Hey 19

Hmm, I was listening to the gaucho album in my car off a really old tape cassette,( CD player not fitted yet), and was wondering, is 'Hey 19' being rimshotted? I find it hard to tell on a lot of 80's tunes, because the snare is just fat, fat and well, fat. A lot of gadd's early stuff sounded like that to me. As if just the centre of the head is being played. There's no real 'crack' just a splat. I can hear porcaro is rimshotting on 'gaucho' though.

Hey 19 is actually a drum machine the recording engineer built that could play Rick Moratta samples. I think that's why it may sound so flat and spot on perfect in tempo. But they may have used a rim shot sample for that sound. Glamour Profession uses the same machine but with Gadd samples, but Gadd also plays live with the machine. I love this album but I'm not totally sure I like the effect of this drum machine. It's almost too clean for my taste and lacks the daring quality of the live tracks (ie Babylon Sisters, Gaucho). I still love those songs to death, sooo good!!

http://www.granatino.com/sdresource/md1.htm

1980: Gaucho

After a long wait, Gaucho was released to an eager audience. While the music was of the usual high leveI, it should be noted that, drum-wise, this album is much simpler than previous ones. Except for a Purdie shuffle on "Babylon Sisters" and Porcaro's odd-meter forays on "Gaucho," the rhythms are all 8th-note grooves. No cranking shuffles like "Black Friday" or jungle grooves like "I Got The News." Part of this might have been Becker and Fagen's desire to fully explore their WENDEL, a sequencing tool that could quantite, sanitize, and generally sterilize a drum track.

"That was Roger Nichols and the computers," says Marotta, who played on "Hey Nineteen" and "Time Out Of Mind". "WENDEL wasn't perfected then, so occasionally it was a little stilted. They were experimenting, taking little snippets of what we played and looping it."

According to Porcaro, "That's at a point when drum machine technology was just rearing its ugly head. There was a lot of talk about the future of quantizing and sequencing in real time. To a perfectionist, that was all really cool stuff. The title track was done to a Urei click. In fact it was all Urei except 'Hey Nineteen,' which is WENDEL."

My Friend who's a great Dan fan, transfered me this jewel:

Steely Dan - Gaucho Outtakes (original)

This is a bootleg recording from the Gaucho sessions.

It includes "The Second Arrangement" which was accidentally erased, when an assistant engineer should prepare the tape for listening.

For unknown reasons he thought he was at the tail header instead of the beginning when he put all 24 channels on "record". When he discovered his mistake, three quarters of the tune was allready erased. Finally replaced by "Third World Man" on the "Gaucho" album.

Steely Dan
Gaucho Outtakes


1. Gaucho (full band)
2. The Second Arrangement (full band)
3. Glamour Profession
4. Babylon Sisters (full band)
5. My Rival
6. Gaucho (demo)
7. Babylon Sisters (demo)
8. The Second Arrangement (demo)
9. Talkin' About My Home
10. I Can't Write Home About You
11. Kulee Baba

Any takers? i think it's off an old STG link.

gymmy is correct: "Hey 19" is WENDEL (WENDL?) technology / Marotta sound, as told to me by Roger Nichols ....

Here's a story for you all ...

When we were rehearsing for the 1993 Steely Dan tour (for approx 3 1/2 weeks at SIR studios in New York), a lot of time and attention were dedicated to getting the "right" tempo for each tune. In fact, we would sometimes double up the metronome/click so we could experiment with such tempos as 119.5 ...! Anyway, "Hey 19" was finally set at a metronome setting of 118 bpm.

(I've told this story at quite a few clinics ...)

About 3 weeks into the tour, I noticed that the rest of the band seemed to be pushing a bit on "Hey 19," and I thought that, perhaps, a slightly brighter tempo might sit better ... and since I was responsible for the count-offs, I made an executive decision on my own to change the tempo from 118 to 119 bpm. Now ... take out your metronomes and check out the difference; it is subtle, I assure you.

So ,,, I changed the metronome setting for that tune, counted it off at 119, and off we went ... it seemed to feel good at the time; this was in Cincinatti.

The NEXT day, in St. Louis, Donald Fagen called up "Hey 19" during the soundcheck, and then both he and Waler Becker turned around and looked up at me on the drum riser and said "Oh yeah ... it felt kinda fast last night ..."

And I said "Wow ... I'm really impressed ..." And they queried "Did you do anything different?"

And I replied "Yeah ... I counted it off at 119 instead of 118 ..."

And they chuckled .. and said "Yeah .... DON'T DO THAT AGAIN."

Cheers,

PE

Thanks for the info guys. I had no idea there were drum machines and loops with the dan. My whole perception has always been 'steely dan have THE best musos, therefore, every instrument is played by real players in absolutely perfect time' It never occured to me that the groove on hey 19 was anything other than note after note played by a live drummer.

Mr.Erskine, thanks for your wonderful contribution to my thread and an astonishing story! How anyone could tell 1bpm difference is unbelievable, and to say it felt faster! hehe. [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

awesome story peter.....the wendel appeared on quite a few records during that time period.

Klemme, any chance of getting a copy..... [img]wink.gif[/img]

Pete,

Oh, man! Too, too much!

You are always the man!

[img]cool.gif[/img]

yeah Erskoman,you rock man!!
great story indeed.
i'm not surprised AT ALL those dudes can hear a 1bpm difference.really.
those guys are just monsters.period.they're just not of this world. [img]eek.gif[/img]
they could hear a song way before it was recorded,with all the arrangements and sounds even the musos they wanted for each song [img]rolleyes.gif[/img] .

not of this world i said!! [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

Klemme [img]tongue.gif[/img] lease share it man!!