American Songwriter » March/April 2010

A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

Barry Mazor — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:34:53 +0000

A FINE ROMANCE: JEWISH SONGWRITERS, AMERICAN SONGS By David Lehman (SCHOCKEN) [Rating: 4 stars] This compact book is a lucid personal response to a thick and complicated subject; how and why so many standards from the Great American Songbook came from the minds, hearts and pens of Jewish songwriters, from the Gershwins, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin to Rodgers, Hart and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Harold Arlen, and on through Sondheim and Bernstein to Carole King, Bob Dylan and Randy Newman. It’s part researched history, part clarifying criticism, and at times it becomes a phantasmagoria dreamscape in which the author—a poet and storied poetry editor— imagines all of the above are his relatives. Lehman identifies often-bluesy aspects of Jewish liturgical music that influenced these songwriters’ sounds, tendencies toward undercutting the glad with the sad (and vice versa) in their tone, and towards playfulness, irony, romance and gall in their lyrics, as elements shared by these children of immigrants “who wanted to re-create themselves as Americans and wound up recreating American culture in the process.” The book also sheds light on the nature and strength of our culture’s response to that shared sensibility.

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American Icons: Laura Nyro

Paul Zollo — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:00:16 +0000

“What if I don’t have anything to say?” she asked, when consenting after many years to an interview. I promised her that wouldn’t happen, but she was genuinely worried, as Laura Nyro hadn’t spoken to the press—or really participated in the machinery of the music industry—for more than a decade. Burned like many of our greatest artists by a business that often relegates even icons to the recycling bin, she was reticent to enter into any talk that might include, “Where have you been all these years?” But as she’d long been an American treasure, one of the most phenomenal, unique and soulful songwriters ever, my focus was on the songs, on the beauty of the melodies, the unchained individuality of the structures, the sumptuous chord changes, the poetic shorthand of the soulful lyrics. She didn’t have any reason to worry. We spoke for three hours straight, after which she said, “This has been great. Can we do it again tomorrow?” And we did. She wrote countless amazing songs during her short lifetime. “And When I Die,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Save the Country,” “Stoney End,” “Blowing Away,” “Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp,” “Eli’s Coming” and so many more, all poured out of her heart like honey. Though she died of cancer at only 49, she did a whole lot in a short time. Although it takes most songwriters years of writing before they approach a masterpiece, her very first song—written when she was only 17, miraculously—was “And When I Die.” And from then on, she composed a succession of masterpieces. Though she was a white Jewish girl, her songs were so soulful and full of genuine joy that many of them became hits as recorded by black artists and groups, including The Fifth Dimension (“Wedding Bell Blues”). But her music was also embraced by white artists in every genre, from Peter, Paul & Mary and Blood, Sweat & Tears (“And When I Die”), to Barbra Streisand (“Save the Country”) and Three Dog Night (“Eli’s Coming”). Her music profoundly shaped the sound and spirit of the 1960s. And to lovers of Nyro, who are fanatic in their devotion, all the covers are meaningless. To them, it was Nyro’s own recordings, some of the most intimately soulful records ever made, such as New York Tendaberry, from which blue soulscapes the path was paved for subsequent masterpieces of the heart by Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones and others. Born Laura Nigro in the Bronx on October 18, 1947, she was surrounded by art and jazz as a kid, and said she was “already deep inside the music” when she was a teenager, absorbing the compositional brilliance of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Unlike most musicians, who are introduced to music by learning its limitations, her first lesson was that music had no limits, and this understanding forever shaped her art. “I’m not interested in conventional limitations,” she said. “As an artist, I can do anything, say anything. It’s about self-expression. It knows no package.” As she memorably wrote in “And When I Die,” “Give me my freedom… All I ask of living is to have no chains on me.” A year after writing her first songs, she was onstage at the Hungry I in San Francisco performing them when Clive Davis heard her, asked her to audition for Columbia (which she did in his hotel room with all the lights out except a TV), and won him over. He signed her and she made her mark, recording a series of landmark albums, and having her songs covered by almost every great vocalist of the time, from the aforementioned to Aretha Franklin, Cass Elliot, Frank Sinatra, Carmen McRae, Chet Atkins and many others. Unlike many songwriters who complain that the process of songwriting is torturous, Nyro delighted in it. “All I know,” she said, “is when I start getting serious about songwriting… it’s like a playground. All responsibilities slip away and you’re with your essence. There can be delight there and self-discovery. You can dance there… I think of it as my serious playground.” She’s famous for writing songs of vast extremes, from deepest sorrow to the purest joy. And like her soul mates Carole King and Joni Mitchell, she knew all the rules about songwriting and why to break them. But the rules dictated by the industry were never easy to abide, and like most artists, she felt lost within the corporate structure of the music biz. As she explained, “I think if you have a vision of peace, it’s strange to live in a world of war. If you’re a woman who honors her roots, it’s strange to be in a male-dominated business.” Asked how she managed to transcend these incongruities, she answered that it was by connecting with the delight of music. “I think you get beyond the suffering. And you focus on the sweetness of your vision.” She said singing—whether her own songs or songs she loved—connected her with the source. “There’s a certain feeling when I go out to sing that happens with everyone. It’s a healing thing. Some of the old songs remind us of the sweet, innocent kid inside us. You’re dealing with the language of love.” Beyond the suffering. That’s where she is now, and the suffering of the world she sang about leaving behind since she was 17—the one child is born to carry on—has been diminished by the spirit she left behind, the spirit that lives in her music.

