NIGHT SCENES

In the late 50’s and early 60’s every guitar player in Los Angeles who knew four chords had a garage band. There where just a few supper clubs and lounges throughout the city where one could seek refuge from the din of these groups and listen to the sophisticated harmonies presented by the wonderful talents of people like Bobby Troup or Matt Dennis. I had all but forgotten about these days until recently hearing from Alan G. Weber, yacht broker and master of the Boom Bass. who is affectionally know to his friends as “Red Dog”. RD reminded me of the great tunes penned by Matt Dennis and the sounds of the jazz quartets that played in the small clubs around L.A.

In an attempt to share a bit of the music from this time, I’ve put together a CD with Bass, Drums, Guitar and Electric Piano playing Dennis’ “Will You Be Mine?”, “Violets For Your Furs”, “The Night We Called It A Day” and many other Standards. Most of the styles were modified directly from the 7K. The longer solos were first recorded in the Sequencer and then copied to the Composer and the others are in the Pads.

When “Laura” was recorded I couldn’t help but embellish the arrangement by doing what the recording engineers call a sweetening session, namely adding string, horns and woodwinds to the quartet arrangement. A bit of trickery was used on the last song, “The Night We Called It A Day”. I wanted to use Techni-chord on both the electric piano and sweeping string parts, playing each part differently. As a result, I put the piano in Right 2 and the strings in Right 1 and played the full song with just the piano selected using Easy Record. Then I went to the Sequencer, selected Record on Right 1 and played back the song while recording the string part.

I know that many of you are not interested in the type of rather low romantic music I play, so I’ve decided not to do a mass mailing, but rather just respond to your request for this material. So, if you are interested, be prepared for a very large file - just short of an hour of music. Please put NIGHT SCENES in the subject bar and drop me a note to frankbez@aol.com.

Back in the saddle again,

Frank