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Winner No. 4 Jim Earp, Smiles to Go Jim Earp's solo guitar CD features mature playing, great tone, and clean production.
This month’s Homegrown CD Award winner is an excellent solo fingerstyle recording by San Diego–based guitarist Jim Earp (www.guitar9.com/rosewood.html). Earp, who describes himself as a "weekend warrior with a day job," has been performing in coffeehouses and Christian music venues in southern California for several years and has previously released one other album, Rosewood. (John August Music recently included "The Twins" from that recording in the book/CD package Pierre Bensusan Presents D A D G A D Guitar.) The CD Earp submitted for our contest, Smiles to Go, features mature playing, solid compositions, great tone, and clean production. It’s hard to believe that the whole thing was produced in his friend Joe Mersch’s apartment and recorded primarily with equipment manufactured in the 1980s, including a reel-to-reel Tascam 38 eight-track and a Carvin MX1688 mixer. This project serves as a healthy reminder that older, inexpensive analog gear can be utilized to make great recordings. Budget considerations were as much a factor in Earp’s decision to forego a commercial studio as was his satisfaction with his previous CD. Although Mersch moved from a house to a less ideal apartment in the interim, Earp still preferred "the greater intimacy and the freedom to go more or less at your own pace." He did have to contend with the noise of other tenants and says, "If I did it again, I’d record during the day and in the winter when the houses are not opened up." Earp has a strong sense of how he likes his instrument to sound and plays a guitar he built himself under the guidance of luthier Bozo Podunavac. He captured the sound he was looking for with an AKG 414 mic about 18 inches away from the 12th fret of the guitar and a Neumann KM184 close to his elbow above the upper bout of the instrument. He ran both signals through a Bellari RP-220 tube preamp. On some tunes, such as the tap-heavy "Bareback Rider" and "Borrego," he also blended in the sound from a Sunrise magnetic pickup run through a Sunrise buffer box. The signals were then sent through the Carvin board and direct to three separate tracks on the Tascam recorder. No effects were printed to tape, although Earp generally chose to hear a little bit of reverb from a Lexicon LXP-1 in the headphones during recording. Earp did not have access to the editing capabilities available on newer recording systems and was limited to old-fashioned punch-ins and overdubs for fixing minor mistakes. "Primarily the reason I ended up doing overdubs is because I’d have a fade, and there’d be a dog barking two blocks away or somebody slamming a door," he says. Mixing brought the project into the digital domain, but even here, basic equipment and simple techniques prevailed. Earp and Mersch used a Tascam DA-30 to mix and added some reverb from the Lexicon LXP-1 as well as some compression from a dbx 166A on tunes that involved two-handed tapping. "On those pieces, the compression ratio is almost eight or ten to one," Earp explains, "and it helps to even out the signal." They also found that the guitar needed to be EQ’ed differently depending on the capo position and the general area of the neck where the song was played. Working exclusively with the EQ on the Carvin board, they carefully shaped each tune, "primarily scooping a little bit out of the mids," as Earp puts it. For final mastering, Earp took his DAT mixes to John Archer at San Diego’s Digital Barn (www.acousticarts.com). Archer digitally transferred the tapes to a hard-disk–based audio workstation and found that there was little to be done except for cleaning up the beginnings and endings of songs before burning a master CD. Earp hired graphic designer Chuck Schiele (www.whatusee.com) to create the CD’s great-looking packaging, which consists of a four-panel insert as well as a two-sided tray card. Duplication of the first batch of 1,000 CDs was handled by CMS Duplication, Inc. (www.cmsduplication.com), a company that specializes in making CDs for computer applications, rather than musical projects. Earp completed the project in August ’99 and sells the CD at Guitar9.com, a Web site that specializes in instrumental guitar releases. It is also available through Acoustic Music Resource (www.acousticmusicresource.com). Earp estimates that he sells about 70 copies a month at shows, making his homegrown project a lucrative one. He hopes to apply his $1,000 gift certificate from Sweetwater Sound toward a second acoustic guitar to use as a backup instrument. —Teja Gerken Acoustic Guitar’s Homegrown CD Awards is a year-long spotlight on CDs recorded and released by acoustic musicians. Winners are profiled in the Stage and Studio department and receive a $1,000 gift certificate from Sweetwater Sound’s music technology catalog. We’re accepting submissions until September 1, 2000. Get the details and the official entry form at www.acousticguitar.com/Homegrown/Homegrown.html. Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, September 2000, No.93. |
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