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On Track: Josh Turner

Tim Ghianni — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:00:42 +0000

Josh Turner anticipates the day his log cabin is finished on his 40-acre spread south of Nashville. “It’s pretty secluded and private out here,” he says of the homestead he shares with wife, Jennifer, and their two boys, Hampton, three years old, and Colby, just seven months. The compound is the fruit of a career ignited on December 21, 2001, when the then-unknown-singer brought the Grand Ole Opry crowd to its feet with his “Long Black Train” tale of redemption, showcasing his talents as a singer and as a songwriter. But the demands and joys of multi-platinum success and thriving family have made it difficult for Turner to find the right time and place to write, which is why he decided to have the 1,700-square-foot cabin built. “We’re calling it the Writer’s Cottage,” Turner says. “It’s going to be my lair, my little hole in the wall, where I can go in and write and think, and not have any TV or computers, or phones or whatever, where I can get distracted.” Even without that cabin, the 32-year-old from Hannah, South Carolina, found time to write the title track and co-write four others on his new album Haywire, his fourth and, he believes, most energetic album. “Whether it would be an up-tempo, positive song, a love ballad, a story song or a gospel song, I feel a lot more energy in this record. I put a lot of passion in it and I think it really shows from song to song,” he says, of the album that kicks off with the hit “Why Don’t We Just Dance.” He also stretched his most-acclaimed tool, the baritone voice that had Blender magazine calling him “a country Barry White.” “My vocals [on this album] have surpassed everything I’ve done so far. I made a conscious effort to step outside of the box, to stretch myself to do more, to do bigger and better vocals.” While Haywire is filled with rollicking and romantic, radio-friendly tales of good times, it closes with “The Answer,” a nod to the convictions that sprang from his “Long Black Train” breakthrough. During a writing session, he and Mark Narmore began with the phrase “‘Jesus is the Answer,” adding, “We just started playing around on the piano and the guitar and it started falling out. For us, it’s a message of hope for people who seem to be struggling with something, floundering around, wandering through life.” Turner delights in delivering his spiritual songs when he takes the stage. “If I don’t get out there and give them some sort of hope or peace, or joy or comfort, through my music that is a God-given talent, then why should they spend their money and come out to a show, if they’ll feel just as empty leaving as when they came in?” Fans know they also can count on him for fun, like the new album’s “Eye Candy,” whose heroine’s “kisses… ain’t nutritious, but they’re delicious,” or “Haywire,” with its “hotter than fire” girl teaching “the definition of love.” “I let Jennifer think that all of those songs are about her,” he says, with a laugh. As a backup singer and pianist, Jennifer not only hears, but participates, as Turner’s songs of lust and the Lord mingle on set lists. One benefit of success is that Turner’s got a tour bus just for his family: “We’re all out there seeing the world together.” His hankering for solitude comes when he’s off the road and in need of time and space to write his next hit or inspirational song. That’s why he’s excited about the cabin, where he can enjoy the solo process of creating songs. “It’s just me. All the pressure is off. It’s really raw and there’s a lot of room for error. It’s kind of like a musical laboratory. You get to experiment with different rhythms, chords and melodies. You get to see songs being born in the musical delivery room and I get to cut the cord. I get to see my musical babies being born, and I get to see them grow up as they go into the studio and to the record, and to when people start buying them.”

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Sounding Off: A River Ran Through It

Evan Schlansky — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:00:33 +0000

A short while back, Bruce Springsteen did something he’d never done before: he performed The River, in its entirety, in front of a rapturous audience at Madison Square Garden. Released in October of 1980, the ambitious double album helped usher in a decade of economic strife and conflicted foreign policy. Now, hard times had once again fallen on America, and Springsteen’s River revival couldn’t have come at a more resonant time. As he sings in the title track: “I got a job workin’ construction for the Johnstown Company/but lately there ain’t been much work, on account of the economy.” Having been laid off myself in 2009, I was ready to get my dose of religion; I was ready to go and see the Boss. In keeping with the current set list ritual, the evening began with “Wrecking Ball,” about the razing of Giants Stadium. But it was merely an appetizer. “We’re going to try this just one time, because it’s too long to do it again,” quipped Springsteen. “This record was a gateway to the future. It was written and recorded during a recession. The title song I wrote about my brother-in-law and sister after he lost his job. A lot of men, women and families were hurting. The River led into Nebraska. “Stolen Car” led into Tunnel of Love. It was the style of record where I wanted to keep the characters I had on Darkness on the Edge of Town with me. We’re going to take you down to The River tonight.” With that, he and the band spent the next hour-and-a-half bringing that album to life, which I imagine was akin to watching Michelangelo recreate the David in front of you. It kicked off, of course, with “The Ties That Bind”—a major Springsteen-ian work that is sometimes overlooked in favor of “Badlands,” “Promised Land,” etc. “Let’s make some party noise!” Bruce shouted, launching into “Sherry Darling,” a seaside boozehound’s lament, played with affection and energy, the Big Man lighting up his sax solo. This is Springsteen’s “your-Mom is-a-pain-in-the-ass” song. The claustrophobic, impassioned “Jackson Cage” was always one of my favorites. Life is a James Dean movie, it seems to say. The stakes are high. “Two Hearts” is a handy summation of Bruce’s mission statement (“two hearts are better than one/two hearts can get the job done.”) You can't help but get “Bruce bumps” at the tacked-on coda, where little Steven and Bruce harmonize on the outro. 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town was a moody and haunted album, especially on the heels of Born to Run, and Springsteen seemed to want to reward his audience with some crowd-pleasers on the follow-up. The River alternates between simple, feel-good songs like “Out on the Street,” “Crush on You” and “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” with songs that lurk in the shadows, your “Stolen Car”s and your “Wreck on the Highway”s (his car infatuation was in full force here). Springsteen jokingly called “Crush On You” “a lost masterpiece!” and had the crowd sing the first verse of “Hungry Heart,” as he’s been doing since 1980. His biggest hit (alongside “Glory Days”) was written after Bruce met Joey Ramone in Asbury Park, and the Ramones frontman asked him to write a song for them. Ever the rock and roll showman, the 60-year-old Springsteen used the occasion to body surf over the crowd. The melancholy, mournful “River” has one of the most resonant opening lines ever, and Springsteen’s harmonica playing is always masterful; it was amplified here by Nils Lofgren’s ghostly slide guitar. The ending touched off a round of deeply heartfelt Bruuuuucccce’s, reminiscent of the 1979 “No Nukes” concert (also at MSG), which featured James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Springsteen stole that show as well, and the movie, with his impassioned performance of “The River” and an insane high-octane, over-the-top performance of “Quarter to Three,” in which he can best be described as the white James Brown. “I’m a Rocker,” always my least favorite Springsteen song, turned out to be a highlight. If anybody’s “a rocker, every day, in every way,” it’s Bruce Springsteen. “Drive All Night” was the big moment I’d been waiting for; I’d recently been crushing on that song hard. Apparently, it’s a lot of people’s favorite, too: I read reports of people crying in MSG during its performance. Springsteen drove it home. Shoes were purchased. Tears were shed. It all built to a subdued and somber ending, with “Wreck on the Highway,” capping the very first and possibly the last, performance of The River. Ain't it funny how those who were born to run end up in the wreck on the highway? Actually, it’s not funny at all. “Thank you!” Bruce said as The River concluded, and brought the original E Streeters to center stage to take a bow. “These are the guys who recorded the record... and Phantom Dan Federici.” Then, incredibly, the real show started. From “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” to “(Your Love Keeps Liftin’ Me) Higher and Higher,” the hours-long encore was like its own concert. The loss of Danny Federici is poignant; the E Street Band is not invulnerable. Clarence’s bad knees might mean this is his last tour, and they’ve been swapping out the drummer so that Mighty Max can rock segues on Conan O’Brien. I felt blessed to see the real thing one more time. “New York! New York! New York! You’ve just seen the last of, for a little while, the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, earth-shocking, hard-rocking, bootie-shaking, earthquaking, love-making, Viagra-taking, history-making, legendary E Street Band!” Followed by, what else? “1 2 3 4!”

