Zappa Band Member Uses M-Audio Gear to Restore Old Recordings

The tenacious and talented Ike Willis is best known for lending his vocals and guitar skills to Frank Zappa’s band for almost 15 years. The only musician to survive the many incarnations of the exceptionally demanding group, Willis gained recognition and popularity during the 80s by bringing voice to Thing-Fish and Joe of Joe’s Garage. He still plays with members of the Mothers when scheduling permits.

His latest solo project, "Selected Works," draws from two earlier recordings, originally released on vinyl as "Dirty Pictures" and "Shoulda Gone (Before I Came)." In order to convert the time-worn analog masters to crisp digital recordings, engineers used the John Hardy M1 mic pre and M-Audio’s Delta 1010 series converter. After testing a variety of converters, the M-Audio 1010 was found to have the most accurate reproduction as its lack of sound personality best preserved the distinctive sonic flavor of the original recordings.

Once converted, the files were loaded into Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge 6.0 where the audio processing began. Sonic Foundry’s Noise Reduction was used to remove pops, clicks, and analog hiss while Waves compressors, stereo widening, Renaissance EQ and 10 band EQs were used along with the UltraMaximizer to restore full volume and output without distortion. Once editing was completed, the tracks were loaded into Vegas 3.0 for mastering. In many places, gaps as long as .5 seconds had to be restored through copying, re-EQing, and mix-placing on the timeline.

In the mastering stage, the Waves C1 compressor, UltraMaximizer and Timeworks Tube Emulative compressor provided overall compression. EQ was applied to match the cuts using the Sonic Foundry Track EQ, the Timeworks Vintage EQ, and the Waves Renaissance EQ. In some areas, the high end had to be restored as much as 24dB, which was successfully accomplished in Waves and Sonic Foundry's Noise Reduction tools.

In support of this newly released work, Ike Willis began touring the United States in October, and will continue doing so in 2003.