Inside Alamalibu

Ohms My Gawd!

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 23:19:05 GMT

So, I could've taken more time to think of a better title to this post, but I was too busy rocking my tits off to this free record:

What Do You Mean, What Do I Mean?

Motor,
AGS

Houses of the Hoky

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 02:30:00 GMT

So, modern rocketry can attribute its beginnings to black magick. So can Led Zeppelin. Oh the irony of it all.

Bottom line - Jack Parsons has a crater on the dark side of the moon named after him. Take a look and then go read up on this guy at your local Wikipedia store....

Zoom,
AGS

Dispelling Myths and the Such

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:55:00 GMT

What exactly is yerba mate? It's the life source. Yeah. It's better than coffee. Better for you at least.

Wait.

I have no idea what yerba mate is, yet I drink it on a regular basis. What IS THIS STUFF?

Well, I've found a reliable source to explain it to me, and thusly, to you as well.

Happy trails,
GS

World's First Recorded Computerized Vocal Performance

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:20:00 GMT

Check out the IBM 704 Mainframe kick out the jams live from Bell Labs in 1961. You may remember Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey channeling this performance as he was "involuntarily disconnected"....

Robert Johnson slower and lower...

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:40:00 GMT

See what you think about this --

A lot of reputable blues dorks are now saying that we've been listening to Robert Johnson's recordings 20 percent too fast. Pretty convincing, mostly. Either way, it makes me want play around with master speeds of some mixes. (it's rumored that a lot of Elton John's vocals were cut to a slower version of the song and then sped back up to achieve that werid and creepy high thing that he has on much of the Yellow Brick Road album.) Either way... a new way to hear a master at work. I'm almost convinced, but I miss his weird and creepy high demon voice.

Here is a pretty good article on it, but mainly just scroll down to the bottom to listen to the wav files.

http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html

--jdn

Everything RIGHT about music!

Wed, 26 May 2010 19:05:00 GMT

ADRIAN!

You can't think of Rocky without wanting to scream that out. Hopefully after you shout that out and realize how dumb it is, you begin to remember the theme.

What a killer theme, huh? Well, here's a live performance of it in all its dignified glory!

This is a masterpiece! Check out the trumpet and conga solos. Just F'N killericious!

-GS

Another electro-mechanical find...

Wed, 26 May 2010 02:50:00 GMT

Got us one of these down in Woodlawn (couple blocks from the studio) for $50. Could have got us a lot more than that if we'd spent it on the invitations from the whores down there. It was the house piano at some sort of halfway house/ hostel/ community center where nobody wants to be part of the community. Hopefully the $50 went to some worthy cause. Couldn't really tell.

Baldwin Electropro ... Strange beast, this thing. I expect to hear it on a recording soon. Real strings and hammers, no soundboard, pickups. Mid-70s is my guess.

Aight,

--Jody

Shipwrecks, discoveries, contact mics and piezo transducers.

Wed, 19 May 2010 20:55:00 GMT

So I just wanna throw this out there. We are making plans to build our own plate reverb, but in an effort to conserve on space within Alamalibu, we are going to make it out of a metal coil. So, yeah, we're sort of reinventing the wheel. Maybe it works, and maybe it doesn't.

At the onset of this misadventure, I predict times of joy and times of sheer frustration with an unknown future. Yes, we are embarking on a treacherous mission, an ambitious journey that surely will have some surprising twists and turns.

Wish us luck, and if you have a name suggestion for this lovely lady we'll be building, please send it our way.

-GS

TTS Interview on Birmingham's WBHM.

Mon, 10 May 2010 22:40:00 GMT

Last week, James and I went to the WBHM studio and had a discussion about recording in Alamalibu.

Click on this to hear it...

Til next,
GS

Jody Nelson will cut your grass... if you are through the sparks' 2000th fan on facebook.

Sat, 01 May 2010 01:35:00 GMT

Jody Nelson will cut your grass...
If you are our 2000th fan on facebook, Jody Nelson will come to your house and cut your grass. He will not do a really great job, but he'll cut it.
Deadline for the contest is July 31, 2010.
Nelson reserves the right to cop out if the travel expenses outweigh the benefits to the organization.
Go to http://www.facebook.com/throughthesparks and hit the "like" button.

The Funniest Video on Youtube! Seriously.

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:55:00 GMT

You're all entitled to your opinions on what is funny or not funny, but I'm positively sure you will all agree hands down that this video wins the funniest F'N video out there on youtube! The video can not be embedded here, but I encourage you to watch it by any means necessary.

Pure genius work.

-GS

Lonnie Johnson, Original Guitar Hero...

