The Linear Canvas
This journal is about the wrongs and rights of the world, as I see them.

The Linear Canvas

My Newest Recording – Sorry It Came To This (remix)

May 15th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

GUITAR1I recorded Sorry It Came To This many years ago on my 4 track tape recorder. I had worked on it a couple of years ago, but I thought it was in need of a remix. It was mainly that the vocals were too low, but there were other problems as well. Originally I had to sync all the tracks, replace live drum tracks with near exact MIDI performances and lined up the song to a timeline. Not an easy job for the way I recorded back then. It must have been one of the first I edited in such a way. I put a lot of work in just the timings alone. The beat on a second look is near perfect. It’s hard to tell when you are still working on it. It takes some time to cool down from it.

I wrote Sorry It Came To This about a time when I just couldn’t get it together while others were conspiring to overthrow my regime. Or something like that.

 

 

My Recorded Cover Songs – Snowblind (remix)

May 11th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

 

Sep21_0002I was listening to this Black Sabbath cover I recorded recently and I just thought it could use a little more work. I just remixed it and I think it has a little more punch now. Especially in the higher frequencies. Here’s your warning. This song is really loud and pretty long. 

Snowblind
[audio:http://www.linearcanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Snowblind BS 20120511_2134mcd.mp3]

I played my Stratocaster through my Line 6 POD 2.0 on this. The bass is my Rickenbacker. The keyboard strings are Dimension Pro played on my Roland slave keyboard. The drums are a MIDI file played through Session Drummer 3.

Fixing Cakewalk Sonar Project File Problems

May 4th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

 

Sonar 8_5 images2I am not going to claim this one fix will solve all your problems opening project files in the digital audio workstation Cakewalk Sonar. It has solved a problem before for me, when many of my projects created on one computer and/or version of Sonar would not open on another. Mainly I wanted to write this down so I wouldn’t have to find this info again.

This process only takes a few minutes and you should know whether you are successful almost immediately.

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My Recorded Cover Songs – Ready For Love (remix)

May 4th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

Alex FisherI recorded Ready For Love in about 1999. I have mixed it several times. Hopefully I got it right this time. Last time I mixed it, it came out sounding kind of thin. It made me wonder if I had the dbx noise reduction switched off when I dubbed it from tape. By the time I realized there was something wrong with the recording, I had forgotten it was on tape and looked through every bit of digital storage I had for the tracks. When I finally found it on tape, I could hardly believe that I had done it on tape. It had to have been one of my last analog projects. I had the tape thing perfected by then I guess.

Ready for Love

[audio:http://www.linearcanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Ready for Love 20120505_1821mcd.mp3]

Ready For Love was written by Mick Ralphs and was originally recorded by his band Mott the Hoople. Later after Mick left Mott, he formed the band Bad Company and they recorded it as well. Mott did an extended ending called After Lights. I tend to believe my version more resembles the Mott the Hoople version and I included the ending in spirit, if not form. I sang, and played all of the instruments. The guitars are my Fender Stratocaster electric. The bass was my Rickenbacker 4001. The drums are my Ludwig’s. There are no keyboards on this recording, although I think it sounds like I played one on it. I originally recorded the song on my analog Yamaha MT-1000 4 track recorder. I processed it with Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge 9.

My Recorded Cover Songs – 867-5309 (Jenny Jenny)

April 26th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

867-5309I got to thinking about the band Tommy Tutone the other day. I recorded their song 867-5309/Jenny back in the 1990’s. I had acquired their LP from a used record store in Lima, Ohio. Sometime after that I recorded this song. I had a mix of it that I had made back then. I think I reprocessed this song once before, but I couldn’t find my converted files. I transferred the tapes to digital again and did my magic on the unsynchronized tracks spread over two different sessions. The tracks actually were very easy to sync. I added some bass drum in the fills, the main weakness of my analog recording days. I did a little work editing the vocals, but everything is as it was back then mostly. I think it came out better this time, than last.

867-5309 (Jenny Jenny)

[audio:http://www.linearcanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Jenny Jenny 20120427_1708mcd.mp3]

I sang, and played all of the instruments. The guitars are an Ibanez Les Paul and a Fender Stratocaster electric. The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. The drums sounds are from a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine and were played on Yamaha MIDI drum pads. I originally recorded the song on my analog Yamaha MT-1000 4 track recorder. I processed it with Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge 9.

My Recorded Cover Songs – My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)

April 22nd, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

640_Elise_Testone_0030.rcI was watching American Idol last Wednesday and was watching the contestant Elise Testone. She has been my favorite contestant all along. They had her sing two songs and the second was supposed to be a soul song from the 60’s or 70’s. Elise picked Let’s Get It On originally by Marvin Gaye. I think she did OK, but I don’t think it was a good fit for her voice. My first thought was she’s too young to have a broad knowledge of the best music from that era. Then I thought she should have sang My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)  by former Temptations singer David Ruffin. My next thought was I don’t know her telephone number, so I should record it.

