California Girls
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www.nonaverage.net/insomanywords/
Comments can only be left at the new location.
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Tom was my best friend on high school. We hung out together so much that when our friends would see one of us, they would ask where the other one was. We met when we were 15 - I had just learned to play guitar and Tom was already playing. We played guitars together, listened to music together, worked at his father’s mushroom plant together, made dorky high school movies together. And we learned about recording music together - we would use two Sony reel-to-reel stereo tape recorders to record ourselves playing guitars at Tom’s house - but while I was spending my 20s and 30s working for the government, Tom was working in music and television studios gaining more and more experience. These days he runs a recording studio, which was our dream as teenagers.
In late 1975 Tom was working part-time in the recording studio of a local college. Since he had access to the studio during off hours, we decided to record a Beach Boys song. So we got together with some friends, spent a few evenings practicing, and recorded “California Girls”. And while I think we did a fairly decent job - sometimes people hear it and say that it sounds alot like The Beach Boys. I don’t think it’s all that close… there are some pretty glaring differences if you listen. First of all, none of us sounded a whole lot like the Wilson Brothers, and The Beach Boys used an organ on their version, but we didn’t have access to one, so we used a harpsichord instead. All in all though, it ended up sounding pretty nice. I sang lead and Tom sang the high harmony part. Tom and I are doing the vocal repeats at the end of the song - I still remember being crammed into the small control room with Tom, crowded around a single mic, singing those parts. Our friends Dale Dimmick and Steve Kiger sang the other vocal harmony parts. Tom played the guitars at the beginning, I played bass, and our high school friend Steve Bollinger played drums. There were a few other musicians (like the guy who played the harpsichord) but I forgot their names long ago. This is what we put together on a Tascam 4-track reel-to-reel:
California Girls
www.nonaverage.net/insomanywords/
Comments can only be left at the new location.
*********************************************************
Tom was my best friend on high school. We hung out together so much that when our friends would see one of us, they would ask where the other one was. We met when we were 15 - I had just learned to play guitar and Tom was already playing. We played guitars together, listened to music together, worked at his father’s mushroom plant together, made dorky high school movies together. And we learned about recording music together - we would use two Sony reel-to-reel stereo tape recorders to record ourselves playing guitars at Tom’s house - but while I was spending my 20s and 30s working for the government, Tom was working in music and television studios gaining more and more experience. These days he runs a recording studio, which was our dream as teenagers.
In late 1975 Tom was working part-time in the recording studio of a local college. Since he had access to the studio during off hours, we decided to record a Beach Boys song. So we got together with some friends, spent a few evenings practicing, and recorded “California Girls”. And while I think we did a fairly decent job - sometimes people hear it and say that it sounds alot like The Beach Boys. I don’t think it’s all that close… there are some pretty glaring differences if you listen. First of all, none of us sounded a whole lot like the Wilson Brothers, and The Beach Boys used an organ on their version, but we didn’t have access to one, so we used a harpsichord instead. All in all though, it ended up sounding pretty nice. I sang lead and Tom sang the high harmony part. Tom and I are doing the vocal repeats at the end of the song - I still remember being crammed into the small control room with Tom, crowded around a single mic, singing those parts. Our friends Dale Dimmick and Steve Kiger sang the other vocal harmony parts. Tom played the guitars at the beginning, I played bass, and our high school friend Steve Bollinger played drums. There were a few other musicians (like the guy who played the harpsichord) but I forgot their names long ago. This is what we put together on a Tascam 4-track reel-to-reel:
California Girls
Labels: audio recording, Beach Boys, California Girls, music
posted by Ruben at
12:28 AM
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