Tiger Rag

Listen (2.82 Mb)

Background:

This piece is a music-sociopsychological experiment. We read an article about the cult band The Residents, who in the 70's made a record with pop covers, by the following principle: The original was recorded on one track of an eight-track tape recorder, after which the band added their own material on the remaining tracks. Finally the original was removed.

SHotQ decided to take this method one step further, by having the five band members do their additions individually, without hearing what the other members had done. Everything was also to be done during a single evening.

For original song, we chose "Tiger Rag" with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from 1918. Each band member got three stereo audio tracks at his disposal, and a considerable heap of instruments were connected (including a borrowed Korg MS-10, whose screaming resonant two pole filter can be heard in many places). The situation was made even more intense by having the "free" Hotsynthetists spending the waiting time by consuming drinks in the room next to the studio.

All this (not least the accumulated drinks) resulted in a very strange piece, even for SHotQ's standards. The fact that no distribution of musical roles (lead, bass, solo, etc.) had been made, resulted in some strange orchestrations; there are e.g. very few basslines, except in the last chorus where there are three.

After the recording, the parts have been balanced in volume and panned. In some places we have cut away parts of the material to give room and avoid the dreaded "porridge effect".

This recording should not be used for judging the general competence, taste or mental health of the Swedish Hotsynth Quintet! It is to be considered an experiment! Listen at your own risk!

Sound Sources:

Other Equipment:

Cubase VST 4.1 Mac

Zoom Studio 1201 effects processor

Zoom 2020 effects processor

AKG microphone

Interesting Facts:

The original Tiger Rag recording turned out to be a quartertone "off" in pitch, but we still decided to use A=440 Hz, since all our instruments couldn't be re-tuned as desired. However, this was gradually forgotten during the night, which is why the tuning here and there is "up the arse" as they say.

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