The Petra Zone

Just recently sat through it and its an interesting piece of memorabilia. Although it sounds it was for a kids project, the camera being used looked pretty big.

The most interesting thing to me was a 10 minute segment in the studio. John E, John L and Mark were laying down background vocals. They were literally only recording one or 2 words at a time. They weren't getting the sound they wanted (harmonies off I guess), so they took it in very small pieces.

I would not make a good musician/engineer/producer. It requires patience I do not have. It may also explain why I prefer live recordings, the "imperfections" may seem more real to me. Who knows?

But if you don't have it, stop in Schlittshop and get it; it supports John and gives you a background glimpse.

That's nothing. People used to "punch in" individual notes in the analog days. Before digital, we used razor blades to cut tape and would copy and paste that way. JDB and John Slick used to do this with Petra back in the day. One time, JDB didn't like an arrangement, had all of the song cut up and arranged on the floor. Somebody walked in and the pieces of tape blew all over the place. Yep, this insanity happened....A LOT. Tom Sholtz assembled drum parts like this for the Boston records, because the drummer would not play what he wanted. Now, we can copy and paste to our hearts content. We set up what is called loop recording. The singer sings multiple versions. We can then go back and listen to all of the layers, picking and choosing every little thing, then we can tune it. It takes little skill anymore.

brent wrote:One time, JDB didn't like an arrangement, had all of the song cut up and arranged on the floor. Somebody walked in and the pieces of tape blew all over the place.

this is how Computer Brains came to be.

Dan wrote:this is how Computer Brains came to be.

+1

Dan wrote:

brent wrote:One time, JDB didn't like an arrangement, had all of the song cut up and arranged on the floor. Somebody walked in and the pieces of tape blew all over the place.

this is how Computer Brains came to be.

That is a good one. I haven't watched this video in awhile; I'll have to reacquaint myself with it.

cvs2kids wrote:...the camera being used looked pretty big..

Sounds like it was probably a state-of-the-art 1980s camcorder. I've seen clips of this recording, and it doesn't look like the videographer was using a professional camera. For one thing, the quality looks like craptastic VHS, and for another, professional kits back then were two pieces: the camera and the record deck with a big, fat umbilical cable connecting them.