Alastair Galbraith

New Zealander, Alastair Galbraith, has been recording his music on 4 track decks in a non-studio environment since he did Stormed Port by his "group" The Rip in 1987. Turned on to the possibilities of "home-Recording" by Peter and Graeme Jefferies during those sessions, he went on to record with Peter as Plagal Grind and finally branched out on his own in the recording realm. Since then he's recorded most of his music at home on an old Tascam 3440 late at night, out in the country, and at his own pace. He's also done various collaborations with Graeme Jefferies and John D's Mountain Goats by sending reels of tape through the mail and adding parts as needed. We got to chat over the phone after his first coffee and cigarette of the day. Thanks kindly to fellow scribe and music lover Bill Meyer for setting this all up!

So your first recording experience was with The Rip in a "real" studio.

That's right. We were about 16 or 17 years old and pretty easily led. At that time there seemed to be a few less people making their own recordings and there was no other label than Flying Nun that could release stuff on. We just went the direction we were led, which was towards a large studio in Christchurch. An engineer did the engineering and I sat back and laughed. When we brought it home it sounded nothing like what it sounded like on the beautiful ten thousand dollar speakers. It was a real disappointment.

Did those recordings get released?

The Rip, an EP called A Timeless Piece, like Flying Nun 23 or something.

Did you immediately start thinking about recording on your own?

Peter and his brother Graeme Jefferies came down from the north island of New Zealand. Graeme owned a Teac 4 track and Peter suggested that we record with him and he would produce and engineer it. They lived in an old store in Dunedin and I went 'round there in the evenings when my band had just split up. Basically the next Rip record for Flying Nun was a solo thing. Graeme played guitar on a song and Robbie Muir played bass on one song. Peter engineered and explained what he was doing as he did so and Graeme engineered a couple of the songs as well. I got the picture of what it was like to record yourself through that experience.

That's cool of Peter to teach you like that.

And Graeme, both equally.

So that was an eye opening experience in seeing that you could record on your own.

Yes and no, because they did it and I was in another room. They explained what they were doing, and what they thought would be good to do next, but I still wasn't there with my hands on the machine. I didn't really know how to do it. Shortly after somebody got me to look after their warehouse and there was a cassette PortaStudio there. That's when I really got the hands on experience. I recorded the song "Midnight Blue" by playing some guitar and then turning the cassette backwards and finding out it was really easy to slow down and speed up and make it go backwards and so on.

Did you move up to a reel-to-reel?

Yeah, I got the same kind of machine that Graeme Jefferies had. [Teac 3440]

So most of your recordings have been done in this format since then. I heard you dumped some stuff to 8 track at one point.

We did that for the Plagal Grind EP. That was a beautiful 8 track that was one inch tape with lots of headroom on each track. There were one or two tracks that were a bit dodgy and two that sounded beautiful. You had to watch where you put stuff. It was fun doing that as well but definitely everything else has been done on the Teac and I haven't really felt the need for more than two tracks.

Do you have it set up at home?

Yeah, the 4 track goes straight into the stereo. I don't use a mixing desk. I plug directly into it 'cause it has such a nice sound anyway. As a result with no mixing desk and nothing to pan things, tracks 1 and 3 of the 4 track go left and tracks 2 and 4 go right and there's extreme separation. When it comes time to actually "mix" something down I just turn the output knobs on the 4 track and do it hard left and hard right. A lot of the records have that extreme separation or else I just press the mono button on my stereo if I don't really think it should be separated.

So you do all your recording that way?

Yeah. Once or twice I've borrowed a small little panning device that a friend made for about $2 with a little knob off a guitar. He just soldered it onto a bar of metal. You plug two things in and then you turn the little knob left or right.

That's crazy. What do you mix down to?

Well, generally what they want is a DAT. In the past I've hired one but now I bought this really cheap DAT thing that's really a still video recorder. It takes a normal DAT tape but it's a very odd machine. Most of the time it's good enough.

When you're going straight into your deck... are there preamps built into that?

There must be. I know so little about it. The level thing, with all those machines, you're pretty safe. There is no need to increase anything or do anything to it. Even if you record it all at a real extreme +3 all the time the natural distortion that machine has is beautiful. I do record like that, in the red all the time, and its got a really warm distortion.