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Behind The Song: “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”

David Freeland — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:00:41 +0000

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell sang, it has been remarked, like lovers, although they weren’t. Similarly, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the team behind one of Marvin and Tammi’s most enduring hits, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” wrote as if under the influence of amatory forces; even if, in the spring of 1968, when “Real Thing” emerged on Motown Records with the warmth of a sunflower, their relationship was still platonic (later, they married). The point of these reflections is that great songs, like all works of art, unify; they pull together what has otherwise been separate. Here, the sense of unity extends to every level of construction: not one element in “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” sounds discordant or out of place. In best Motown fashion, the song glides along like a precisely fashioned unit. Ashford and Simpson have never earned much critical recognition, perhaps because their songs are so listenable, so smoothly tuneful, that the critic in us tends to withdraw from them. Songs this easy, it seems, couldn’t be great art—particularly when, as the story goes here, they are inspired by the slogan for a Coca-Cola commercial. But the simplicity of a song such as “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” is deceptive. A current of anxiety bubbles underneath the lyrics, which are tinged by the longing of two people who can’t be together as much as they would like: “I read your letters, when you’re not near/But they don’t move me, they don’t groove me like when I hear/your sweet voice whispering in my ear.” The writers have landed upon a concept—fear of separation—that informs a listener’s experience of their song, triggering specific memories. Those who have been pulled from loved ones, through unforeseen events or armed conflict (“Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” was written during the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam war), can relate to the “picture hanging on the wall” that nonetheless “can’t see or come to me when I call your name.” Finally, at the song’s peak moment, with strings and voices swelling, Marvin and Tammi sing, “Let’s stay together,” as if in joyous determination to withstand the pressure of forces beyond their control. Once the final chorus is changed to “so glad we got the real thing, baby,” it’s hard to imagine that doubt could ever have existed. Ashford and Simpson have surmounted the challenges they posed earlier, resolving all tension in the span of little more than two minutes. Still, the anxiety never fully dissolves: it is impossible to hear Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell perform without reflecting upon the tragedies (a brain tumor in her case, murder by a parent in his) that brought their careers to an early end. We can be thankful to Ashford and Simpson for providing both singers with an opportunity to sound, in spite of whatever else was going on in their lives, happy. Terrell’s delivery in particular is full of the wonderful asides and interpolations (“Talk to me”) that made her one of Motown’s most distinctive vocalists, while Gaye supports vocally with all the consideration he supposedly gave Terrell during her long illness. They weren’t to perform together much longer; on later hits (such as “What You Gave Me”), Simpson herself subbed for the ailing Terrell in the studio, in an unaccredited switch Motown would deny for years. As brilliant as they were, Marvin and Tammi did not have the last word. One proof of a great song is its adaptability to new contexts and interpretations, and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” has been revived successfully many times—most notably by Aretha Franklin, who gave it a luxuriantly romantic spin in 1973. Slowing the tempo, Franklin repeats “together” as a climactic shout, leading to a coda sparked by delicate interplay with a trio of ethereal-sounding backup vocalists. More jazzily introspective than that of Marvin and Tammi, no less powerful, Aretha’s version preserves the tightness of construction and flow that characterized the song from the beginning. Writing with one mind and heart, Ashford and Simpson ensured that the pieces of their marvelous composition would always fit together.

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Under the Radar: The Soft Anthem Revisited

