About TortoiseClimbing™

Duets with Terry

My friend Terry played a pivotal role in the evolution of TortoiseClimbing™ and its subsequent subsidiaries, by in 1990 asking David to record duets with him at Bias Recording Studio.

How We Met

Terry and David met when David began singing with the small ensemble Sentimental Journey. Its focus was on multi-part harmony songs from the 1940's. Their name came from the song "Sentimental Journey," which was very popular from that period.

The group started as an impromptu gathering of folks who liked to sing. Their 1^st "performace" was a get together to sing 1940's music for themselves from the rooftop of a Federal building within sight of the Washington, DC mall on a 4^th of July. That group evolved into the small singing group Sentimental Journey. (Terry and David joined after the group's initial July 4^th "performance.")

Initial Recordings with Terry

In approximately 1990, while both of us were singing with Sentimental Journey, David was thinking about recording as a way to create something more lasting than performances. Turned out Terry had already begun recording at Bias Recording Studio and asked David to join him to record some duets.

So in 1990, Terry and David began making private recordings of duets at Bias Recording Studio in Springfield, VA: a very fulfilling experience. That began the process of honing skills for making quality recordings.

(For your listening pleasure, included below are several streamable examples of duet and trio recordings made at that time, but since upgraded using additional skills learned to make quality recordings.)

Terry had worked mostly with the Bias partner, Mr. Bob Dawson, with whom we recorded the first duet, "I Am the Starlight." However, shortly after our 1^st recording with Bob, much of his availability became preempted by extended recording sessions for Mary Chapin Carpenter albums. She had become very popular, and her then producer, John Jennings, was based at Bias.

(Mary Chapin would later switch to a Nashville, TN based producer, and move her record production there.)

So, we switched to using the other partner involved in creation of Bias, namely Bill McElroy, for the rest of our recordings.

Samples

The examples below are numbers Terry selected from his wide interest in different musical styles. Three different styles of music are included:

• The emotional, motivational, pinnacle number from the Rock Broadway musical, Starlight Express;
• Two iconic "Country Rock" Everly Brothers love songs; and
• The ballad hit from movie, The Rose.

I Am the Starlight

In about 1990, in order to capture more of the production feeling of the Rock Broadway musical number "I Am the Starlight", Terry worked with his producer and audio engineer Bob Dawson at Bias. They recorded multiple accompaniment tracks using piano, synthesizer keyboard, drum machine and bass guitar. With Bob Dawson as engineer, we added our duet vocals. (While this song has somewhat of a Broadway style feel, it is referred to as a rock musical.)

This magnificant motivational song focuses on capabilities we have within us that we can tap to achieve surprising things. In the musical Starlight Express, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Richard Stilgoe, this powerful duet is sung as a dramatic dream sequence between the young steam engine, Rusty, and the mythical Starlight Express. While Rusty has big dreams of winning the championship railroad race, other engines and railroad cars think Rusty is not up to the task. In the musical, this dream sequence takes place in Act II after Rusty has been discouraged by all the other engines and rail cars. In this motivational pinnacle number, Starlight Express comes to Rusty's mind and exhorts Rusty to use the power from somewhere deep inside, which makes anything possible.

Everly Brothers

After recording the dramatic inspirational rock broadway duet "I Am the Starlight", we recorded 2 simpler productions of songs about young love that were made famous by the Everly brothers. These songs are somewhat iconic romantic expressions in a "Country Rock" style.

The first is: "All I Have to Do Is Dream"

The second is: "Till I Kissed Ya"

"The Rose"

This song is in a ballad style. Because Terry and David were still singing with Sentimental Journey, we were asked another member from Sentimental Journey, Karen Davis, to join us in recording a multipart arrangement of the song "The Rose".

Our original version was recorded and rough mixed using the 3 parts from the sheet music. Years later, after converting the master tapes to digital, and performing the post production tuning, during remixing and remastering David listened to the original recording by Bette Midler, and substantially re-imagined what he wanted in the re-mix, guided by:

• The style used in the hit single. He revised the remixed version to similarly start and end as a solo, as it does in the Bette Middler single;
• David edited Terry's picking guitar track to bring out more of the picking, and largely minimized most of the strumming guitar tracks in many parts of the song; and
• Used the bass guitar sparingly.

Credits: Terry played all the guitar tracks on his guitars. The synthesizer keyboardist is unknown. (Note. Use of guitar departs from the original recording by Bette Midler, which prominently featured piano. Karen Davis provided both the alto and descant parts, while David and Terry sang melody.)

This is a simpler accompaniment production than for "I Am the Starlight" but more of a production than for the Everly brothers duets. As with all these songs, we had great fun creating this very different style of recording.

Listen to the fun we had.

Impact on Creation of TortoiseClimbing™

Making these recordings provided hands-on experiences working in a professional recording studio. This is distinguished from David's observational experience years earlier with editing of Fague Springmann at the Edgewood studio in DC. These experiences recording with Terry and others, gave David the confidence to undertake recording the solo album, Solo Collection, privately released in 1993 on cassette tape. Recording and preparing that 1^st private album, provided even more learning experiences in creation of recordings and their release. So, the journey began.

TortoiseClimbing™ was created as part of releasing the private Solo Collection album in 1993. See Beginnings of TortoiseClimbing™.

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