Rodger got a moped ride down to the Gloucester waterfront. Everyone in the USA will recognize this statue (although I will give no hints) which memorializes lost fishermen; a continuing problem in New England.
The kids got right to work in Tio Tino's studio.
After laying down a great reference track, they then got to experience the disorientation and seeming insanity of studio recording. But they got the hang of it once they understood that they didn't need a perfect A-Z performance and it wasn't a failure at all if they made any mistakes because we would piece together all the best takes into the final cut.
We will do the mixdown tomorrow, but today's lesson ties into yesterday's (and today's) theme music. Did you listen to "Autobahn?" The entire 22 minutes? That's ok, I didn't expect you to. But if you did attempt a small part of it you will hear the obvious influences on today's theme. The differences are that in the 1970's there were no sequencers, digital-effects-processors, auto-tune or graphical recording software. It was analog synthesizers with lots of knobs, spliced tape-loops, notepads, stopwatches and all manner of springs, tubes and miscelleni for special effects. While it still takes an amount of creativity to record modern electronic music ("techno", "trip-hop", whatever) much respect is due to the pioneers like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, John Cage, Robert Fripp, Isao Tomita, Sun Ra, et al.
Tia Ana prepared a portuguese feast! I can't recall how long we stayed at the table, but everything was delicious!
After dinner, Rachael and Tio Tino jammed
while Rodger caught up on TV shows he hasn't seen for weeks.
After all that, can you believe there was more food! HUGE lobsters!
No more work in Tino's studio tonight. We need to sleep this off.