My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) is my number one favorite song of all time, bar none. I bought the 45 RPM record in 1969 and just have always thought it was the my favorite song. Even after all these years. I have never recorded a Motown song before. I think the arrangement only hints at the Detroit sound. It’s more 1970’s folkie meets Auto-Tune.

I have never used Auto-Tune as a hard effect before. I have used it for pitch correction here and there. The common name for the settings are the “T-Pain Effect”. I used the “Drake” setting and then went a little past that in smoothness. I just thought the juxtaposition of a 60’s soul song, ‘70’s folk style and and Auto-Tune was too extreme to pass up.

My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me) was originally recorded by David Ruffin. It was written by Harvey Fuqua, Johnny Bristol, Pam Sawyer, and James Roach. I played acoustic guitar and piano on this track. I sang all the vocals.

My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)

 

My Newest Recording – She Knows All The Colors

April 11th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

jill19Last year at this time I wrote a song for my wife Jill’s birthday. This year quite by accident I wrote a song inspired by Jill called She Knows All The Colors, just about a week after her birthday and a few days after our anniversary. I had the concept and Jill fit right in.

Anyone that knows Jill, also knows that color has been important in her life since she was young. She was always the pretty girl who knew how to apply makeup, but it helps when you have eyelashes that long. She’s always been that pretty girl. It’s also about the other kinds of color Jill radiates and receives.

I wrote the song in a third person. I guess I am telling myself what a lucky guy I am. I got her and you didn’t. She whispers to me.

She Knows All The Colors

This is the first recording I have done on my Tascam interface. It worked fine. I still like my PreSonus, but it’s dead. I played electric guitar, bass guitar, tambourine, and organ on this track. I also programmed the drum software.

I sang all the vocals, but I got Jill to add a word near the end. It is Jill’s first recorded vocal performance. In case you are wondering, I say the word color or colors seventeen times in the song.

 

My Cousin, Robby

March 6th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

IMG_0006Today I got word of my cousin Robby Fyffe’s death. He was in his mid-50’s. Too young to go. The last few days had me thinking of the times we spent together. Generally that was only once a year during the summer as children. Robby and his twin brother Andy were a few years older than me. Older than my oldest sister by about a year. Being twins makes you think they were a lot alike. Besides being brothers, at times the only thing I think Robby and Andy had in common was a birth date and living in Red Bush, Kentucky.

In the summer of 1964, everything was, as it  always had been, as far as I knew. I was between kindergarten and first grade in school. My family was in Red Bush because my grandmother, Martha Fyffe Kelly (Mammaw) was seriously ill and would soon pass away. Besides the fact that she was in the hospital at nearby Paintsville, nothing seemed any different to me.

My parents had gone off to the hospital to see my grandmother with my Aunt Berenice, mother of the twins and my cousin Steve who was a teenager and a star basketball player, already in high school. They had left all of the younger children at Mammaw’s house together. The oldest kids were Andy and Robby, at about ten. My sister’s Cara and Cathy were around nine and eight years old, respectively. I was six. As odd as it seems to leave children that age alone, I think we were safe from any predators in that part of the Appalachian Mountains, except for maybe wild animals. But we were never really safe from the collective and individual antics of the twins. Our older cousin Steve was just down the road, so if there was any real trouble, he was only a phone call away. I felt safe. Regardless of the facts. When they left us to go visit my grandmother, they also left us with a large frosted chocolate cake to eat. Just what we needed, more sugar.

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My Newest Recording–Speed of Life (remix)

February 29th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

front-cover-20110728_1624_thumb1I wrote the Speed of Life after a friend was killed along with his family in an auto accident last year. Regardless, it is one of my favorite songs that I’ve written. There is a pause just before the outro that was missing a piece. It was a sound effect of a crashing car. I just put the sound effect in and did a remix. This is closer to what I planned from the start.

Speed of Life

I am uploading “The Wavelength” CD to ReverbNation and am re-releasing it including some bonus material. My main problem was that the piano was buried in the previous mix, and as I said the sound effects. I was hesitant to put the sound effects in, but now as more time has passed, I run less risk of offending someone.

My Recorded Cover Songs – Snowblind

February 25th, 2012 . by Alexander Fisher

 

P1010601_thumb1I posted Snowblind, originally by Black Sabbath, a few months ago. It was not completely finished back then but I decided to upload it anyway. I had another project going and I was afraid I wouldn’t get done with it. The song first appears on Black Sabbath’s “Vol 4”  album which in my opinion is their best record. I had said I was going to record Snowblind some time ago to someone, somewhere. I wasn’t sure if I’d manage to get it done, but I finally did.

Snowblind
[audio:http://www.linearcanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Snowblind BS 20120225_1422mcd.mp3]

If there is one thing I regret in recording this song, is using the the same key that Black Sabbath played it in. My fingertips are intact and I think my vocals could have benefitted from a step or two higher in pitch. Also I used my Stratocaster. Tony Iommi used a Gibson SG guitar, which I think has a much fatter sound. My Strat has a humbucker pickup like an SG, but I still think the sound is slightly thinner. Some other things I notice I just decided to live with, making the American Idol excuse that I’m making it my own. I love that.

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