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TweedBlog: the Tangleweed blog
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The blog was started by the Chicago-based acoustic Americana group Tangleweed to document their activities as working musicians. It has since expanded its mission to help engender greater interest and understanding of American vernacular music. The blog i
Recent Posts Tagged With 'recording'
More Merry Christmas, from the Kennett Brothers (repost)
Today’s post is more reposty goodness for the holiday season. Enjoy Here’s another song from the Kennett Brothers’ long out of print and now ridiculously pricey Xmas CD, Santa is Real. This time, it’s the Kennett’s perfo...
Merry Christmas from the Kennett Brothers (repost)
This is a repost of a post I wrote two years ago. Enjoy, while I take the rest of the day off. Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco comp...
The new record will be called…
…Most Folk Heroes Started as Criminals We’re mastering it tomorrow (Thursday) night with Mike Hagler at King Size in Chicago. Unless something changes over the next 24 hours, here’s the track list and sequence: Side 1: Sandy River ...
Naming tracks for an unnamed CD
We’re in the home stretch for our as-yet-untitled 3rd CD. Here’s the probable track list: California Short Life of Trouble The Logjam Sandy River Belle Pain in My Heart Trishanku’s Heaven The Takeup Reel/ Cold Frosty Morning/ Grey ...
Quick studio postmortem
We had a hugely productive day yesterday at King Size, pushing our as-yet-untitled third CD closer to the finish line. We were also honored to have the great photographer Paul Natkin join us for a quick photo shoot. More later....
Don’t drum and drive
This just popped up on YouTube yesterday–a video of an anonymous drummer playing along to our first CD while driving the streets of Chicago. If the author would like to play some steering wheel with us sometime, he should drop us a line. The...
Fun with drunken Irish Karaoke
Here’s a fun little artifact from the Where You Been So Long sessions: a version of the Leaving of Liverpool (MP3) without vocals. When we record our tunes, we usually do the instrumental tracks as a group, and then overdub vocals. We had done ...
Studio postmortem
We had a remarkably productive session with Mike at King Size yesterday. We cut six (!) tunes, far more than we had expected. In all, we have basic tracks for 15 tunes. We’ll take stock of what we have over the next few weeks and see what will ...
The Amazing Randi takes on Audiophiles
I have long believed self described ‘audiophiles’ and ’stereophiles’ to be little more than gullible and vain conspicuous consumers. So it is with great pleasure that I read the exchanges professional pseudo-science debunker J...
Merry Christmas from the Kennett Brothers, part II (repost)
Today’s post is more reposty goodness for the holiday season. Enjoy Here’s another song from the Kennett Brothers’ long out of print and now ridiculously pricey Xmas CD, Santa is Real. This time, it’s the Kennett’s perfo...
Merry Christmas from the Kennett Brothers (repost)
This is a repost of a post I wrote last year. Enjoy, while I take the rest of the day off. Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco completi...
Bob Katz talks about loudness: sounds like crap, only worse
Mastering engineer Bob Katz has an interesting rant about unlistenably loud CDs. He asserts that contemporary CDs are ten decibels louder than those made 15 years ago. Remember that decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale. A ten-decibel increase...
Looking at loudness
CDs are getting louder, and the increased volume is coming at the expense of dynamics and other musical details. The Loudness War isn’t the sole domain of major labels–indie labels are often just as guilty of creating unlistenable CDs due...
The loudness war, continued: why some CDs may make you vomit
More on the Loudness war. This article from the Times of London, Why Music Really is Getting Louder, includes this insight from Abbey Road’s senior mastering engineer, Peter Mew. Using a hard limiter during CD mastering causes waves to get squa...
Quick studio postmortem
We had a good day today recording with Mike Hagler at King Size, though both Mike and our banjo player Ryan Fisher were feeling poorly. We tracked five songs, and added some overdubs to the tunes we tracked last time. The song list: The Takeup Reel/...
The Loudness War
Here’s a nice, concise demonstration of the reduced dynamic range in contemporary CDs, a good companion to the article Scott posted earlier in the week (how loud is your band’s new CD?). I grew up with LPs. I miss dynamics. We’re...
How ‘LOUD’ is your band’s new cd? Interesting Mastering article
Here’s a link to a very interesting article about cd-mastering and the overall trend towards GETTIN’ LOUD in the age of the ipod-shuffle, courtesy of Chicago Mastering Service. Maybe I’ll do a little analysis of some Tangleweed wav-...
The Takeup Reel
I’m listening to the roughs from our session with Mike Hagler on the 20th of October, and liking what I hear. One of the songs we tracked was a little fiddle tune I wrote a few months ago called The Takeup Reel. We weren’t especially happ...
