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Re-mastered by Douglas
Spotted Eagle at Native Restoration Studio
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 Ike Willis was Frank Zappa's lead singer and rhythm guitarist for nearly 15 years. Ike Willis recorded and toured with Frank Zappa and was one of the few sidemen to survive the many, many incarnations of Frank Zappa's exceptional bands. A truly amazing voice, coupled with a style of guitar playing that is reminiscent of that unimitatable Zappa melodic style, Ike has continued the Zappa sound legacy through his own music, as well as performances with ensembles performing Frank Zappa's music on three continents.The Ike Willis: Selected Works CD derives from Ike's very early works, released originally as two seperate recordings; the first, on vinyl as "Should'a Gone Before I Left" and the second, on CD as "Dirty Pictures". These selected works contained print through, noise, hiss, and other audio problems related to the medium on which they were recorded. Engineering errors marked many pops, scratches, and missing audio from tape flake. Other problems relating to age of media also played a role in restoring these recordings. The masters were converted from analog to digital using John Hardy M1 Mic pre's and the Midiman/MAudio Delta 1010® series converter due to it's non-digital sound, or complete lack of unwanted sound personality. Other converters have been tested, and found wanting for reasons of either being sterile and thin, or for having a 'sound personality' that was not desirable. The MAudio converter was found to have the most accurate reproduction on the output side as compared to what was going to the inputs. Once converted, the files were loaded into Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge™ 6.0, where the audio processing began. Predominantly used in the restoration process were Sonic Foundry’s Noise Reduction to remove pops, clicks, and analog hiss. WAVES compressors, stereo widening, Renaissance EQ and 10 band EQ’s were used, along with of course, the Ultramaximizer to restore full volume and output without distortion. Once all 15 tracks were edited to repair gaps and holes left in the tape as a result of flaked tape or print through, all tracks were then loaded into Vegas 3.0 for mastering. In many places, audio had to be carefully copied, re-EQ’d, and mix-placed on the timeline to restore areas that had gaps as long as .5 seconds due to lost analog information/tape flake. All monitoring took place via the Midiman/MAudio into a pair of Event Tria’s and Genelec 1029’s w/subs. In the mastering stage, overall compression was provided by the WAVES C1 compressor, the Timeworks Tube Emulative compressor, and the UltraMaximizer. EQ’s were applied to matchback each cut, using the Sonic Foundry Track EQ, the Timeworks Vintage EQ, and the WAVES Renaissance EQ. In some areas, again due to print through, high end had to be restored to the tune of as much as 24dB!! (try applying that much high end without adding hiss, thanks to WAVES and Sonic Foundry's Noise Reduction tools) Also used in the final master was the BBE 422 plugin, and the RedBook CD was burned directly from the Vegas timeline prior to delivery to the duplicating house for replication and print. Restoring older recordings is rarely perfect, but we're very proud of this work here. It had been nearly 20 years since I last communicated with Ike, having had the pleasure of him staying in my home during a tour. I'd always admired his personality and talent, and am excited about the opportunity to have worked with his music again. Ike Willis will be touring in the Western USA in June and Eastern USA in July before leaving for an all-Zappa German festival, Zappanale in late July. A national tour is scheduled for the Fall of 2002 in support of this newly released and exceptional work.
Photos provided by Steve Auerbach of Planet Agency. Permission to use for website is granted, and print permissions may be obtained with scannable print copies. |