David Mead — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:00:15 +0000

Ah, the soft anthem. With so many musical trends from the ‘80s being revisited these days, the UTR staff had been wondering when someone might attempt to reinvent that particularly pillow-y yet aggressive celebration of broken hearts. Any fan of criminally underrated bands like Supertramp and Air Supply might also have felt a certain dearth of truly tender-yet-brave musical moments over the past decade. It’s been as if no one understands us anymore. Like a panoramic jib crane shot of a hardened general surveying a battlefield of fallen soldiers at the end of a war film, the soft anthem has the ability to translate epic suffering in a very personal language. In these days of catastrophic natural disasters and ruined economies, we knew it could only be a matter of time before a new group would come along to put a fresh spin on the formula. Upon listening to our advance copy of Pinstripe 45’s Through The Darkened Window (Crying Icon), we knew that the wait was over. After discarding empty boxes of Kleenex and crumpled cartons of frozen yogurt, we set about the hard task of analysis. Pinstripe 45’s version of the soft anthem is both enigmatically modern and earnestly retro. Producer-of-the-moment Jacquire King’s minimal production touches propel the songs beyond sentimentality, but the band’s finger-picked guitars and doubled harmonies go all the way back to Simon and Garfunkel, Tim Buckley and the heady fragrance of clove cigarettes. Marshall Hanbury, Jr.’s lead vocal wavers with an epileptic vibrato and slightly Continental vowel twisting that hints at something out of proportion and possibly epic. (For example, when Hanbury sings, “Oh girl,” it sounds a lot like “Olga.”) The frequent layering of bassist Gina Black’s harmony vocal only expands the possibilities, creating an achingly familiar sensation that inspired at least one UTR staff member to reach for a tambourine. Simply put, Hanbury and Brown’s vocals sound a lot like the Carpenters on Ambien—no small feat for a band from Chicago. Through The Darkened Window’s song titles are deliciously dramatic, as well: “Because She Waits,” “Even When You Cry,” “Run From Me” and “When I Lie To You” provide a strong idea of the sort of emotional terrain in which Pinstripe 45’s feel most comfortable. The best distillation of their efforts may be the elegiac “I Love You, Ilene,” a soft-focus romance that deserves a prime spot in the next Wes Anderson movie, underneath the bicycle chase scene, right between Cat Stevens and Petula Clark. Inga Swearingen’s melodies unfold like Virginia Woolf’s best sentences, patiently building to an expected climax before transcending it like a sweet exhalation of air. First Rain (Rhythome), her newest release, is an exquisitely crafted piece of work that delicately interweaves jazz and folk into a most uncommon singer/songwriter album. Although Joni Mitchell may be her most obvious touchstone, Swearingen possesses the musical chops and intuition to step out of Mitchell’s considerable shadow and into a place all her own. First Rain includes several stellar versions of standards (a Monk-ish take on “Blackbird” is particularly excellent), but Swearingen’s original compositions, in which she utilizes the complexities of jazz harmonics to bring out the emotional undercurrents of her still life observations, are the most inspiring of the collection. Walter Rose’s new eponymous EP (4th St. Records) swells with enough warm, smoky ambiance to bring tears to the eyes of a hardened convict. Rose’s songs are melodic novellas of road trips through broken-down desert towns, the kind of stories that bring to mind tumbleweeds blowing through old Clint Eastwood movies. In fact, the entire recording sounds as if it could have been released in 1975, the sort of thing that might come crackling out of a road house jukebox in Barstow. Its flat, analog spectrum lends plenty of warmth to the nooks and crannies of Rose’s weathered delivery while showcasing the subtle dexterity of his backing musicians. There is no sparkle or fairy dust here; just long, open stretches of lonely highway winding into purple sunsets and swells of pedal steel, the perfect setting for Rose’s endless journeys in search of home.

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The Art of Home Recording

Steve Martin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:00:49 +0000

While subscription and streaming services continue to make headlines, who knows what the future holds for the value of recorded music? At the same time, though, a $17 billion global musical instruments and products industry is hedging a strong bet that the art of recording isn’t going anywhere. And with the hyper-aware culture of the Twitter and Facebook generation, maybe the next innovations in recorded music may actually knell the death tolls for recorded music itself. What if instead of heading to the studio to create your magnum opus for months on end, your musical output becomes a series of real-time live sets streamed over the Internet? Record from a studio, your bedroom, a music club or festival. Value is placed on the fact that performances are available in real-time. Stream is the new mp3, right? So what does all of it mean for the home recordist? Home recording—and the musical products that have revolutionized the home studio—is, without a doubt, the wave of the future. With a computer and a few hundred bucks, the home recordist can get a microphone, digital audio workstation and interface, and jump on the horse and head straight to town. For a few hundred (or thousand) dollars more, add higher-end mics, room-treatment acoustical products and DAW plug-ins that simulate the type of gear for which you’d be paying $2,000 a day at Abbey Road studios. If you’ve got a basement or attic, you can build your own vibe-y ‘70s studio with a little resourcefulness. What follows is an investigation into the products, process and options available to the home recordist.--DAVIS INMAN

It All Starts With A Microphone

Recording engineers are masters in the art of capturing sound. A good engineer can hear a sound and make quick judgments on what combination of equipment will capture that sound most appropriately. These decisions—of what gear to use and how—draw upon years of experimentation, training and practice in order to achieve a desired result. The bottom line is: it’s all about how well you know your tools. A bad engineer with a great microphone will produce sub-standard recordings. But a good engineer can do great things with very modest equipment. Let us assume that you have a computer to use for your home recordings. From there, the first piece of gear in your signal chain is a microphone, arguably one of the most important. We’ll devote some considerable space here to the different types of microphones and why you’d want to explore them for different applications. A microphone is a transducer. Transducers convert one form of energy (in this case, sound waves) into electricity. There are three basic categories of microphones: dynamic, condenser and ribbon. And while there are no rules, you’ll find that some microphones are particularly well-suited to, say, a guitar or saxophone, while others may work better on drums or vocals. Dynamic microphones are durable, relatively inexpensive and capable of handling high sound pressure levels (SPLs). Some dynamic microphones, like the Shure SM57 and the AKG D112, can be found in major studios all over the world and are used in a variety of applications. The SM57 can be found for under $100 and is often considered the industry standard microphone for snare drums and close-miking guitar amps. (The SM57 has also been rumored to be the microphone used to record the strings on “Eleanor Rigby.”) SPOTLIGHT: AUDIX i-5 Condenser microphones are designed to handle a larger range of frequencies, and are thus suited to recording a larger variety of sounds. They are more sensitive and thus better suited for quiet sounds, and are typically more fragile than dynamic microphones. Condenser microphones are used in a variety of applications, including vocals, guitars, drums and pianos. Condenser microphones also require an external power source, known as phantom power, which is 48 volts of DC power. (Many mixing boards and audio interfaces allow you to apply phantom power to your condensers with just the push of a button.) Condensers are split into two categories: large diaphragm and small diaphragm. Small diaphragm condensers, also sometimes referred to as pencil condensers due to their shape, are more commonly used on acoustic instruments and are often found on hi-hats and used as drum overheads. Because of their size and shape, small diaphragm condensers can sometimes offer a wider range of placement options. SPOTLIGHT: RØDE NT5 Large diaphragm condensers are more common, and are the number one choice for vocals and room mics –but really they’re great on just about anything. Some condenser microphones also offer multiple polar patterns. A polar pattern is the direction from which a microphone picks up sound. Cardioid patterns pick up sound best from the front of the microphone, with decreasing signal on the sides, and very little from the rear. Bi-directional, or figure eight, microphones pick up from both the front and the back. (Just picture John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing into two sides of the same microphone.) Omni-directional polar patterns pick up sounds from all around the microphone, and are great for room mics or if you have a limited number of inputs with which to record. Using a microphone with an omni-directional polar pattern would allow you to record a group of musicians all surrounding just one microphone. SPOTLIGHT: KEL AUDIO HM-7U Ribbon microphones—though technically dynamic microphones—are different enough in their construction and function that they warrant their own category. Typical ribbon microphones have a bi-directional polar pattern, but ribbons do not lend themselves as well to the same applications that bi-directional condenser microphones do, due to their construction. The ribbon microphone contains a thin piece of corrugated metal (aluminum is very common) that is suspended in a magnetic field. When air molecules pass through the magnetic field a signal is generated and passed down through the microphone to the cable. This makes ribbon microphones particularly sensitive to wind, or high SPLs, and limits their use in certain applications. When using ribbons to record vocals, it is always recommended to use a pop filter to avoid strong breaths and moisture from damaging the microphone. Ribbon microphones are capable of producing exceptionally smooth high-end frequencies without any of the harshness that can be generated by some condensers. The sound of most ribbon microphones can be described as “warm,” or natural sounding. For a long time, the only ribbon microphones available were quite expensive, although in the past decade ribbon microphones from Cascade, Nady and MXL have become available for under $500. At the other end of the spectrum is the Royer R-121, one of the more popular ribbon microphones in use today, although it carries a price tag to match at around $1295. Common uses for ribbon microphones are guitar cabinets, room microphones for horn sections, as well as acoustic instruments. Because of their fragility, ribbon microphones are not recommended for kick drums or close-miking anything that generates a large displacement of air. Ribbon microphones are also commonly used as a stereo pair in what is called a “Blumlein technique,” where two bi-directional microphone capsules are placed atop one another, so that they occupy essentially the same space, and are rotated 90 degrees. SPOTLIGHT: AUDIO-TECHNICA AT4081

