Album: Fluke

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Released in November 2018, my seventh album explores the combination of flute (primarily the 6-hole Native American style but also 6-hole whistles) and ukulele. Flute and uke. FLUKE! Most of the 15 tunes play in the sea of down-ish tempo smooth jazz, but there are some surprises along the way. Pull out of harbor and have a nice cruise with the sounds of FLUKE. -Jim

Total Playing Time 78:21

Liner Notes/Technical Details

Smooth Floot
Marajo
Cetacean Serenade (Fluke Intro)
Fluke
Thermal Soaring
Five or Six Things Behind
Gnossienne 1
Gnossienne 2
Frangible
Maiden Glide
Ab’s Lament
Know Mercy
Sea Flat
Edge of the Storm
Summer Morning

Smooth Floot

Liner Notes:

Perhaps the most “straight ahead smooth jazz” piece in the collection.
Sometimes you need a little vanilla too.

Technical Details:

This piece uses my very first “real” Native American syle flute, a G4 quilted maple by David O’ Neal (Rising Moon Flutes) as well as a chirpy Bb4 cedar by Mark Bickett (Bedford Avenue Flutes). The baritone uke is by David Ingalls (Ono Ukuleles).

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Marajo

Liner Notes:

I don’t know if this Latin-inspired tune fits a particular genre, but it feels at least vaguely Brazilian to me, so I took the name from the island located between the Amazon river and the Atlantic Ocean.

Technical Details:

This song introduces the most used flute on the album, a D4 cedar by Mark Bickett (Bedford Avenue Flutes) that appears on a total of 6 tracks. The “uke” is actually the Cordoba C1M 1/4-size guitar. Tuned in Terz (“G to G” – a minor third higher than standard guitar tuning, or a whole step down from standard guitalele tuning), it is basically a baritone-scale guilele.

Also appearing for a solo is a Bb4 whistle by Mack Hoover made of phenolic resin. This very narrow bore whistle has a quiet, almost “reedy” tone that is quite pleasing and easy on the ears, though it does take some care not to over blow. It also has a cross-fingered “F#” (relative) in the upper octave which is not common among my whistles (in fact, might be unique to this whistle) but was very useful for this song.

Recording for the guilele used an interesting technique with the iRig Acoustic soundhole microphone. Designed for input into iOS devices, I connected it to my iPad into the Multitrack DAW app where input and output levels were set. It was not recorded on the iPad however. I took the 1/8″ line out from the iRig Acoustic and routed to my PC audio interface into Propellerhead Reason. Reason is just so much easier to record multiple takes and comp a full performance than anything I have found on the iPad.

The rest of the realization was a fairly typical “Band in a Box to Reason” session, as is much of the album.

Cetacean Serenade (Fluke Intro)

Liner Notes:

Your vocabulary word for today is “cetacean”. (Go ahead, look it up. I didn’t know it either. 🙂 ) OK, now that you’ve been edumacated, press Play. Close your eyes. Listen to the whales call to each other beneath the waves. They sure do talk slow. Maybe they’re like Ents of the deep. Whalemoot?

Technical Details:

The “uke” is again the Cordoba C1m guilele, again recorded with the iRig Acoustic soundhole microphone, but this time recording was done “free form” direct into Cubasis on the iPad as a single take, no comping required. The track was effected with Brusfri and Waves:AudioTrack to clean up, Discord4 to mess up, and delay/rotary speaker to swirl up.

The flute is the lowest pitched flute in my collection at this time (of course), a G3 Surian cedar by Terry Green (Dragonfly Flutes), the first G3 Terry had made.

The “bass drone” part is also derived from this flute, achieved by recording a sample into the Tardigrain granular synth and processing it into a synth patch that was then played using the on-screen keyboard in Cubasis.

Fluke

Liner Notes:

If the Intro is for whales in a melancholy mood, this continuation is for dolphins in a more playful mood, though the whales have some fun in the middle too.

