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Well back to the story. I wanted Ryo to play with a Wurlitzer sound on the song and there is one at the studio so we plugged it in, turned it on, and the D note above middle C was out of tune. So Ryo grabbed a screw driver and went to work. Now for those of you who don't know how a "Wurly" works, it has all these metal pieces that the hammers hit to make the sound and the longer they are the lower the note and the shorter the higher pitched the note and the way you change the pitch of a certain note is to either grind it down a little or add a little solder to it to bring the pitch up or down. Make sense? I don't get it either. No matter because master Ryo was there to save the day. Well all was going good with the repair until the piece Ryo was trying to fix broke in half. "No matter" I said. "There is a Rhodes piano over there in the corner." "We can use that." "The sound is different but I still think it will work" So we get the thing over to Ryo's station and there is no sustain pedal. I find the bag it is in but there is no rod to hook it up with. A rod connects from the pedal up into the keyboard and the pedal pushes the rod up but "WE HAVE NO ROD." So Dave, the ever present problem solver says "why don't you use the rod from one of your high hat stands?" I say "OK" "what the *#*@^%@#%^@". I get the rod and it looks like it will work but... it's to short. So we find some two inch tapes, a magazine or two, and put the pedal on them. We duct tape it all to the floor and what do you know...it's working.
But the sound was too plain. Ryo started playing the theme from the TV show Taxi. He knew the whole thing. SO... am I rambling? Ryo and Rich suggest we put the Rhodes through the Leslie speaker. For our untrained keyboard listeners, that's the speaker cabinet with the spinning speakers that Ryo plays his HUGE organ through. So... now we need to get the sound to the Leslie. The studio has a pedal that lets you do just that. You can plug in guitars, voice, whatever, with this box. We do that, the sound is really starting to sound great and... out of nowhere... the switch that makes the Leslie go from a fast spin to a slow spin and back, stopped working. GREAT. By this time it is around 4 in the afternoon. We had all been there since the morning and were still messing with sounds. That is when you start looking at the clock, then your wallet, and back to the clock. So Ryo, I think he was getting a little frustrated by this point as we all were, finds a pedal in the studio with a switch on it similar to the one on the broken pedal. Goes into the little work room and starts ripping things apart. Next thing you know he is cutting wires, soldering wires, changing switches, and what do you know... HE FIXED IT!!!!!!!!!!! The man is a stud. Finally we got to making some music at about 6:00. That is one expensive switch. But the song and Ryo's part came out sounding awesome. I know this as a super long story but I just felt like venting :) So now it is back to overdub land for a while along with some stress-tabs and a beer :)
More updates to come soon and I will try to make them shorter.
Take care y'all, NDV
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