Digital Beginnings

Sound recording has undergone massive changes during the past few decades. But, in the scheme of things, it’s really nothing new for the art form. Before the German invention of magnetic tape in the 1920s, sound was mostly broadcast live on radio programs or issued as gramophone recordings. By the ‘50s, America had taken the magnetic tape recording innovations made by the Germans during World War II and invested heavily in the new medium, continuing to do so for the next few decades. While people will always argue about analog vs. digital, it’s tough to deny that the rise of digital in the ‘90s and ‘00s has been a boon to the home recordist. Many studios and major engineers are realizing what the digital audio workstations offer over the fussy tape reel; and manufacturers are getting closer and closer to simulating analog sounds using those little 0s and 1s. In digital recording, you’ve got a beginning and an end in terms of a signal chain. The beginning is where the sound is captured: the microphone. The end is your computer. The DAW, or digital audio workstation, is the software that your computer uses to record, manage and edit all the different audio files that come about as a result of a recording session. That missing link between the microphone and the computer is the Audio Interface. Interfaces have as many options and upgrades as most SUVs, but their basic function is the same: they allow audio to pass in and out of your computer. For the recording studio, consumer-level audio just doesn’t cut it. Many computers now come equipped with an onboard microphone that enables recording directly to the computer. After the microphone captures the sound, the computer performs analog to digital conversion (AD Conversion), so that the computer can understand the analog signal. The sound of whatever you have recorded is converted in binary code, and then stored in your computer. In a recording studio, the quality of these AD converters is far superior than those found in consumer-grade electronics, and can more accurately convert the signal with minimal degradation. The other plus-side to using professional audio interfaces is the amount of ins and outs (IO) you have available for use. There are audio interfaces available for the home recordist that have anywhere from one to 28 inputs, and some are expandable beyond that with an additional interface that can be connected via ADAT. Since recording multiple tracks simultaneously produces a large amount of information, audio interfaces are usually connected to the computer using USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or FireWire 800, because of their high bandwidth. If your computer doesn’t offer the same type of connector that the interface uses, some adapters are available. Today’s interfaces are capable of recording audio at extremely high sample rates. A sample can be thought of as a “picture” of an audio signal, thus a sample rate is how many “pictures” are taken in a second. The range of sample rates found in audio interfaces can vary from 44.1, all the way to 192 (audiophile quality), and is measured in kHz. In the process of recording, audio interfaces and computers perform an enormous amount of tasks in a very short amount of time. In order to record a sound, a series of events have to take place following the occurrence of the sound. This process—sound passing through the capsule of a microphone, being transduced into electric signals, passing through a microphone cable, being converted from analog to digital, then recorded to the computer’s hard drive and played back—is going to take some time. This time period is called latency. Fortunately, technology has come so far that this time is often measured in milliseconds. Interfaces made by manufacturers like PreSonus and M-Audio, to name a few, offer near-zero latency monitoring. SPOTLIGHT: FOCUSRITE LIQUID SAFFIRE 56 The DAW is the final link in the signal chain. This is where the various audio files are stored and displayed in such a manner that you can manage and manipulate them to achieve a desired result. While analog tape machines were limited to 24 tracks, most DAWs run 24 tracks and some have unlimited track counts. The most widely used DAW in professional recording studios is, undoubtedly, Pro Tools. However, Logic and Cubase increasingly make up a significant amount of the market. Today’s DAWs offer everything from virtual instruments, loops and sample libraries, to MIDI sequencing, plug-ins, and music notation. It’s worth noting that Pro Tools comes in HD, LE and M-powered versions. Pro Tools LE and M-Powered (compatible with M-Audio interfaces) require specific interfaces to function while Pro Tools HD requires both a specific interface as well as additional processing cards for your computer. Unless you’ve got a steady stream of major label artists coming through your studio, it’s not as common to have Pro Tools HD in a home recording environment. But that also is not to say that amazing recordings can’t be made with Pro Tools LE or Pro Tools M-Powered.

