Thank you Matthew for calling attention to my music.
The steel is growing in stature all around the world. Players like Travis Toy, Hal Merrill, Lionel Wendling Perso, Christopher Woitach, and so many others are taking our instrument “where no steel player has gone before,†and helping to shed the “hillbilly instrument†stereotype.
I am proud to have played a role in that growth.
I want to discuss my recording of the piece “Gymnapodies.†(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzKaDmJ ... e=youtu.be)
The piece is based on a G major 9th chord. The notes are G, B, D, F#, A. The bottom 3 notes are a G chord, and the top 3 are a D chord. So, while the total of all these notes is the G major 9th, I approached the piece by breaking the chord into the 2 chords that form it, and played them separately in different instruments, (fretless bass and autoharp.) Thus the steel is never playing the same chord as the others.
Moreover, I played the steel part (in D) with some country licks, which as a rule I avoided doing, but since the other instruments are playing a G chord against the D chord licks, it doesn’t sound country.
I’d like to call your attention to what I, and many others, consider to be my very best recording. The piece is called “Capriccio Espagnol.†You can hear it on my Soundcloud page.
https://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin
The piece is 16 minutes long, and has to be heard in its entirety on one sitting to be fully appreciated, as is builds up to a dramatic conclusion. The last 3 minutes required 109 tracks to record.
As you listen, you’ll hear what sounds like a piano and a horn section. These were actually done with a steel. The way I got the horn section sounds was to record each part on analog tape. Running at 30 inches per second, and leaving every other track on the tape blank. Then I slowed the tape down to 15, and played back each part, one at a time, through a heavily EQ’d distortion unit, and recorded the slowed down distorted parts on the empty tracks on the tape. Them when I played the tape back at 30, the distorted tracks were the original pitches, with none of that chipmunk sound. But the RATE of the distortion was doubled. When combined with the distorted tracks, the result was that horn sound.
This was my “mad scientist running amok in a recording studio†project. And when I started it. I didn’t know what I was getting into. The production took on a life of its own. But I’m really happy with the results.
I hope you guys will check this one out and listen to all 16 minutes, preferably through headphones.
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