The Two Worlds Album

The Two Worlds Album:

Part One: Pre-Production

My memories of the making of our first album are sketchy at best. Andy was the one who really motivated this project. He, along with his friend Glenn Koehler (future Awakening manager), made contacts with a Kitchener, Ontario recording studio in hopes that we might be able to record there. Keep in mind, this was before the age where everybody had a home studio. It was not easy or affordable to make an album back then. We had to raise money. Through a variety of sources both familial and external, we raised over $10,000. The final costs of the album including artwork and packaging was over $14,000 as I recall. For a young band playing in a very small market in Canada, this would be hard to recoup.

A good way to start the discussion of the Two Worlds album is to discuss the gear and technology of that era.

When I joined The Awakening, I didn't have a suitable keyboard to tour with, and I certainly couldn't afford one back then. Remember that keyboards back in the 80's were easily $2000 a crack. I had just completed my one and only year of University, so spare change was not lying around!

When we started the album, I ended up using the recording studio's growing keyboard arsenal, and thus our sound became very keyboard-dominant. I remember drooling over the Emulator, which was one of the first high-end sampling keyboards. It was over $10,000 so not everybody had one. There were Linn Drums and Yamaha drum machines too.

The studio we did the album in was Cedartree Recording Studio. It was owned by Doug Biggs and J. Richard Hutt. Rick did the bulk of the production work and Doug took care of the business end. They recorded Country acts, but also did Corporate work including TV and Radio "Jingles."

Two significant things to mention in regards to recording an album in 1986 were:

1. The Macintosh Computer, and

2. Time-locking technology between tape machines and computer.

The Mac:

When we started this album, my only experience with a computer was in high school, when I briefly got to use some barbaric DOS machines. The intelligent people learned about computers. I played games on them! I had never heard of "personal computers" before, so seeing the ultra-powerful Mac Classic (40 Meg hard drive!!) was a real step forward for the ages!!

The computer was using software called "Performer," which acted as a Midi sequencer. Before then, any sequencing had to be done with single unit devices that were insanely complicated to operate. Even drum machines back in those days were very difficult beasts to tame.

The Mac and Performer made programming drum parts much easier.

Time-Lock Devices:

SMPTE time code has been around since the early days of film technology, as a code which synchronizes sound to picture. In the music world, Time-code generators and locking devices enabled old school tape machines to be in synch with computer music systems. In today's world, these devices work seamlessly with no latency. Back in 1986, getting your computer to lock with your tape machine was a lot more complex.

Each song would have to have a SMPTE "start time" which was a numeric code. On one track of the multitrack tape, you would record the sound of the digital code from the Locking device. This track would have to be clean and far away from anything like vocals or quiet elements because of tape bleed. This code would communicate with the Mac computer so that our sequencing information could be completely in synch with our tape machine. The technology was not very advanced back in 1986, and thus, actually getting INTO synch was not instantaneous. We would have to roll tape from 20-30 seconds before the song start time in order for the locking device to catch up with the tape and thus finally end up rolling in synch. This made punching in very tedious, because you'd literally have to roll back the tape 20-3o seconds before the spot you wanted to fix. So every time you'd mess up a punch in, you'd have to go through this procedure.

Within a year or so, new devices and interfaces came out which locked to SMPTE instantaneously.

Because we only had 16 tracks to record on, most, if not ALL of the keyboard parts and drum machine parts would play in synch with the tape and not be laid down on actual channels. Of course, this would have made re-mixing virtually impossible, as most of the keyboards ran "live to mix", and getting those sounds back at some later date would have been very unlikely. But this was the price you paid for only having 16 tracks! (Remember, the Beatles only had 4 tracks!!)

The Pre-Production:

I'm assuming that the Two Worlds album started with drum programming and keyboard sequencing. All the songs had already been recorded as demos previously, so there was no confusion about arrangements and the like. It was too expensive to waste studio time, so everything had to be very methodical. Andy and Mike probably programmed most of the drum machine parts, and I probably learned on the go for some of my own songs. I spent the first month doing my best to learn how to use a Mac computer and how to operate the Performer software. I had never even typed before, but thankfully it all came pretty quickly for me.

One sad aspect of the 1980's was the reliance on machines to do the work of humans. I don't believe at any point it was ever considered that Mike would play live drums on the album. Most of our demos were done with programmed drums, so it made sense to do the album this way too. It certainly cut down on studio time, and also tracks. This was a 16 track album, so allotting 8-10 channels for a live drum kit was never going to be an option. Drum machines and synth bass parts are the things that really stick out like a sore thumb by today's standards. Unfortunately, almost every note the Awakening ever recorded was marred by this initial concept, and there's no way to un-do the damage. Hopefully we'll never repeat such a stupid philosophy again!