DLP Main Street Loops

[eyore]

Could well be. Many of the tracks now used in the Gibson Girl are medleys of the sort of stuff you would play if someone said "give us a tune". I suspect that they were originally the loop for Casey's though (designated as player-piano). I don't suppose you recall any of the tunes now do you?
Looks like areally good lead. Anything else you recall would be warmly welcomed as only partial loops now remain in these locations.

 

[gmeader]

...It would be great to learn more if you have any further notes.

.... I don't suppose you recall any of the tunes now do you?
Looks like areally good lead. Anything else you recall would be warmly welcomed as only partial loops now remain in these locations.

Unfortunately my notes (and a few bad pictures) consist mostly of technical things like mic's used, placement, board settings and outboard gear used. The thought was that if we had to go back and re-record anything we could re-create the sound. In this particular case the guy just sat down and played with no music. Had I known that there was going to be an interest in the tunes I would've kept better notes but at the time my job as a recording engineer was to get the music on tape while the content was handled by someone else.

 

[eyore]

Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it.
We seem to remember Casey's playing some obvious things like "take me out to the ballgame" on player piano but for the last few years (probably much longer) it's been playing the Gibson Girl/ Cable Car loop.
Unfortunately it probably means that half of the original loops have been dumped (as they did with the Explorer club when it became Col Hathi's and they added the Jungle Book music; the loop length remained about the same)

 

[eyore]

Yes, I can now confirm that the Gibson Girl loop is a guy at a piano (but there's a guy with a drum and cymbal as well) playing away) and that the Gibson Girl/Cable Car playlist in the blog is the original loop. I was totally wrong about the Casey's loop being amalgamated into it. A present recording still agrees with the 1992 version of the loop. I presume the software ID was bogus (unless that was the guy hired to play, of course - it must have been a professional player)
Now, that asks the question, did Casey's ever have it's own loop or did they decide not to bother? It certainly plays the Gibson Girl loop now and for at least the last two years according to the partial live recordings we have.
I seem to recall Take me Out to the Ballgame and Casey's the pride of them all playing in the early years but was that a live band in the arcade, a speaker inside the (now removed) player piano or some other nearby source.
The only area playing Take me out to the ballgame in a loop that I am aware of is the Athletic club at WDW and Casey's Corner at WDW (I've not been there, I hasten to add so it's not a crossed memory).
Any information on Casey's at DLRP would be welcomed of course.

 

[DavidG]

Interesting. I'll try to investigate…

 

[eyore]

SoundmanG, was the source recording made in mono or stereo do you remember? It obviously plays mono through the speaker but how was the original recorded?

 

[gmeader]

SoundmanG, was the source recording made in mono or stereo do you remember? It obviously plays mono through the speaker but how was the original recorded?

Looking at my photos confirms that the original recording was made in stereo. Actually we recorded it across six tracks (three stereo pairs) using different mics. Technically speaking we used two AKG 452's in an x-y pattern for the overhead recording, two AKG 414's (left and right) on the backside of the Piano and two Neumann U-87's (set to omni) for the room sound. The final track is a combination of all these mic's. These tracks were originally recorded to a Mitsubishi 1" 32 track digital multi-track machine This loop could conceivably be mixed in 5.1 surround and sound quite good. Most recorded BGM was originally recorded in stereo because it's easier to dumb it down to mono than it is to create fake stereo later on down the road.

 

[eyore]

Thank you for the information. It's fantastic to have first-hand information like this. I have heard a version made joint stereo with a slight offset and it sounds bright and very good. It's a shame you didn't note down the tunes. There are still a few we just don't know the names of. If they are as obscure as the Gibson Bathing Girl (which, as far as I an tell, never made it onto an album or record since they started making them out of vinyl although I did find the sheet music). I wonder who the guy was that played it. He's pretty darn good.
That still leaves Casey's of course and whether they ever did make a loop for it and, if so, when the changed it to the Gibson Girl loop. Oh why didn't I start on park loops earlier! I was just overawed by the whole experience for far too long

 

[gmeader]

I probably should've written things down but as the recording engineer my job was technical. My priority was to get the track recorded in the best possible way. The producer at the time was responsible for keeping track of the names of the tunes. However on this particular session there was nothing written down at all as the piano player was told to just play what ever came to mind. The guy just sat down and played whatever he felt like. I think his name was Lincoln however I'm not sure about that. Back then (1991) the licensing of the tunes was a little more lax than it is today. My feeling is that he's the only one who knew exactly what he played.

 

[eyore]

We have been able to ID quite a number of the tracks but there are a few that appear to be a medley of two or three which are proving difficult (the other unknowns are simply ones we don't know although there's a familiarity about some). He does do a lot of interpretation of some (like all good pianists) and sometimes the actual melody is hidden in the impro. You never know, some may have been his own tunes he slipped in there! :lol:
One never does think years ahead when at work of course or we would all have saved those things now fetching a fortune as antiques and saying "my gran had one of those"!.