The Folk Festival, WDCB 90.9 FM

I don't listen to much radio anymore. At least not with a physical, traditional AM/FM receiver. There are radio programs I listen to online that I used to tune in on a radio. They are much easier to record this way and sound better. I don't have to worry about a cassette not being long enough to record a longer show.

One of the programs that I still enjoy listening to is "The Folk Festival" found on WDCB 90.9 FM public radio from the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn IL. The show is live on Tuesday evenings from 7pm to 9pm.

I've been listening to the show since the days George Brown used to host it. He passed away suddenly and then Lily Kuzma took over as host. The show is basically 2 hours of mostly Contemporary Folk/Americana music with occasional tinges of international folk and studio guests who give interviews and perform live versions of their songs.

I have not listened to the show for a while now due to the music selection being less interesting than in the past and the imbalance of talk vs. music when the guests come on. But I do have plenty of shows that I recorded over the years and will be providing links to those programs here on this blog.

I don't have much information on the shows other than the dates they were first broadcast. If you want to know the names of particular songs or artists you will probably find them mentioned at some point in the program.

Stayed tuned for links to the shows!

Open Sky

This is a new video/song I made for my YouTube channel. I originally just had the video up but I felt it needed some music. The video is a time-lapse presentation of a severe thunderstorm that was coming through the neighborhood on June 18, 2010. It was actually 14 minutes long in real time. Even though I enjoy watching it in real time I felt that most other people would not. Besides that, I like to keep my videos generally short because unless it's something absolutely mind-captivating or with plenty of visual effects, most people don't have the attention span to watch them.

As for the music of this video, I created a basic 2 track ambient sounding instrumental track, just about 2 minutes long (just about 1:20 was used for the video). I wanted something to match the eeriness, dramatic nature of the video. So I used my Yamaha S90 for a great sounding synth sound and a piano track. For the piano track I added plenty of reverb to create a very distant and lonely sound. The entire song was made in a matter of minutes. I just wanted something quick and ominous sounding. I titled it "Open Sky." I'm pretty interested in this type of ambient, atmospheric sounding music. It can be used in movies, commercials or just as chill music. I plan to make a full length album of this type of music.

No More Music Clubs

I first started buying music cassettes in the late 80s, going from jr. high to high school. I joined Columbia House which had a great introductory offer--something like 12 tapes for 1 cent--and further good deals after meeting the membership commitment of purchasing a few additional titles at regular club price. From the time I joined them I remained till the end and acquired quite a collection of tapes and later, cd's.

Sometime thereafter joining Columbia House, I joined BMG Music Service, at which point I had switched over to purchasing cd's. The move to buying cd's wasn't so much my own personal choice. I enjoyed working with tapes, though I was well aware of their shortcomings and delicateness. It was more of a forced move as cassettes were being phased out. Looking back on it all, I definitely prefer cd's and wish I had never even began to buy tapes. But at the time there was quite a difference in price and money was not as readily available to me. Thus, I still have a great number of cassettes even after parting with many through ebay and other individuals. I have converted nearly all of the ones I still have to .wav files and cd.

Anyway, as a result of my memberships in those 2 clubs, I have amassed a large collection of tapes, cd's and plenty of boxed sets as well. They offered unbeatable prices especially on those boxed sets.

Then in 2005, BMG acquired Columbia House and there was one less music club to be a member of. But BMG still offered plenty of great deals and I continued purchasing (and getting free) many albums from them. Until they shutdown sometime in 2009 and became YourMusic.com, which was an online only store. No more mailers. I rarely purchased from YourMusic.com. The deals were not bad but no longer as wonderful. And now at the end of this month it will be shutting down as well. I guess people are just not buying cd's anymore. They're going the route of downloading.

I know that I haven't been buying many cd's lately. But it's not because I am choosing to download instead. It's due to having bought so many while I was in those 2 clubs and from Amazon and CDUniverse as well that I haven't even been able to listen to all of them. I was just accumulating cd's for the sake of accumulating them. I'm now looking to downsize my music library a bit and perhaps keep only the titles that are meaningful to me.

As far as the cassettes go, well, it's hard for me to part with all of them even though I have transferred them all to cd. As I said, I have already sold a good number of them, but I'm still hanging on to a little less than 200 total. Some are not available on cd so I want to keep those. Maybe I'll take some pictures of them and upload them here.

WVVX 103.1FM

Back in the early to mid 1990's, there was still pretty good radio in Chicago anyway. I was always coming across new stations and new programs and was always prepared to record anything good I heard onto cassette tapes.

One of the stations I had come across was WVVX 103.1 FM, broadcasting out of the suburb of Highland Park. It must have been a rather low power station since it was difficult to tune to it and get a clear stereo signal. So most of the time the best way to listen was through a cleaner mono signal.

So on certain evenings I recall 2 dj's who played really obscure (or non-hit singles) rock from the 60's and 70's on this station. Bands such as the Syndicate of Sound, Blues Image and Robin Trower among many others were played. And it sounded like they were actually playing vinyl at that. They each took turns playing brief sets of songs, if I remember correctly. At the moment I don't recall their names, but as I come across the tapes I recorded of their shows, perhaps I will discover their names as well.

I'm not completely certain how many times a week they were on the air, but for some reason my memory is leaning towards 2 weeknights. After a while, their show just disappeared from the air and I never came across it again.

Another short-lived show I stumbled upon on WVVX was "Radio International", a German music program hosted mainly by Monique Skolmar. This show was usually on Saturday afternoons and/or Sundays and I recorded 2 complete 90 minute tapes worth over the course of the show's run. Even though I don't understand German the show was entertaining and the music was enjoyable. I did learn to count in German from 0 to 9 as a result of listening.

I recently uploaded both cassettes as .wav files on my computer and will eventually upload them to a file hosting website which I will link to here.

But I loved WVVX if only for those 2 programs. I don't recall hearing much of anything else on that station except for some heavy metal music. The station had an underground feel to it, and though the sound quality was not crystal clear, I didn't mind. It wasn't commercial and that made it worthwhile.

According to Wikipedia, WVVX was a brokered station that was sold in 1997 at which point its call letters was switched to WXXY.

All Things Music

This blog will be all about music. Commercial music, my own music, musical instruments, radio and anything else related. I will offer links to some cool music files I have come to accumulate over the course of my 22 years or so of collecting. Hopefully, you will find this website as interesting as I am excited about bringing it to life.

I've titled this site "16 Track Mind" since, as a musician who spends plenty of time recording in my home studio, I have come to believe that 16 tracks is an ideal amount of recording capability for the music I create. Of course more than 16 is wonderful but might result in a tendency of overproduction.

I will link this page to my YouTube page as well (af14eva) with the intention of helping to create more traffic and hits on both sites. And I will try to regularly blog here as much as possible.

So keep the music turned on and keep it alive.