disquiet0302 gronkytonk by NorthWoods

for this track, I decided I wanted a dirty rock n roll feel. I also decided to use the worst gear in my collection.

Drums: I used the aluminum pan shown in the picture and put the SM57 underneath it, then banged on the pan. (It's one of those disposable pans used in a steam tray)

Guitar: I used the Hannah Montana guitar shown here. It's actually not a terrible guitar--eminently playable, and with a funky loose sound. So to make it sound a bit more wretched, I jammed the SM57 into the sound hole, so that the business end was wedged inside and the back end was dangling out of the guitar. This made it impossible to play the high strings, but I figured I didn't really want to get too fancy anyway. I tripled the result for that epic arena-rock feel :)

Piano: I took the keyboard shown here, turned it all the way up, and played it while holding the SM57 against the speaker. It occasionally malfunctioned while recording, or maybe that was me (hah!)

Vocals: I inserted the Sony micro-cassette recorder into my mouth and sang ("sang"). I did have lyrics but thought, why bother--incomprehensible anyway. I just improvised. I then recorded off the Sony's internal speaker using--yup--the SM57.

Last, the little wooden coffin shown here makes a spooky sound when opened, so I stuck that on the front end. (It's a box my daughter made to hold my guitar picks)

Put the guitars and piano thru amp plug-ins, added various bits of limiting, EQ and reverb here and there. Voila! Dirty rock n roll!

More on this 302nd weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Gronkytonk: Record a single in the genre introduced in Malka Older’s novel Infomacracy) at:

https://disquiet.com/0302/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0302-gronkytonk/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Photo associated with this project is by Michael Banabila. It’s used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:

flic.kr/p/EqsRd5

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/