A Room Of One’s Own

A great engineer once said, “All you need is ears.” This may be true, but if you’re listening to your recordings on laptop speakers or Radio Shack headphones, what your ears perceive is not an accurate representation of your music. Good monitoring is essential to good recording and mixing. Good monitors or a nice set of headphones are essential to a home studio setup. Headphones will provide an isolated listening environment and will take the room that you’re monitoring in out of the equation. With a good set of headphones, you’ll be able to zero in on problem frequencies, spatial effects and stereo imaging in a much more accurate manner. SPOTLIGHT: SENNHEISER HD 380 Pro headphones Professional recording studios spend thousands of dollars to acoustically treat their rooms. The idea is to create an optimum listening environment where what you hear from the monitors is not affected by early reflections off of the walls, or frequency buildups as a result of the shape of the room. In most home studios, the acoustics of the room are not optimized for good recording or monitoring. There are several products on the market to help home studios wrestle with their acoustic problems. With a little work, and perhaps some foam, you can create a much more accurate monitoring situation. SPOTLIGHT: AURALEX Room Analysis Plus Kit

Putting On The Final Touches

Plug-ins are mixing tools and effects used within a DAW. Some plug-ins are digital models of vintage analog gear that are reverse-engineered to produce similar results. The key with using plug-ins is to know the theory behind how they work. Plug-ins are mixing tools and, when mixing, it’s all about how well you know your tools. A bad engineer with a great compressor isn’t going to produce a good result. There are plug-in versions of just about any effect you can imagine or have heard, and new plug-ins are being developed all the time. Some plug-ins are even available for free download from developers’ Web sites. Most DAWs come complete with a respectable selection of essential plug-ins to get you started, but any DAW can be outfitted with the latest and greatest emulations from developers like WAVES and Universal Audio, who both make spot-on plug-in versions of the kind of gear most engineers can only dream about owning. SPOTLIGHT: NATIVE INSTRUMENTS KOMPLETE 6 SPOTLIGHT: iZOTOPE Alloy This article was written and researched by Steve Martin, a professional engineer and educator based in Nashville, Tenn. Leave your comments and questions in the Comments section, or contact us here.

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Guitar 101: The Bridge to Somewhere

Gary Talley — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:00:39 +0000

It’s been a cold 2010 so far in Nashville, and I hope to have thawed out by the time you read this. By the way, we need a famous bridge around here like the Golden Gate, which reminds me that I’ve decided to write about bridges. The kind you put (or don’t put) in a song. Many times, people stop me on the street and ask, “What is a bridge?” or “Do I need a bridge?” or “How do you write a bridge?” I have no idea why they come up to me and ask this. To get these people to leave me alone, I humbly submit this column. Let’s tackle the first question, “What is a bridge?” There seems to be no agreed-upon definition, but I can give you a general one. A bridge is a distinct section of a song, which offers contrast to and relief from the other sections (verses and choruses). A common song structure would be intro, verse, chorus, turn-around, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. Some (lyricists) call that an ABABCB structure. The intro and turn-around aren’t important enough to get a letter. If you’re writing a chart for a musician, you must put those sections in, though. Songs without choruses (where the “hook” is in the verse) often contain bridges, too. The song form would be called AB or AABAAB. “Yesterday” is AABAABA—it doesn’t have a chorus. The term “sing-along” chorus is often used around here. So if you’ve been singing along with a verse, not the chorus, stop it right now! Anyone listening to the song should be able to recognize that a different section has begun, whether or not they could identify it as a bridge. The same thing can be said for choruses. Something needs to change! It should have a different melody and lyrics at the very least, but even more change is better. The chord progression, phrasing of the lyrics, and the rhythm section “feel” usually change in a bridge. It’s the most different part of a song. That’s not to say it should sound totally unrelated to the rest of the song, of course. By the time you’ve heard two verses and two choruses, your ears are ready for something new. A common arrangement change would be that the rhythm section goes to a “half-time feel.” So if you’re playing eighth notes on your guitar, you could switch to quarter notes or half notes. This doesn’t mean the tempo changes! A beginning-songwriter “mistake” is to say, “OK, it really slows down a lot here and then speeds up again.” That’s not what needs to happen. By going to a half-time feel, you get the illusion of slowing down because there’s more space between the notes. So if you need a bridge, how do you write one? The Beatles, and Brits in general, used the term “middle eight” instead of “bridge.” That tells you the typical length of a bridge: eight bars. Guitar-wise and compositionally speaking, you must first decide what chords to use in the bridge. Here’s where it helps to know some more chords. Let’s say you’re in the most guitar-friendly key of G. You know about the C, C, D and D7, but don’t forget, there are three minor chords in every key: The 2m, 3m and 6m. In the key of G that would be Am, Bm and Em. You could start the bridge with one of them. An engineer I work with a lot sings “Desperado” every time the bridge starts on a 6m…a common chord for starting a bridge. If your song is in the key of G and the verse starts on a G (1), and the chorus starts on a C (4), the bridge could start on D (5), F (b7) or one of your minors in the key of G: Am (2m) Bm (3m) or Em (6m). You could even go to Gm! You’d be changing keys if you did, but if you’re going to be so bold as to change keys, the bridge is the best place to do it. That could make it tricky getting back into the same key for the last chorus, so be careful. The different sections of a song do not have to start on different chords. It’s the sequence of the chords and the melody that really need to change. A really cool song I like to use as a bridge example is “Strawberry Wine,” written by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison. Put the capo on the first fret and play in C (it’s in C#), and download the Deana Carter version of the song. The bridge works in Dm6, Dm7, Dm6, Dm7, Am9, C, G/B and G. It does not change keys! Incidentally, I downloaded the song and wrote out the chords. Out of curiosity, I Googled “Strawberry Wine chords” and went to more than 10 different sites. Not one of them had the right chords! This is not unusual. Remember, these online chord sites are done by amateurs. You will not find the correct chords to a song for free online! I have seen this over and over again. Be forewarned. Do you really need a bridge? My publisher once told me that “unless you have something new to say,” you do not need a bridge. He was speaking mostly in terms of lyrics. You don’t want to repeat the same thoughts with different music. Sometimes, the bridge is used as sort of a “summary” of the previous lyrics. It may show insight or a deeper level of meaning than the verse and chorus. Most up-tempo songs do not have bridges, interestingly enough. As an example of a well-known song, let’s use “Yesterday” again. The “Why she had to go…” part is the bridge. The verses tell how the writer feels and the bridge asks why it happened. Imagine this song without the bridge. It’s quite different. Let’s go back again to “Strawberry Wine.” Do the bridge lyrics say anything new? Yes. It brings you back to the present, “The fields have grown over now.” It’s very effective and makes it an even better song. Gotta go. I’m freezin’.

