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Liner Notes
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Interview with Grammy
Award-winning songwriter, producer, studio musician Jay Graydon Part 1 (Page 2)
Jay Graydon is a Grammy award
winning songwriter and producer, as well as a successful studio guitarist
and songwriter for film and television.
He did the guitar solo on Steely Dan's
song, "Peg," had a role in Al Jarreau's success in the 1980's, and won Grammys
for co-writing George Benson's "Turn Your Love Around" and Earth Wind &
Fire's "After the Love Has Gone."Jay Graydon his own music label,
Sonic Thrust Records,
and is currently writing a series of books with Craig Anderton on recording
and mixing. His latest CD will be released in early 2006. Recently James
Auburn caught up with him, and here's the resulting e-mail interview.
Continued from
Page
1
JG: Pop music [and] such
territories are still based upon melodic music. The West Coast sound is
loaded with melodic melodies and musical chord structures that are pleasant
to the ear. Further, the groove is mature. Since the beginning of recording,
note that every pop era of music has basically grown musically until the
50's rock period. From Sinatra stuff with great melodies and great chord
changes/orchestral arrangements, down to three or 4 chords with only a
rhythm section banging out a straight 8th rock grooves. It was time for a
change but the melodic end was reversed.
Yeah, the BEATLES started a trend back to using more chord changes and new
sounds. From that point on, the melodic concept was on its way back in to
pop land. The West Coast Pop sound was the culmination and the trend then
went back into remission and remains there today regarding pop radio.
JA: What did you do to get that distinctive lead-guitar sound -
distorted, yet not too edgy? Was it mostly done in track mixing?
JG: Recording engineers can only enhance a sound so the source must
be as good as possible. The following will explain why my sound was not to
too edgy (featuring the mid range) with sweet distortion.
When playing on a Barry White session at ABC around 1975, Dean Parks told me
that a tech by the name of Paul Rivera was working at Red Rhodes tech shop
in Hollywood. Dean stated Paul did a great job modifying one of his amps.
I took a 70's Fender deluxe to Paul and asked he modify. I was delighted as
his mods made the amp sound so very sweet when distorting ("Even Clipping"
on both sides of the "Push Pull" circuit) I told everyone about Paul and all
the guys went to Paul for the mod.
The next cool tonal mod was adding sweet midrange tone to an amp (it may
have been discovered before the Paul "sweetening mod"). On the hunt for that
sound, Ron Benson stated that the mod is to change the capacitor value in
the amp treble circuit. The treble tone control basically turned into a mid
range "fat" control. Dean and I went to Ron's house/shop (I brought a
Blackface Princeton and Dean brought an amp) and we experimented with
different cap values. We came up with a value that was great for a fat mid
range sound for soloing (and or melody lines). The drag was a lack of treble
when needed for rhythm (whatever application). I mentioned the concept to
Paul and the fix was to add a 6-position switch as to select different
capacitor values from major mids to major treble! After the mod, I was in
sonic heaven! The switch was installed on the 2nd input jack (removed in
wiring land and not needed) on my Fender Deluxe's on the normal channel.
(Note that the vibrato channel will never sound as big as the normal channel
since the vibrato circuit is always in the electronic chain even when
switched out "smalling up" the sound). Ooops, maybe too much reflection. <g>
Part 2
Part 1 Page 1
James Auburn is a
keyboardist, musical director, arranger, educator, and all-around
audiophile. He's also the co-founder of the Boston Hip Hop Alliance.
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