangement. That was before everything else was contaminated by the love for saturation. The title of the song was change during the recording, even I could not remeber the original title, but that is a worthless detail. However, with time, the lyrics were also completely modified since the archaic recording, thus, the voices track was retaken. As I did not had the dear old coffin size Tascam with me, I did with what I had at hands, which was a digitalised version of the 8 tracks, acquired with a Leyla soundcard (courtesy of Mauro Martinuz), a cassette four track recorded (courtesy of my wife, Niki) and a pair of universally abused Shure SM 58. At first the original digitalised tracks were mixed stereophonically occuping two track of the four available, and the voice was recorded on the remaining two tracks. The whole thing was then mixed down and mastered (analogically) directly, to an Ampex 1/4" two-track recorder. This all added probably and endless amount of hiss, but because of the abundant feedback on the background, it goes, to my hear, almost completely unnoticed. However, I bother to also convert in digital form both, the voice take, even though are not perfectly sinchronised due to accuracy of speed reproduction of the four-track, and the full mixdown, which then appear in the full length version of Clinical Shyness.


The Wish Talker
Wish Talker, Alternative version #1
Wish Talker, Alternative version #2


Monza, sopra-elevata
Needless to say, the digital rendering of the new vocal tracks remained untouched until a few weeks ago. And for good reasons. Mainly two reasons. The first, why should I have been bothered; the second, I knew they were not in perfect sinchro. However, there was a something it never convinced me in the final version of the song, specifically the voice mix. This probably had to do with the fact that while in all the other songs the voice was recorded together with the main guitar track, I had to drop this track in the mix because the vocal line was different. I also ended up mixing it too high with respect to everything else, which is a stylistic mismatch. Thus, being a perfectionist, and having some time to spare, I went back to it and decided to give it a posthumous try. In fact I have now erased all the digital files, not be tempted to procrastinate this process even longer. To my horror I discovered that, although the synchronisation was not that bad, and no apparent sign of flanging or anything equivalently horrid was occurring on the voice track, they were horrible in itself. Which mean, I am an absolute arse. I should have realised it immediately. They are not even bad, just don't blend with the rest, which is real cry.
However, there is always a remedy, which is what you could hear now, if you'd be bother to download these two free tracks. Moreover, on top of this embellishment on the voice, the tracks are enriched by sampling from Under the Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, involving an outstanding interpretation of Richard Burton. Actually that is undoubtedly the best thing in the song.
Finally You'll ask why two take? Because I couldn't decide which one was better, and, in all honestly, the are nearly identical. In this virtually endless uncertainty I made both of the available. The choice is yours on which you prefer. If any. I like them most than the version which features on the record. For what it matters.



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