Which guitars did you play on the record?Almost exclusively a 45-year-old Martin D12-20 with frets that are almost entirely worn down in the first position and around the 12th fret, where I tend to play the most. I was having some very, very slight intonation problems with that, so I took it over to Ron Tracy at Hoffman Guitars and asked him to re-fret it. He said, “Why do you want to re-fret it?” Ron is a real professional. Somebody who just wanted work would say, “Ok, that will be $900.” He asked if I liked the way it sounded and when I said yes he refused to re-fret it. That was really cool.Describe how you string and tune your guitars.On both acoustic and electric I drop the sixth string to C and the fifth string to G C, G, D, G, B, E, low to high. I use the same tuning on the 12-string, but with all of the strings dropped down a whole step Bb, F, C, F, A, D, low to high. And sometimes I just use a dropped-D tuning.
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I also string and tune the third, fourth, and sometimes the fifth strings as double choruses rather than octave strings, which puts more stress on the neck, but so far it hasn’t broken off.What brand and gauges are the strings on the 12-string?From low to high they are.054/.030,.044/.044,.044/.020,.032/.032,.024/.024,.016/.016,.012/.012. I use GHS Phosphor Bronze strings unless I’m using the guitar to trigger MIDI, in which case I use GHS White Bronze. One of the characteristic qualities of your 12-string sound is pitch modulation. Are you doing that primarily with finger vibrato?Yes. And because most of my strings are double choruses rather than octaves, if you tune them in unison and then bend them slightly, they’ll chorus and flange against each other. It is essentially like having two guitars—two hands and two guitars.
Steve Tibbetts music compilation / best-of, remasters sent out to radio stations and media in late 2010. A 3-CD set split into acoustic, electric, and “other” music (Acoustibbetts, Elektrobitts, Exotibbetts). Yusef Lateef - Eastern Sounds One of multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef's most enduring recordings, Eastern Sounds was one of the last recordings made by the band that Lateef shared with pianist Barry Harris after the band moved to New York from Detroit, where the jazz scene was already dying. Steve thompson (1) steve tibbetts.
You might say it is also a way of doing cheap real-time overdubbing. I actually got a lot of my sound by copying Bill Conners, particularly the album Theme to the Guardian. The other musician I try to emulate is sarangi master Sultan Khan. I can’t even come close to imitating the sarangi, but he creates a singing sound and pays uncanny attention to pitch that I try to imitate a little bit.Do you ever play with a pick?I play exclusively with my fingers, and I fret with the fingers on both hands, which is something I stole from Harvey Mandel. Harvey Mandel was playing a goldtop through a Marshall and fretting with the index finger of his right hand when Eddie Van Halen was still in his nappies.
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I use my right-hand index, middle, and ring fingers to fret, but only one at a time. For example, I’ll fret something with my left and right hands on the first string, and then my left hand will move to the second string and I’ll fret notes on that string with it and my middle finger. Then my left hand will move to the third string, and I’ll fret a note on that string with it and my index finger. That makes it easier to play quick flourishes of notes. How do you record your 12-string?I place a Neumann TLM 170 largediaphragm condenser a bit to the right of the soundhole from the guitarist’s perspective, and I place either an AKG C 451 or a Mojave tube condenser at about a 90-degree angle to the spot where the neck joins the body, listening to each mic centered individually in my headphones to find the best spots.
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These Martin 12-strings are known for their woofiness, and you have to find spots that aren’t too woofy. Then, once I’ve got two good sounding individual mics, I spread them out hard right and left, hope that the stereo image is good, and if it’s not I do little micro adjustments. Both mics go through a John Hardy M-1 four-channel mic preamp straight into MOTU Digital Performer recording at 24-bit/88.2kHz.
I think that 24-bit resolution provides a certain harmonic richness, especially for percussion and complex cymbal sounds, but also for guitar. And I tried recording at 96kHz, but I couldn’t hear much difference between that and 88.2, and my mastering guy said he “liked the math better” when it came time to convert to 44.1kHz.Did you do anything more unusual when recording or mixing?The most unusual thing overall was that I didn’t use practically any EQ or compression, which is why the record sounds so dull. I decided early on that at this point the guitar and the piano and all of the drum and percussion instruments were already perfect sounding, so I’d just use good mics to get a good sound initially and wo.
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