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Street Smarts: Bringing It to Nashville

Michael Kosser — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:00:23 +0000

The last issue of American Songwriter contained a very nice letter from Nicole Nikki Sullivan. Part of the letter dealt with the agonizing problem many songwriters face about the need to go where the music business is. I began writing about the business of songwriting nearly 35 years ago and, even then, I was constantly screeching that you have to come to Nashville if you hope to make it as a non-performing songwriter. Since then, I’ve never had reason to doubt that bit of dogma, but Nikki’s letter got me thinking. Am I really right? Is there no other way? After all, there are a lot of talented and dedicated songwriters whose lives make it impossible to move to a commercial music center. I felt that I owed Nikki, and thousands of other readers of this magazine, more than pat dogma. As I start this article, I promise I haven’t come to any conclusions yet; you’ll read my thoughts as they develop.

First, Why Nashville? I’m sure many of you who are loyal readers of this magazine are somewhat troubled that we are constantly making reference to Nashville and Music Row as the center of the American songwriting industry, versus L.A. or New York. Some of you cannot understand why the magazine is based in Nashville. Well, you are not alone. I’m sure there are moguls at the major music conglomerates who don’t understand it, and don’t like it. However, it is a fact that Music Row presents a centralized, almost campus-like agglomeration of publishing companies, studios, labels, management companies, performing rights organizations—all the elements that make up a commercial music industry. Music Row feels approachable. It’s a place where a newcomer need not feel intimidated. It may not be quite as warm and fuzzy as it was 40 years ago, but it still feels like a legitimate destination for the ambitious songwriter. I, and others, have had a lot of discouraging words to say about the A & R functionaries who sign singers who have never written a song in their life, throw those singers in a room with veteran songwriters and then market the singers as the next Hank Williams or Merle Haggard. All that is true and deplorable. But as far back as I can remember, there have always been insiders with special connections that brought them songwriting success. It is these connections that songwriters cannot develop in Dubuque or Duluth or Peoria. But Nashville… the South… Country music? Get over it. You may or may not like the sound of country music, but on Music Row, they still honor the song as distinct from the production. Believe it or not, many of the most popular songs in the pop world come out of Nashville. In Nashville, songwriters still get together and write a song without making the melody and lyric subservient to a riff. We may be old fashioned here, but we deal in basics, and I earnestly believe it is the continued influence of Nashville that keeps the song alive in the pop world; otherwise, the song as we know it might have vanished from pop music somewhere around the Disco era. So I don’t care what kinds of songs you write. I believe that going to school for country songwriting is just as valid as studying Shakespeare, Shaw and O’Neill to learn the craft of writing plays. All Right, All Right, Please, Your Point I really thought I needed to establish “Why Nashville?” In order to proceed to the main question, “But do I really need to be here?” Answer: Songwriting offers a difficult road to success. Talent counts. Toughness counts. And yes, the luck of relationships counts. A new writer in town may hook up with an old pro, thinking that the old pro is a conduit to success. It may take three or four years for that new writer to realize that the business, and the music, have passed the old pro by. Or a new writer in town might hook up with an old pro who has hooked up with an up-and-coming singer/songwriter and the three possess a powerful songwriting chemistry that carries them to glory. Some paths of networking lead to fame and fortune, some lead to dead ends, and most, well, they lead to more networks. In Nikki’s letter, she explains why she can’t move to Nashville, and describes some of the networking she has done. It is this part of the letter that has grabbed me, and since y’all have read this far, here is a grain of wisdom you can glean from an otherwise digression-filled column: The Internet is changing the songwriting industry and will change it more and more, radically, over the coming years, in ways that we cannot imagine today. The Web can be one heck of a place to network. As an example, I suggest you visit AmericanSongpace.com, AS’s Web site specially created to bring songwriters together. Some smart people on the staff of this magazine are putting a lot of thought into that Web site. As the site matures, it will link with more and more websites for serious songwriters. One day cyberspace will replace Music Row. Even now, songpluggers e-mail a lot of their pitches. What would you give for the email address of the head of A & R at Big Machine or Capitol Records? So, in Conclusion … … Nikki and the rest of you, it wouldn’t hurt to make some appointments and spend a week or two on Music Row, just talking to people, getting a feel for their needs and how things get done. But there are also the online sites like American Songspace, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, CDBaby and a thousand others that might move a songwriting career forward. I do believe that, sooner or later, learning to do music business on the Web will be as important as hanging out on Music Square West is today. Thanks for the letter, Nikki. I think you’ll do fine.

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Spoon: The Power of Transference

