So it's going to happen....

Because of all the pent up creativity musicians naturally have, we need an outlet. 2020 and so far 2021 are not good representations of pouring that outlet to an audience. As you know, Scott has a twitch stream (https://www.twitch.tv/scottymakesmusic) and has a great audience. That audience showed interest in hearing KF's 1998 self-titled CD done acoustically.

In these days of lockdowns, I've seen a few of my musical hero's do live acoustic streams. like Glen Phillips playing acoustic streams for various causes on Youtube and Juliana Hatfield streaming on Q Divisions streaming page (both of which can be seen now on Youtube btw). That has motivated me to not only re-learn songs from 1998 but put some effort into seeing how we can create these songs acoustically. At some point, it's going to happen but the actual date and time is still TBD. It would be great if we could get John to sit in on drums and make it a real throwback MTV Unplugged type of thing!

5 songs you should really listen to

I get it. Songs are very personal. What I think is the shizznit may make others barf. But really, I think you should listen to these five songs. I'll even link you tube links. To quote the movie Garden State: "You have to listen to these songs, it'll change your life I swear."

Manchester Orchestra - The Moth

Cat Power - Cross Bones Style

Better Oblivion Community Center - Little Trouble

Kashmir - The Curse of Being A Girl

Brendon Benson - Tiny Spark

Apologies though, I don't listen to producer created trash that ends up on Billboards top 40. Peace!!

About the new "old school"

I'm an avid watcher of Rick Beato. His insights into modern and classic rock and modern pop songs from a musician and producers view is refreshing. I think I've watched nearly all of his “What Makes this Song Great (tm)” YouTube videos. Something I hear a lot, and it's true, is when he's reviewing a song like say “Carry on Wayward Son” from Kansas, he frequently comments about how great the singing was so incredible back in the day, when every chorus had to be sung not only amazingly, but in tune (before auto-tune).

Now I will be the first to admit, yes sometimes we use an auto-tune on Karma Factory songs. But many times we don't – it depends on the song.

But the big revelation is this: Though Karma Factory songs are recorded on a DAW using either REAPER or LOGIC, we don't often loop our choruses or intro's or verses. We use the hybrid recording method we literally will comp (recording a tracks multiple times and then combine the best versions into one track) tracks but we sing each and every verse, intro, chorus as well as record all the instrumentation as if we were recording on 2 inch tape.

The obvious question after the “WTF?” is why? Why make it so much harder on yourself and take so much more time? I'll let Rick Beatto answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Jqt9DyjMs&t=16m0s

Watch the entire video you'll be glad you did. It just shows you how many amazing musicians were around in the 1970's and 1980's and how much we miss them and their brilliance like Kerry Livgren and Kansas! (When Scott and I were in high school, our band Sabre used to play “Carry on Wayward Son” as well as Rush “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight”!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-yUOlOC5M Limelight

The other thing that occurs is when you record organically, meaning like bands used to back in the day, they'd record with everyone playing in the studio. There was no click track. They played off each other and the songs grooved in ways it's near impossible to duplicate with click tracks and cut/paste parts. Listen to a Ariana Grande song or BTS Dynamite – it's all click + auto-tune + vocoder cut and paste magic on Pro-tools. Modern pop songs aren't written by bands but by groups of producers huddled around a laptop with a half million dollars worth of plugins and the knowledge of how to use them.

With DAW and click tracks, everything perfectly hits, perfectly comes in, ends, parts are all electronic, sampled and sterile. What's lost is the organic magic that makes songs classic and so good you will play them all your life. I personally like hearing a little string noise, or tiny mistakes in music, it lets me know it was recorded by a real person with a real guitar.

There are still some who record old school with some newer techniques so the tape splicing and tracking through analog isn't as arduous, but that analog sound had something new music doesn't have: a Soul. Ask any audiophile: Vinyl or MP3? Vinyl wins every time.