Man of Very Few Words

Well, it's a few days late for the November '07 MeFi Music Challenge, but my on-the-fritz computer spent most of the month in the repair shop, plus the dog ate my homework, but better late than never, I reckon. So this one's going under the veryfewwords tag, as if the song title didn't give that away.

Instruments in use: little rattles and bells, guiro, tiny clay drum, talking drum, bass drum, drone (from Juno 60) and vox.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by flapjax at midnite (13 comments total)

Very cool. Nice work!
posted by psmealey at 1:46 PM on December 4, 2007

This is cool! The drone really carries over into the feel of the whole song which is great!
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:08 PM on December 4, 2007

This is great fun!
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:13 AM on December 5, 2007

this gets a 10 from me.
talking drum = hells yeah.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:01 AM on December 5, 2007

This song is quite long as it is, but when it ended I thought, I could listen to this all day long!
posted by ORthey at 1:39 PM on December 5, 2007

Thanks for your comments, friends and neighbors!

TwoWord, interesting what you mention about the drone: in fact it has its own internal rhythm that insinuates its way into the groove in a curiously appropriate way, I think.

And yes, ORthey, this tune struck me as perhaps being a bit overlong, and I even dropped one verse because of that. I was looking for a 2nd verse to drop, but in the end I thought the rest of 'em needed to stay.

Here's the verse I dropped:

I had to translate Dostoevsky by candlelight
I had to translate Dostoevsky by candlelight
But I was being paid by the phoneme,
so you see I did alright
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:50 PM on December 5, 2007

Forgive my giggle, but it's hilarious that you dropped a verse from this, a la "A Man of Fewer Words".

This has a really excellent sound, so much so that I have to ask; was this recorded with your typical rigging? I'm not hitting the Absinthe but this had a very clear and robust sound.
posted by snsranch at 4:06 PM on December 5, 2007

snsranch: yes, it was all recorded as per usual, straight into Logic (running on a Mac) using a MOTU 828 audio interface and my usual Microtech Gefell microphone. As far as effects, each percussion track got either only a drop of reverb, or no reverb at all, so that would perhaps account for the clear and robust sound overall. I often use more processing on individual tracks, generally with an eye toward sonic interest and variety, but this time around everything went down pretty straightforward, and very quickly, bam bam bam.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:34 PM on December 5, 2007

Ah, very cool. From a "hearing it on this end" perspective, again, that was really excellent.

Side note: I found some "moo shoo(?sp)", do you have any serving suggestions? On rocks w/ a twist? :)
posted by snsranch at 6:04 PM on December 5, 2007

Hmmm... never heard of moo shoo. Is that for getting rid of unwanted cows? I think you're probably referring to Ume-shu, though: Japanese plum wine, basically. It's often very sweet, but when it's not so sweet I can enjoy it, every now and again. Rocks might be a good idea, especially in the summertime! Check the Wikipedia link!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:52 PM on December 5, 2007

Fantastic percussion. What mics were you using? I'm especially interested on the stuff that includes some low end, that's tricky.
posted by erikgrande at 6:56 PM on December 5, 2007

erikgrande, the mic used for all perc tracks as well as the vocal is this Microtech Gefell. Bought it used from a NYC studio about 20 years ago and I've been using it almost exclusively ever since. It's going for over a thousand bucks these days: I think I paid about 600 for it (the guy I bought it from was a friend). Still going strong and sounding great, I love that mic.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:17 PM on December 5, 2007

Thanks. Never heard of it before, but it sounds amazing, and it looks like it's well known among the pros. From your link:

Comes in it's own beautifully hand-crafted wood box.

It better!
posted by erikgrande at 7:39 PM on December 5, 2007