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Fake Teak



Last Updated: 11/23/2009

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Status: Single
City: London
Country: UK
Signup Date: 11/28/2005

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Tuesday, May 05, 2009 

Category: Music

Lagos '82, we feel sure you can't have failed to notice, is missing something.  "Schtop!"  I hear you cry.  "It'sch not ready yet!"

The missing ingredient is in the verses, and we think we've found the machine we want.  It's an RS202, a string synthesizer from 1976.  You've almost certainly heard something like it; it works like an electric organ, with a single pitch-generator running at high frequency and some clever circuits to divide the waveform into manageable (i.e. audio-frequency) notes.  Unlike an electric organ and like an analogue synthesizer, there's also a reasonable amount of enveloping and filtering cleverness going on.

The real magic, however, comes from the chorus unit.  Without it, you have a passable and rather lovely synth wash.  With it, you are immersed in a world of rich, textured, creamy goodness.  It's a cheesy sound in some ways but we're hoping it will be the yoghurt to the rest of Lagos '82's curry.

Having said all this ... we don't have an RS202.

So for the recording, the Odyssey will be pretending to be an RS202, and for live, we'll be putting a relatively boring transistor organ through a chorus unit.

Stay tuned.

Friday, January 02, 2009 

Current mood:  enlightened
Since I began writing music a few years ago, I've been hampered by drums.

Drums are expensive and loud. You need a big, relatively echo-free room, far from the neighbours, and a minimum of around four microphones to record drums. Even if I had four microphones (actually I do but two are very cheap and nasty) I only have two inputs on my computer sound card; the eight-track tape deck would do it, of course, but then I have to pay around £40 for half an hour of recording time. You get the idea. I can't do real drums until I get to a studio, and even then I need a drummer.

However, I got the WALL-E DVD for Christmas and there's a special feature about Ben Burtt, who did sound design for it. He also did sound design for a little flick from 1977 called Star Wars. Watching him produce laser guns from a slinky and wind from a duffel bag dragged along a nylon carpet reminded me of something: I have done sound design before.

A friend of mine wanted to organize a charity read-through of the Lord Of The Rings radio series. She wanted sound effects, and she asked me. Thirteen hours' worth of sound effects is a pretty tall order, but I mainly managed by a combination of cheating, multitracking and finding things that sound like other things.

So for 2009 I will be producing music in the spirit of Ben Burtt. I will go around, find good sounds and make drums out of them. Here's to transformation through sound design.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 

Category: Music
Digital Fish Phones may save our lives.  You've probably noticed that the recording quality is a bit ... well ... shonky.  Well, it was ... until we discovered compression.  Blockfish is a brilliant compressor unit, Spitfish de-esses a vocal and Floorfish is a lovely lovely gate.  Long story short, expect better masters of simply everything as soon as the Brompton gets his technical work done.
Saturday, September 16, 2006 

Current mood:  accomplished
With the massive assistance of Basic Electronics, Fake Teak are proud to announce Rocket Attack, 1'52 of electropunk craziness.  To those who say it is neither truly punk nor truly electro, we say fie.  Fake Teak fear not distinctions.  We recorded the track, with Richard of Basic Electronics taking the guitar parts and doing sterling work on the mixer, Brian fiddling with synth pedals and Ken doing his usual louche thing on the bass, and of course Andrew, who wrote it, singing.

We hope you like it.