I guess you should state what your goals are, as far as preserving songs, so that our readers understand that.
Yeah, that is my goal — to keep the old traditional songs alive, because to the current marketplace they are in danger of getting lost. It's the same problem that was happening in the '30s when the Lomaxes went out to do the field recordings. There is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt saying that there is a chance of these old folk songs getting lost 'cause of music hall songs. Of course music hall songs have been lost now, but the old folk songs are still around, so it was kind of ironic.
Do you find that many times you'll be looking at a song and there's numerous different versions? Do you just kind of go with gut feelings and pick a favorite?
Yeah I actually choose the verses that I like the best. So I'm modifying them a little bit too. I figure it's fair game.
It's already happened for many, many years before.
You can't do all the versions so you might as well pick the one you like the best.
I like the liner notes a lot on Treasures from the Folk Den.
Thanks. You know I did that project with a Dell tower computer? I've got it down to a laptop now — Toshiba. I'm using the same Cool Edit Pro, but they've got a Version 2 now that has 128 tracks of digital audio. It does some more tricks — it has MIDI and video editing capabilities too. Basically I use it for digital audio. I just use it like a big multitrack recording machine.
What were you using when you did the first Folk Den recordings?
I used a DAT machine for the very first one. And then to overdub it I would sing along with the DAT and dub it, at 44kHz, onto my PC - probably a 166mHz PC at the time. I have a lot of songs on the early part of the Folk Den that I cannot reproduce. There are actually no masters because it was all done on the fly.
Did you begin to do all the recording in the computer later on?
The original Folk Den stuff was all very simple. It was 11 kHz, 8 bit, and I did that for a reason: Because bandwidth was so slow back then. People had 300 to 1200 baud modems, they couldn't download anything bigger than like a megabyte — that was really a big file. So I tried to keep it under 300 kilobytes for the whole thing.
I noticed on the versions that I got on CD-R from MP3, that they were kind of grainy sounding, and I was wondering if that was just the quality of the MP3.
Well MP3s are grainy sounding. It's a ten to one compression. It's like jpeg compared to a tiff file or something. In all this belly aching that the record companies are doing about file sharing, they don't mention the fact that MP3s don't sound as good as CDs. They ought to make that clear to people, 'cause there's a big difference.
Oh, exactly.
And they burn these CDs at mp3.com from the MP3s. There are artifacts in them — you can hear a lot.
I was curious about that.
Plus they are very simple recordings. With not a very good microphone...
What kind of mic?
I think I was just using a Shure Brothers SM58, or something, when I first started, and now I'm using a Stedman [1100B] tube condenser mic that's much more high fidelity.
With some of the gear that you've gotten, like the Cool Edit and the Stedman, were you getting endorsements?
I actually got the Stedman and the Cool Edit for free. I contacted them. The Stedman actually fell into my lap. This other musician was borrowing it and he emailed me that it was a great mic, and asked me if I wanted to evaluate it, and I said, "Yes." So they sent it to me for evaluation and then I talked to the guy who owned the place and said that I loved it and he said, "You know what, keep it." [laughs] So it was great. He said, "I just want you to make a statement that you like it and put it on your web site." And I did. It's a wonderful mic, it sounds like an old Telefunken.
I've never used any of Stedman's tube mics, I've just used some of their dynamic mics — they're really good.
Well there's a big difference. The tube mic is much warmer — you can hear the glow come out of it. Mics are wonderful. It's like the kind of brush you use, or film you use in a camera.
At this point what do you use going into the PC?
Well, I was just going in through the soundcard. I had a Yamaha SW1000XG soundcard. It was capable of doing 96 kHz and 24 bit. I was just going in through the little 1/8" jack in the back, the little stereo jack. But now I've got a thing called the Edirol UA-1A — it's a USB interface. It's got some RCA input tracks on it. I was using a Mackie [mixer]. I still have that, I use that at home. For the road, when I go out I've got a really small, two channel [mixer]. It's got two XLR inputs, so I can record two condenser mics at the same time. It gives phantom power — it's a Behringer. I just got that recently and I haven't used that yet. I've used it around the house, but I haven't taken it on the road.
After traveling around and making the Treasures from The Folk Den record did you reevaluate what gear would work better?
Yeah. Actually I broke the flat screen on the way back. This was clunky, carrying a tower and a flat screen around, so I tried to get it down to a laptop, and I did. I was able to get a laptop with a CD burner built into it and enough storage. Actually, with the CD burner it's got infinite storage. I've got a twenty gigabyte drive on it, so it's plenty of room. To record in Cool Edit Pro, usually a session will take up a gigabyte or so. That's with maybe ten or fifteen tracks of digital audio.
Have you done more sessions since the Treasures... album came out? Going to visit people?
Um, not really for a new Treasures... — I haven't started that yet. I've just done the Folk Den stuff.
You're still posting some of those?
Every month. I haven't missed a month since 1995. You have to check my site instead of mp3.com. Check mcguinn.com and go to the Folk Den — there's a logo on the left hand corner. Over almost eighty songs right now.
Maybe you're more prolific now then you ever were.
Yeah, one a month, yeah it adds up, after a while.
