The Steel Guitar Forum

Greatly encouraged by Gerry Hogan (who was playing the festival that year) and my good buddy Phil Campling, in 1995 I travelled to the US for the first time to visit Scotty’s Steel Guitar Festival. I’d only been playing for about 2 years… and what a trip it was. I recall asking Scotty if we could record some audio of the shows… he said, “sure”. We recorded several artistes during the festival, and to be honest everything blew me away! But, I have a strong memory of Lloyd Green’s and Buddy Emmons incredible playing – at the time I was listening to Lloyd’s ‘Reflections’ album and Buddy’s ‘Live!’ album in my car – continuously.

As I recall, Herby Wallace opened up the show, and I remember thinking… Wow! Later I watched Tommy White’s set… just incredible, I remember saying to Gerry, “That’s how I’d like to play”, and I recall his words, “That’s how we’d all like to play”. But, one song completely knocked me out; when Buddy played ‘Night Life’ his intro and fills were almost beyond belief. I think Darrell Macall sung the vocals on this number and the band were sooooo good.

For the last 17 years I’ve been messing about with this number and finally recorded it (link below). Of course I had no video, so I couldn’t see how Buddy did the bar bouncing and where he played the licks, so it’s all guess work. And I’ve had to convert it an instrumental… But, I’ve always appreciated Scotty allowing us to record Buddy’s set. Great memories!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDKCljWR ... ture=share

I should say, I’m using the Telonics Type 84 pickups on both necks of my Zum and a Telonics PRE-1000 preamp connected straight into the recording card. On the recording I’ve added a little compression to make it sit in the mix, but no EQ. It’s my view, the XLR recording outs of the PRE-1000 are about as good as I can achieve, and I’ve tried all sorts of speaker and mic combinations. I’ve always thought the distortion a speaker adds contributes significantly to the sound and this couldn’t really be modelled… but Telonics appear to have nailed it.

Mark

Excellent job, Mark - much enjoyed!

That was very well done Mark...knocked it out of the park!

Seventeen years well spent, I'd say...

Mark,you did a great job. I liked the arrangement and the expression you put in it. Good guitar work also.What do you have in your rack ?
Lathan

Hello Mark,

Excellent job on your steel guitar playing. I enjoyed it very much.
Your video production on the fade in & fade out of your 2 guitar solos is also excellent.

IMO you did a great job. I thoroughly enjoyed this and other of your videos. Thank you!

Mark, good job,very nice playing.

Great job Mark. You made Buddy proud. Great Job !!

Thank you for the kind comments. Roger, I liked the comment 17 years well spent - you wouldn't believe how many times I’ve learnt it, forgot it and then learnt again…. And I’ll probably do it again!

Lathan, you asked what I have in my rack – In the floor rack I have a Teloncs PRE-1000, Lexicon MX-200 and a Telonics PA-200 power amp.

For recording I use a Focusrite soundcard and a PC running Sonar. I programmed the drums using the Session Drummer plug-in (part of Sonar), the bass I played on keyboard and triggered bass samples from the Dimension Pro plug-in (part of Sonar) and the piano is the TTS-1 sound module plug-in (part of Sonar). The acoustic guitar was plugged straight into the soundcard. The Telecaster was plugged straight into the soundcard and Guitar Rig LE (again part of Sonar) used to effect the sound.

So in a nutshell it’s all done in Sonar using the plug-ins supplied – Great piece of software. Only the steel is fed via an outboard – I’ve not been able to equal the PRE-1000 sound using the Sonar EQ or any plug-in.

Mark

Thank you Mark, all in all it was a nice sound. Would like to hear more from you.

LATHA

Mark,

Thanks for your story. Love to see you playing Nightlife. Especially the hammering with the bar.
I´m proud of yeh...

Marcel

A really great job Mark.I have always admired your playing and it is one of my all time favorites.

Jimmie

Nice one Mark, great playing and sound. Alan

Thanks again for the comments. Marcel - your YouTube of Nameless Shuffle is a peach! - I must get that video of Buddy and Hal… Nice to hear from you Alan.

As I mentioned previously, I use Sonar (8.5) to create the backing. Once the backing is ready to go, and with a fair bit of practice to develop the song, I’ll record my steel part using Sonar to record the audio and at the same time video the performance using a small handheld HD video camera on a tripod. After recording the steel I’ll record the guitars – just a short clip where the guitar plays lead; again both audio using Sonar and video on the camera at the same time.

The next job is to mix the audio to a single stereo track; this is all done using Sonar. When you’re happy with the mix, the export facility of Sonar allows you to create an audio file in the right audio format to be used with the video editing software – Typically 44.1kHz, 16 Bit .WAV file.

Over the years I’ve used several cheap and cheerful video editing programs. Most of them I have to say have been painful to work with, especially Adobe Elements… I couldn’t recommend this program. Currently I’m using Corel Video Studio Pro X4 – it’s about £50 and rock solid stable when used with AVCHD video files.

The next step is to import the audio and video files, synchronise them all up using the audio waveform view, cut the clips to size and add some cross fades between clips, create some titles at the beginning and end and preview your video making sure your fingers are synchronised with the audio. When you’re happy with the preview, the video software has a ‘Share’ wizard that automatically formats the video and uploads it to YouTube. The only thing you must have is an existing YouTube account.

I hope this advice is helpful.

Mark

Hey Mark,

That's a very impressive performance. Nice that you're well versed on the technical end as well.

Joe

Cheers Joe

Hi Mark. Have to say, superb playing on all instruments. Really must try to catch you somewhere soon.
All the best
Tony.

Great job Mark. I love the bar bounces.

Tony

Mark...Please add a Caption to this video...Stating...If you play a lacquer guitar don't try the bar bouncing at home..Also if you are going to play in that Flamboyant style,you better get a more colourfull shirt. something along the lines of the bling master David Wright..Seriously, you are playing better everyday..very nice...The late Jeff Newman would be proud of you.......................

Fantastic job Mark. You really nailed it!