Technical Details:

This song was completed fairly late in the project. I had the album title for some time but did not have a title track to go with it. With this one being a favorite all around, I figured why not let it be the focus.

Musically, this is the same basic chord structure as the Intro track but in a more structured and up-tempo setting.

This is the most complex song on the album in terms of instrumentation. In total there are 4 flutes and 3 “ukes” represented. The lead flute is a low F whistle from Polish maker Marek Bzowski made of “wild pear from the Carpathian mountains”. The solos are by the G4 O’Neal and G3 Green previously mentioned. Another low F whistle by Geoffrey Ellis also snuck in just before the final head.

All the “ukes” on this track are 19-inch baritone scale instruments, but other than that, they couldn’t be more different from each other. The lead “uke” is once again a baritone guilele but this time, the C1M has been upgraded to a custom from Jonathan Dale (Jupiter Ukuleles). Arriving late in the project, the Jupiter still snuck onto 3 tracks, and I expect to be seeing a lot more of this guy in the future. Backing up the Jupiter is a long-neck tenor from Pete Mai (Bonanza Ukuleles) in low cFAD tuning. Finally, the electric lead in the middle is courtesy the custom Konablaster steel string from Bruce Herron (Blue Star Guitars). The tone of this was surprisingly not that complicated. The direct signal was recorded then passes through the Softube amp sim, a Pulveriser for a little more dirt, a delay from the Echo unit, and an EQ to roll off some low end. That’s it.

The bass track took a bit of a wandering path. I wasn’t happy with the MIDI track from Band in a Box (too busy), so I tried to replace it with the Gold Tone ME-bass, but I wasn’t happy with my muting technique while recording (too noisy). Finally, I tried the iFretless Bass app on the iPad and got a result I was satisfied with. It was played using the app’s interface with the audio captured and comped in Reason just like a “real” instrument.

Thermal Soaring

Liner Notes:

Just a couple of birds gliding high above the cares of the world below. All the problems look so small from up here.

Technical Details:

Of the tracks that made the album, this was completed first. It features both of the Mark Bickett flutes previously mentioned, the D4 lead and the Bb4 harmony above it. The ukulele is the the first “super concert” from lead luthier Silvio Conto (Cocobolo Ukuleles). It is doubled, with one track mostly picked (panned more left) and the other mostly strummed (panned more right).

Five or Six Things Behind

Liner Notes:

The title is a combination of the meters used and the source inspiration song, Nick Drake’s “Things Behind the Sun”.

Picture a traveller. Is the traveller trailing behind where he feels he should be by now? Or is he sad of the things left behind in his journey? Or is there some other secret meaning? You decide, dear listener, you decide.

Technical Details:

Musically, the chord progression is related to the source material but with enough changes to make it less a cover and more an “inspired by”. Noodling round with the chords, I couldn’t decide if I liked the patterns better in 5/4 time or 6/4 time, and ultimately decided not to make that choice (and yes, I realize that was still a choice, Mr. Peart). The track goes back and forth between stretches of 5/4 and 6/4 and sometimes a measure of one is stuck into a stretch of the other for apparently no good reason. I laid down the “uke” (really the Jupiter guilele) first and built everything else around the structure defined by that track.

The Gold Tone ME-bass abandoned for Fluke finally makes an appearance. It’s pretty much all root notes and all thumbed notes so was much easier to tame here than the other track.

There are a total of 4 flutes in this one. The lead is a Bb4 ashwood whistle by Russian maker Pavel Mirra (Harmony Flutes) with another solo from the G4 O’Neal NAF. The G3 Green and D4 Bickett also make another appearance, this time in the form of a (mostly) root/five pad in lieu of a keyboard instrument.

Percussion is from shaker loops recorded and edited by me and a cajon track played in DrumJam. By the way, there are no MIDI instruments or sequenced parts in this song, the only one on this album that can make that claim.

As I was mixing this track, there was a certain “je ne sais quoi” quality but not in a good way. It was missing “something”, too “clean” almost? I struck on the idea of adding some kind of atmospheric element. On a whim about midnight one evening, I stuck a Blue USB microphone on the porch recording into Cubasis on the iPad, went back inside for a few minutes, and let it capture whatever was out there. It’s a combination of close-by nighttime insects and somewhat distant traffic. filtered it a bit (mostly notably with a wide notch out around 1kHz) in Cubasis then laid it under everything else in the Reason session. It’s at a very low level and also significantly ducked by the flute leads so as not to interfere, but it’s what was missing. Musically, it kind of glues the track together. Also it adds to the story of the traveller.

I couldn’t decide where to put this track in the album order. I settled on #6. Maybe it should have been #5. 😉

Gnossienne 1

Liner Notes:

This piece was written by Erik Satie around 1890 as a solo piano piece. Here it is arranged for Native American flute, ukulele, percussion, and introducing the “NAFeridoo”.

Technical Details:

The flute is a C#4 cedar by Pat Haran used two ways, the normal melody and the decidely-not-normal didgeridoo-like bass drone. This was achieved with a combination of octave shifting, distortion and delays. The uke is a long-neck concert (i.e. tenor scale) pineapple by Perry and Terry Bullinger (Covered Bridge Ukuleles) that I call my “cuatro” as it was designed to be tuned in this “low reentrant” tuning. By the way, this is the uke featured on the CD packaging.

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Gnossienne 2

Liner Notes:

Another solo piano piece by Erik Satie. He did 7 of these, and I considered doing more. But some of them I don’t particularly like and others seemed more idiomatic to the piano, so I just stopped with the pair.

Technical Details:

The song features the Ono baritone again as well as 3 flutes, each making their first appearance on the album. The lead is an F4 oak by Jadon Smith (Nipomo Flutes). The middle solo is an A4 cedar by Jimmy Davis (JD Flutes) supported underneath by a C4 oak from Ukrainian maker Konstantin Mitokaru.

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Frangible

Liner Notes:

This is another “inspired by” track with the chords loosely (or maybe not so loosely) drawn from the source track. Can you guess the source? I’ll give you a hint. Look up Frangible in the thesaurus. 🙂

Technical Details:

This song is the final appearance of the Cordoba C1m baritone guilele. The flute work is courtesy an Eb4 cedar diatonic by Miguel Medina (Singing Tree Flutes); essentially a low Eb whistle though the sound production mechanism is a NAF design. The middle solo is a C5 oak NAF from Terry Green; this is the highest starting pitch instrument on the album (though some of the whistles probably played higher).

The realization process on this one was a little unusual. Recording of the flutes and guilele was done in Reason with the tracks being comped and cleaned up – as usual. But then the cleaned up tracks were tranferred over to Cubasis on the iPad for the mix.

In Cubasis, I added sequenced tracks for bass (iFretless Bass), organ (Galileo II), marimba(ish)(Mersenne), synth pad(Micrologue), and drums(Ruismaker), all with custom programming. The AudioReverb and EOS2 plugins were used for “atmosphere”. One interesting technique on the bass track is that I used Regroove in Reason to tweak the MIDI notes before transferring to Cubasis – made it a little less “mechanical” by moving slightly “behind” the beat and adding some timing and velocity randomness.

Maiden Glide

Liner Notes:

How do you combine 19th century melody with 20th century harmony and 21st century technology? Like this. The melody is directly drawn from “Gliding Dance of the Maidens” from the Polovtsian Dances by Alexander Borodin, harmony is inspired by such tunes as Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock, and of course I’m using modern recording and mixing technology.

Technical Details:

The flute track is once again provided by the Mark Bicket D4. The uke is once again Cocobolo Ukuleles Super Concert #001.

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Ab’s Lament

Liner Notes:

They buried Abner in Hebron, and the king wept aloud at Abner’s tomb. All the people wept also. (2 Samuel 3:32)

The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you-O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33)

Technical Details:

This marks the final appearance on the album of the Ono baritone uke and Nipomo F4 flute though it was among the first recorded.

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Know Mercy

Liner Notes:

This is an “inspired by inspired by” tune, being inspired by Glenn Cashman’s “No Mercy” which was inspired by Joe Zawinul’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”.

I did a straight cover of “No Mercy” first and had intended to include it on the album also, but simply ran out of space on the CD.

Technical Details:

This marks the final appearance on the album of the O’Neal G4 flute that mostly takes the lead here. The harmony part is the D4 Bickett, and it gets a solo chorus in the middle too. The primary uke is again the “low reentrant” Covered Bridge “cuatro” with a standard “high reentrant” tenor providing support in just a few places. This was provided by the Imua iET chambered body koa.

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Sea Flat

Liner Notes:

Calm waters, light breeze, seabirds flying overhead. Does it get any more peaceful? Aw, who am I kidding? I’d probably still get sea sick. 🙂

Technical Details:

The flute here is a “C4” redwood by Brad Young (4 Wind Flutes). I call this my “C flat” flute as it has the sweetest voice played with a lower breath pressure that yields a lower pitch reference, roughly 431-432Hz instead of 440Hz. The uke is the Konablaster in a more contemplative mood than the title track.

More technical details are available in the production log.

An accompanying video is available on YouTube.

Edge of the Storm

Liner Notes:

This is the most recent composition on the album, composed this past summer in the wake of Hurricane Florence. In central North Carolina, we were fortunate to have missed the worst effects of the storm as it tore through more southerly parts of the state (and other states). This song was born out of that spirit of personal thankfulness but also heavy heartedness for those in the direct path.

Technical Details:

I had posted a quick demo of this to YouTube, but reworked it for this studio take. The uke is the Jupiter guilele with a total of three tracks, a main finger picked part, a supporting “arpeggiated strum” part, and the harmonics at the end. The first flute is once again the D4 Bickett, making its final appearance on the album. This gives way about a third of the way through to my newest flute acquisition, an A3 side blown alder from Pat Haran.

For the bass track, I replaced the Gold Tone ME used in the demo with my newest bass acquisition, a Kala S.U.B. U-Bass with the Pahoehoe Dreads strings. For the “atmosphere”, I added some synthetic wind and rain effects from my Reason refill collection, massaged a good bit to keep them as “not to interfere” bits.

The demo video is available on YouTube.

Summer Morning

Liner Notes:

What could be more relaxing than an early summer morning on the porch with a coffee and a biscuit watching the butterflies and hummingbirds hover around the new blooms? Nothing, that’s what, unless maybe also listening to this tune at the same time. 🙂

Technical Details:

At almost 9 minutes, this is by far the longest song of the album, and it also had the longest incubation period. This was started *last* summer (2017), but I was never quite happy with the flute work, or much of the other instrumentation for that matter, so I set it aside and never got back to it. Finished with the other tracks, I picked it back up and decided it was salvageable after all.

The sequenced bass was one I was really not happy with, so I replaced it with an “organic” track from the Kala S.U.B. Much happier. This is another instrument I expect to get significant use from in the future.

The uke is once again the Covered Bridge “cuatro”; the previously recorded tracks were just fine.

The flute was the C5 oak by Terry Green. I ended up keeping the first and last but completely replaced the middle section with the G3 cedar, also by Terry Green. One interested technique here was a way to boost the lowest notes. The low G3 fundamental on this flute is very quiet compared even to the next hole up and especially the upper end notes. I needed a level boost for those notes. But this is audio. You can’t just raise the MIDI velocity to get more volume. Or can you? What I did was to convert the audio to MIDI, extract out the low notes and use the time markers from those notes to automate an input gain knob. So the MIDI notes are not directly “triggering” the level boost but you could say they are indirectly triggering the level boost. A little tedious but effective.

Credits

A special thank you to the following individuals for allowing me to use their work:

CD Artwork

Native American Flutes

Whistles

Ukuleles/Guileles