Tom Thornton — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:00:17 +0000

In 1995, Spoon were often dubbed “the next Pixies.” The tag never quite fit, but the two did share a love for writing glorious pop songs and then shrouding them with walls of noise and mystery. Over 15 years, the Austin, Texas band have survived lineup shuffles and early record label neglect, finding their signature style with 2001’s Girls Can Tell and quietly building one of the strongest rock catalogs of the decade. With their new self-produced release, Transference, Spoon show little interest in matching the mass appeal of past hits like “The Underdog.” Instead, they’ve produced a starker, more brooding album, full of lyrical confusion and musical jitters. The notably meticulous band don’t do anything by accident, so it’s a measured rawness on display, showcasing just how good the band are at what they do. We recently spoke to Spoon and tried to unravel Transference’s creation over a beer. You chose not to work with a producer this time out. Did the rawer nature of the material dictate that decision, or was it something else? Britt Daniel: We don’t know any producers, really. [Chuckles] I don’t think that we had a firm game plan when we started the record. In fact, we did some recording with Jon Brion to see how that would turn out. We did versions of “Written In Reverse” and “Trouble” with him. But then we kept working on our own. And I remember at one point just going—maybe what this record’s about is each song being done in a different way. Not bringing it into a studio and spending five months all together, but, instead, doing it all over the place. And when we decided to do that, then it was easier for us to be in charge. Are you still advocates of recording mostly to tape, or is there a temptation to give up and use Pro Tools and e-mail to facilitate the record’s progress? BD: It all hit tape at some point. Jim? Jim Eno (drummer): We prefer tape and everything hit it at one point or the other. BD: It was the first record where it wasn’t strictly two 24-track tape players. Sometimes, we did record digitally and then bounced to tape. Sometimes, it was recorded on cassette first, but every song was done differently. There’s a lot of discord and noise on Transference. How do you strike a balance between noise and melody? JE: What noise are you talking about? [Laughter] Well, a lot of “Written In Reverse,” like the piano, has this sense of discord. And you’ll hear background noise. There's a lot going on, but everything seems considered. BD: I think that’s a good question. One of our strong suits is that we’re going after these songs that are fairly traditional. I think we’re always on the lookout for things that happen accidentally that we never could have thought of ourselves. JE: They’re cool moments that keep you interested, but aren’t distractions, that will fit in. You know—ear candy. BD: For a long time, I saw mistakes like that and would say “That wasn’t what I was meaning to do. Forget that.” But the more we’ve gone along, the more we really are looking for those things. JE: And a lot of times... BD: …inviting them. JE: Those become part of the song, or you miss them once you start weeding that stuff out, especially recording on tape, when you hear it every time you start the song. I miss how all those different mistakes fit together into a really cool intro. The tonality of Transference made me reach for headphones—it feels like a record you play in the morning, or by yourself. Was this intentional? BD: I don’t know. Was it purposeful? Was I discussing that at any point? Rob Pope (bassist): Not out loud, no, but I could see that happening. JE: For example, on “Trouble,” which may be one you were referring to. The performance that we captured on that four-track—it was very difficult to beat as a rhythm section. BD: We had no idea we were recording for the record. We were just recording our progress as we worked. JE: So it wasn’t about fidelity. It was about how the take felt to us. And it felt great, and we actually tried re-recording that song. Did we try to beat it? BD: Yeah, with Jon Brion. JE: So, we tried. We couldn’t beat it, and it was, like, let’s embrace that. BD: Then, I came up with the idea, why don’t we just record on top of that cassette? And everybody was like, huh? JE: Just about everybody. [Longtime Spoon producer] Mike [McCarthy] was. I loved it. BD: But…I know I wasn’t absolutely sure at that time. There was one part of the song that had the wrong note in it. Eric Harvey (keyboardist): Yeah, that was me. JE: Well, me too. We were playing together. BD: We had to fix that, which was kind of amazing. “Got Nuffin” rocks more than almost anything Spoon have done, yet it’s a red herring—it doesn’t capture the album’s tone. How did that song originate—and why tease the record so early? BD: We had been wanting to do a single, and later decide if it was going to be on the record or not, if it fit. Because singles are fun! I think we tried “Who Makes Your Money” and we tried another. We never really loved how they were working, so when we finally got one that felt, like, “this is cool.” That was going to be the song. JE: And it was the only thing that was done! So did we plan to throw people off? No. Radio and retail have lost some influence lately, as have the major labels. The combination of indie labels like Merge and the ability to sell digitally and license to TV and video games seems to have shifted the power back to the artist. Has this helped you earn a living at music? BD: It’s never been easier for us, but that’s just because nobody ever gave a shit before. JE: And we know a lot of young bands that can’t make a living doing music now, so I think it is just where we are as a band. RP: I know very few musicians that are actually making money. JE: With the licensing, that is a big deal. They are embracing independent artists. That’s great, but it is still really difficult to get a record deal to get someone to put your record out, so we have a lot of friends that have had a hard time with that. BD: Jim has worked on a lot of records. JE: I’ve worked on a lot of records that have never come out. Spec jobs—I ‘spect not to be paid. Over the past few years, your early backing has helped bands like White Rabbits and Black Joe Lewis. Do you feel an obligation to help or mentor newer acts when you admire their work? BD: I don’t feel an obligation. I just feel like it is fun if you really like their music, and it’s cool to work with them. And I found being involved on the production end of a record, where I hadn’t written the songs and it wasn’t me being the vocalist—it was a totally different experience and you can really step back. All those mind games kind of slip away—at least, most of them do. So for me, it’s just for fun. Does your current status playing larger venues make it a challenge to play quieter material like “Goodnight Laura”? JE: That’s one we haven’t played live. That would give me a chance to pee. BD: I don't think the size of the venue matters much. It’s just a matter of if you can pull it off. We haven't tried working that one up, but I'd like to. We're going to try to get every song going and playable… EH: Even on the last record, it took a long time. At some point, we could play every song from the record, but it took a while. BD: That always surprises people that aren’t in bands. “What do you mean? You played it on the record.” Well, it’s a totally different process, buddy. People throw words like “meticulous” and “consistent” around about Spoon records — you don’t often hear anything like silly or spontaneous. Does that side of the band exist? EA: Well, this album’s got fewer inside jokes on it. I think, on the new one, there are some vocals on there that I didn’t think would end up on the final version. You hear a demo and Britt does some weird little thing that sounds funny. It makes me laugh and I think, “That’ll probably get turned into something more serious.” RP: I’m just happy the Bon Scott moment made it. JE: What’s the Bon Scott moment? BD: You mean in “Who Makes Your Money?” [Singing] Ow, oh! RP: Which was just a scratch vocal, but all of us were just cracking up. BD: Well, we can be really meticulous. I think it’s possible to be meticulous and also have spontaneous elements of the recording. We weave in as many mistakes as we can, ‘cause they’re charming. But are we aware that they’re there, and did we turn them up in the mix? Yes. This record also has longer songs than usual—Spoon definitely isn’t afraid of a two-minute song. And there’s stuff pushing five minutes here and longer passages where it’s just music. Is that in keeping with the “demo” feel? BD: It has less to do with demos—what I wanted to do were songs that mostly just stayed in one chord, and to let the power of the song come through in the repetitiveness or the intensity. You don’t get that from “The Underdog.” It’s a good song, because it’s well-constructed, has tons of chords and has melody. But there’s a lot of great music out there that is more powerful just simply from the repetition. And I wanted to try to do that for once. I was amused to watch the Spoon videos with [Japanese dancing robot] Keepon on YouTube. Was it fun to do a sequel? My two-year-old loves it. BD: That’s cool… but I don’t think that little robot is very rock and roll! [Laughter] The good thing about the second video was that we got to go to Japan for free and eat a lot of incredibly expensive food! But we didn’t have anything to do with that one, the dancing thing. JE: Nor did we receive any free robots. BD: Well, that’s a $25,000 robot. It is actually cool—it helps autistic children come out of their shells. And that’s really the video I want to see—the documentary on that. Click here to buy March/April 2010 issue.

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