Any thoughts on microphones?

If anyone that's into home recording is reading this and they want to know about a really good cheap microphone get a PZM microphone.

We did an article on them in the first issue.

You can get them for $60. I find them just the best vocal mic. I love to hold that big plate in my hand at a distance of 2 or 3 centimeters. It has about the same treble response as the very best valve microphone.

Do you use any effects to run things through before it goes to the tape deck?

Generally I haven't bothered for myself. The effects I use are not really effects like that. I've got a big, old fan and I broke a blade off it so that it really has an dd, eccentric motion and I stuck it on my chest and sang. That is a really great effect, if you can adjust the speed of the fan.

Were you singing through the fan?

No, no. Just hold it on my chest. I've done things like sing down a pipe or, in one case, get a big polystyrene picnic hamper thing, stick that over my head and make a hole in it and stick a microphone in and you get an extreme deepness that can't be beaten. That kind of thing interests me a lot more than buying a box that has little wires in it.

Do you make a bit of racket there at your house? Do you have a room set aside?

I do have a room that's mainly used for that. Because I'm plugging the guitar straight in I'm not using an amp, except for what comes back through the stereo, it's like the music has never existed except for in the 4 track itself. Except for singing.

How have you felt working with the Bats [in bigger studios adding violin to their songs.]?

You're just a session musician. I don't do that anymore. It's always been really fun to play with them, especially live because it's pure improvisation. In the studio, when there has been a producer, it's been difficult because they want to know what you're going to do. You don't know what you're going to play when you're improvising. That's kind of the point of being in that band and being a member who didn't have any idea what was going to happen; that was important.

So you'd come in and be like, "Well, let's see what happens."

Yeah.

And the producers and engineers...

Producers. They had a couple of well known American producers where that was definitely not allowed. So I stopped at that point.

I assume you're still friends with the Bats?

Yeah, they're great.

Do you find that having this recording setup at home is conducive to your way of working?

Yes, 'cause otherwise you'd be worrying about how much money or time you had. I find that I generally record in the evenings, at night really, and I live in the country and there's nobody to annoy if I ever make too much noise. It's a good thing to be able to start it when you like and stop it when you like. To have no set agenda of what must be done. That's the other thing about working alone, that you really are totally free when you are writing and recording. You work on what you want to work on. I want to keep doing that for as long as I live. It doesn't mean you can't work with other people. Like John from the Mountain Goats and I worked with Graeme Jefferies in this way as well: They would send me a 4 track tape with two tracks filled up with the song they want me to work on and I still work on it alone, at my own pace, without them even knowing what I'm gonna do to it. It's exciting for them to get the tape back and not know what's gonna be there.

Have your collaborators been pretty happy with the results?

Yeah, it's my favorite way to work 'cause there's no one looking over your shoulder. I'm sure if you see the process of improvising on somebody else's material there will always be a point where it will not sound good. It's important to go through that part of the process. Otherwise it's not real experimentation. I make wine at home and there's a point where it tastes out-n-out awful.

When it's just starting to ferment?

Yeah.

Some musician from New Zealand had mentioned the lack of decent places to record being an impetus for doing recording on their own.

That probably holds true for people who have the money to consider the option of going into a studio. If I had several hundred dollars at my disposal to record the next thing instead of fifty dollars for tape and splicing patches. Even if I had the option I wouldn't take it anyway. I do know people, like Fish St. studios who I would trust if I were in that type of position but I still wouldn't pursue it. I want to be the engineer and producer myself anyway. I've got the freedom to take a year to do something. If you're going to work in a studio you're doing it mainly 'cause your record company has told you to go to this studio and you want this kind of album. I think that's really the main reason, in most case, that people have worked in a particular studio instead of at home. If most people were given the option of owning their own gear or going into a studio they'd rather get their own gear.

Check out his "new" CD, Morse and Gaudylight on Emperor Jones, PO Box 49771, Austin, TX 78765 or write to: Alastair Galbraith, PO Box 1376, Dunedin, New Zealand