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:05:00 GMT

It's Robert Johnson who most likely first comes to mind when we think of guitarists to come out of the Blues tradition and ultimately shape what ended up being the guitar rock we know and love today. However, strictly from a standpoint of guitar theory and proprietary tunings, he could also be considered the Joni Mitchell of The Blues. It's Lonnie Johnson that first ended up on vinyl, bending notes and running down scales with a second instrument providing the accompaniment. It's Lonnie Johnson that you'll hear playing actual guitar solos on the oldest recordings to feature them. If not him, maybe Scrapper Blackwell. Not being a scholar of any kind, I would find it ridiculous to debate who cut the first guitar solo. There is however, something to be said for being a reputed influence of Robert Johnson's. Keep in mind, Lonnie had the luxury of living into his thirties and beyond, something that held back Robert's career. It's this evolution of his career that makes Lonnie Johnson such a giant of popular music. If you spot check his catalog, you'll hear music that sounds like String Band (a la Mississippi Sheiks), straight up Country Blues, early Jazz, an oddly guitar-led proto-R&B, to some tidy but very genuine Chicago Blues. Through his own virtuosity, Lonnie Johnson made each of these "genres" even more vague than they already were.

Check out "Tomorrow Night". It's a beautiful song with a genuine anxiety that's still palpable after sixty years. It's a real ghost....

- JB

It's Puppetshow First Then Extreme Closeups! or New WMW Promo Video

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:40:00 GMT

So we filmed and edited this little tramp last night. I think the puppeteering was performed exceptionally well by Jody.

-gs

Lurvin' It!

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:05:00 GMT

This is a little joke our Shawn came up with...he'll probably kill me for posting this:

Anyone want this on their bumper? It comes with a cool vanilla shake.

Bring on the lawsuits. Or at least the cease and desist letters....

-GS

TTS Back Catalog is no longer FREE (to the masses)

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:30:00 GMT

While the tracks are still available for download, there's a small fee attached to each of them. We've made the price for downloading the entire albums attractive as well. But if you insist on getting your music still for free, and there's a track or album that you would like to have, please send us a note, and we'll email you a download code for free. No strings.

-GS

Fellow home recordist...

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Some friends came over couple weeks back and showed me Nik Freitas' new record "on the down-low." I resisted ripping it to my hard drive out of some weird cautionary respect for a record that's still under wraps, but I wish I had. Great songs... and a great recording. He's got this great habit of editing stops into the songs where everything just halts, beautifully. Listen to "See Me There" on the myspace site... There are also some great Brian May-ish guitar stuff on "All the Way Down." Can't wait to hear the new one all the way through again. I'm told it's all done at his home. He's out in Los Angeles. I sent our old friend, drummer and Birmingham ex-pat Thomas Mimikakis a lilnk to his stuff and told him to look him up to see if needs a drummer. -jdn

Spinner.com Interviews TTS's Jody Nelson for SXSW

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:40:00 GMT

Well, the headline pretty much says it all. Tom Walsh from Spinner.com had a phone interview with Jody Nelson of Through the Sparks and you can read here what he said. No mention of all our free music on the site or Alamalibu. But it's a fun read nonetheless.

10 New Songs "Mastered" at Alamalibu

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:05:00 GMT

At Alamalibu, we're getting our hands in just about everything, media-wise, these days. Now we're dabbling in mastering. Not quite pro, but I think we're getting some really good results.

The most recent project is a beloved friend and bandmate of mine in the Rebel Kings, Duquette Johnston. He has posted a collection of songs, entitled Rugged and Fancy, on Bandcamp - a website for musicians that's turning out to be quite a painless way to distribute music.

http://therebelkings.bandcamp.com/album/rugged-fancy

He wrote and recorded 10 songs in 3 days on his 4-track and Jody mastered these recordings with him this last Sunday, which was still on the same day of the 3 days he had written and recorded the 10 songs on his 4-track. It's free in the next 24 hours and then he selling the songs for charity.

A lotta numbers and redundancy, but after a listen, it evident there's no math in this rocket surgery. Duque kept the songs simply beautiful and full of melodic goodness.

-GS

Please Don't Call It a "Keyboard"

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:50:00 GMT

While we won't be adding this early 20th Century electronic instrument to Alamalibu Studio, we can however enjoy this bit of gear porn compliments of Youtube. I hear that Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead had the means to pick one up and even composed for it. He's in good company. Shostakovich and Oliver Messiaen were also including it in compositions while WWII was getting underway. The lows this thing creates around 3:55 are terrifying...

-JB

Eisenhower-era drum machine...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:05:00 GMT

Ended up in a werid part of North Alabama yesterday at an old piano and organ store. Can't say where I was, because I was pretty lost following GPS directions to the nearest Colonial Bank.
Being completely lost might have made it feel even more like the Twilight Zone -- happy-looking, clean little town, where there weren't many cars and everyone was over 60.
All the great, old broken-down stuff made our place look like the NAMM convention. They had some really weird stuff on their junk heap, alongside some more pristine vintage stuff that didn't seem to be for sale, which was fine because I'm down to double digits.
Organ-type drum machines are all over the place, but this thing is especially Rube Goldbergish in its elaborate mechanics generating what results in a pretty cheap thrill. Here's one that works... from the 1950s.

-JDN