Vintage Gear | Jeremy Larson

“When We Were Young” – Behind The Sounds

Posted in Collaborations, Recording, Uncategorized, Vintage Gear | Tagged Darren King, Jeremy Larson, Stacy King, Sucre |

I believe this was the third song Stacy and I worked on together. The pad that you hear on the intro, is from the original demo, and is basically all that Stacy sent me to work with in the beginning. At the time, I was in the middle of making my Fort Christmas EP and was really into getting 60′s inspired drum sounds. This wasn’t too difficult, since almost every snare drum I own is from that era. But the drums are where I started with this demo. WWWY was one of the few tracks on the album where I played the drums. I recorded them with the intention of having Darren retrack them once he got into town (though he insisted later on that we keep the ones I performed). The kick drum I used was a 1960′s Majestic (Ludwig knock-off). I actually have two of them, but don’t have the photo of the one I used. But it’s almost identical to my other one:

I used two different snares layered together (plus a tamborine) to make the snare sound that you hear. The first is a 1940′s Leedy snare:

and the second was a 1950′s WFL (Ludwig).

The strings were added next. I really wanted the strings to “lift” the chorus up- make it take flight. So I wrote a violin line that basically glissando’s up, then floats back down after the downbeat. I went ahead and had the 2nd violins and violas follow in unison but different octaves. It took a little bit of time to find a melody that didn’t distract from the vocal melody, but I think the end result was nice, and sounds really fun.

These are the main elements that drive the song. The verses stay really sparse most of the time, with just Stacy’s organ/pad, bass and the drums. The bass by the way, was recorded with a P-Bass doubled with a synth bass.

I remember I was really nervous about sending the first draft over. The previous two songs we had worked on were much more serious sounding, and neither one had “traditional” drums on them. It felt like a bold move to send over something that was such a left turn from what we had been doing up until that point.

The official music video for When We Were Young is going to make it’s debut on Monday, so stay tuned to find out where!

Thanks for reading!

Jeremy

2 Comments

Another Flea Market Win!

Posted in Vintage Gear | Tagged Drums, Majestic, vintage |

I have several different drum sets in my studio, and they serve very different purposes. But the kit I've used the most over the last few years, has been a Japanese kit from the 60's. The company is called Majestic, and I've become kind of obsessed with collecting their drums. It's a little bit silly to become a collector of something that is technically a "knock-off" brand, but I think they're amazing. My good friend Phillip texted me the other night and said he found a Majestic kick drum at a flea market for $25, so I ran over and grabbed it:

Sounds amazing. Just gotta get it cleaned up a little bit. And that's what I intend to do today. Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

4 Comments

Oh Dear Lord

Posted in Vintage Gear | Tagged Baldwin Sterling |

On Saturday, I gathered up four of my friends and moved this:

Up this flight of stairs:

It was even heavier than I thought it would be, and was much harder to move than I expected. We had to move it up one stair at a time, resting after each one. Huge thanks to Wess, Darren, Chris, and Joe for making this happen. (And thanks to Stacy for taking video)

Despite the strange "graffiti" on the piano, it's actually one of my favorite uprights I've ever played on. It's an old Baldwin Sterling. It was restored by my good friend Joseph Hunt. I'm extremely anxious to write some new music with it. I may track some piano today. Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

3 Comments

Wm F L Snare

Posted in Collaborations, Vintage Gear | Tagged Darren King, Juno 60, Stacy King |

I had a nice little thrifting day on Friday, and found this:

From what I gather, it's a WFL marching snare from the 30's or 40's. It didn't actually have a badge, but there was a little logo on one of the hoops that said "Wm F L". After doing some research, I learned that this is what WFL was called before 1939. One of my best thrifting finds yet!

Most of the rest of Friday was spent working with the Juno keyboard that my brother loaned me. I am going to have to buy one. Great keyboard. Darren and Stacy at work:

Darren and I at work: