|
CONSIDERABLE talent and fortitude have helped launch a Milwaukee musician's effort to crack the popular record field --- as a one man band.
Dave Kennedy is proficient on the piano, violin, trumpet, trombone, saxaphones, viola, bass, drums and organ and has a voice that encompasses all the male ranges. He is also a self-taught recording and electronic technician.
His skills have been parlayed into an intricate system of tape recording operations in which as many as 35 instrumental and vocal parts are blended by 32-year-old maestro Kennedy into a band whose output is virtually identical to the real thing.
Finished Tapes
His own composer, arranger, and vocalist (singing as many as four parts per song), Dave has a batch of finished tapes at his K Recording Studio, 4504 W. North Ave., whose quality will probably help in persuading some major record firm to wax his tunes.
Keeping the account books in the black until he scores a recording hit are music man Kennedy's commercial recordings for local and state radio and TV stations, special effects for industrial film shorts and recording work for local musicians.
Continued Below
|
|
Behind all this is quite a story.
After some preliminary schooling at Carroll College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dave put in six years at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, recieved his B.A. in composition and a diploma in violin.
In college, he put together a band in which he was the pianist.
Kennedy spent three years in the Army during World War II in which he was a radio operator in the European theater. Kennedy ended his service stint as staff arranger for the noted 32nd Division Band.
An Experiment
Then the muliple-recording gimmick which brought fame to guitarist Les Paul caught his fancy and he tried some similar music with two cheap recorders. The results were hardly noteworthy and an engineer friend advised him that equipment of much better quality would be needed to obtain the desired effects.
Dave invested about $4,000 in the best equipment available and spent the next year learning how to operate it.
Adept only on the piano and violin at that time, he also taught himself to play the rest of the instruments in the band during his first year of multiple recording experimentation.
Now Dave estimates that if the arrangements are already done, he can put together a 10-piece band rendition within an hour.
On the tape featuring 35 parts, Dave combined 18 different string parts, three trombones, three saxaphones, drums, piano, bass, vibes, flute, cornet, four voices of his own and a solo by a female singer.
Cuts Distortion
Multiple-recording operations of more than 8 to 10 parts usually produce tone distortion due to the regular methods of alternatly recording and blending, but Kennedy reports he has run accross a new system which eliminates much distortion even with the inclution of up to 35 parts.
On a novelty tape, he presented the combination of drums, bass and four pianos -- one tricked up to simulate a banjo -- that produced a snappy tune equal to many on juke-boxes today.
Trick pieces like this are considerably easier to put together than full scale band numbers, he indicated, and on the basis of current tastes in popular music, there should be a market for them.
Dave's household at 4430 W. Meinecke Av. includes his wife, a former singer with his college band, and three children.
|
|
