Lyle Ritz: No Frills
When jazz ukulele virtuoso Lyle Ritz stepped into the studio to record his first solo album, “How About Uke,” for Verve Records, President Eisenhower was in his second term, Steve Allen was hosting the Tonight show, and Russia had just shot Sputnik into space. It was also that auspicious time for audiophiles when the recording industry started releasing hi-fi stereo LPs. “They always cost a dollar more than mono,” says Ritz, now 77, from his home in Portland, Oregon.
Verve didn’t own a recording studio in 1957, so they leased one from Capitol Records for the production. “It was in that big round building on Vine Street in Los Angeles,” Ritz recalls. “How about Uke” had the distinction of being the first stereo recording ever engineered by Capitol, and in those fledgling days of hi-fi stereo, Ritz and his fellow musicians found the in-studio logistics to be clumsy at best. (See sidebar.)
“A Recording Studio in a Computer”
A far cry from the experience Ritz had self-producing “No Frills,” his 2006 solo album, using an iBook and GarageBand. Ritz learned about the Apple recording application from his friend Jim Beloff, president of Flea Market Music, a publisher of instructional materials for the ukulele. In early 2005, Beloff, a long-time Mac user, had bought an iMac bundled with iLife and was surprised to discover all that GarageBand could do.
“I’d been looking for a way to record at home and do quality work,” says Ritz. “Jim called me up one day and said, ‘I just got a new Mac. You won’t believe it, but there’s a program called GarageBand that’s a recording studio in a computer.’ He said, ‘It’s fantastic,’ and I thought, oh boy, if this is everything he says it is, it’s a dream come true.”
Ritz had stringent quality goals for his setup because he was used to working in the finest recording studios. In the early 1960s, he put aside his ukulele and became one of the most sought-after studio bass players in Los Angeles, contributing memorable deep grooves to more than 5,000 well-known jazz, rock, and pop music hits from the 1960s through the 1980s, including such songs as “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” “Good Vibrations,” and “I’ve Got You Babe.” In the 1970s, he scored and recorded soundtracks for two films, and recorded themes to a number of popular TV shows, including “The Rockford Files.”
Photo by Liz Beloff.
Hawaiian Icon
During his years as a studio sideman, Ritz wasn’t aware that he was gradually becoming a cult phenomenon in the South Pacific for his earlier, non-traditional jazz approach to the ukulele. A group of talented Hawaiian musicians had discovered “How About Uke” and were enthusiastically adopting Ritz’s melodic jazz stylings into their performances.
One day in the 1980s, he was shocked to receive a phone call from a Hawaiian named Roy Sakuma asking him if he could headline an upcoming Hawaiian music festival. Ritz dug his ukulele out of mothballs and soon began performing live in Hawaii as well as on the mainland, a passion he pursues to this day.
Ritz’s personal ukulele revival led to a friendship with Beloff, who began collaborating with him on a series of ukulele instructional materials in 2001. It was about this time, Ritz says, that he started thinking about setting up a home studio to do quality recordings. “Not that I had any design at that time to do a CD,” he says. “But just to do demos and just to play with it, to be able to make a nice sounding record.
“Trial and Rewind” Leads to GarageBand
Between 2001 and 2005, Ritz tried, tested, rewound, and rejected a wide variety of home recording methods, including digital and tape recorders and a synthesizer with a built-in recording function. “It didn’t really work well,” he says. “It didn’t have the quality and precision I was looking for. So right after Jim told me about GarageBand, I went down to the Apple Store and had them show it to me.”
So, at age 75, Ritz found himself carrying home an iBook. He got started refining his home recording chops, learning the ins and outs of GarageBand, and comparing it with the studio processes with which he was so familiar. “Gradually, I got to where I could do what I wanted it to,” says Ritz. “Jim was helping me with it a bit, and then the idea came for a CD I could do in my back room.”
In his Portland home recording studio, Ritz spent hundreds of hours producing “No Frills.” He’s currently working on a CD demo for a new ukulele song book for Flea Market Music.
Ritz decided to record a solo album featuring himself on ukulele and bass, taking a basic, no-frills approach after fans asked for a minimalist recording without a lot of other instruments. He found the pure, clean sound he wanted by plugging an acoustic-electric tenor ukulele into an M-Audio USB preamp, using GarageBand to record it as a real instrument track. “I recorded in one pass, and didn’t use any compression or EQ, other than a little bit of reverb,” he says.
Covering All the Basses
When it came time to record the bass track, Ritz chose a surprising route, considering his status as a world-renowned studio bass player: “I used the M-Audio Keystation 49e,” explains Ritz. “I had far more control using a software instrument track. I could control the sound, the timing, and the grooves.” When Ritz got the bass track where he wanted it, he duplicated it and assigned a second bass style to get a hybrid sound.
“The recording is half acoustic upright bass and half finger-style electric bass,” he says. “It gives it a nice round sound, but with enough of an attack, which I liked. A conductor and composer I used to work for in the studios sent me an email saying, ‘Oh man, that sounds good. But wait, now, is the bass for real? Did you play it or is it the computer?’ So it fooled him.”
A “No Frills” Release in 2006
Despite humble protestations about his ostensible lack of computer savvy, Ritz neatly wrapped up all twelve tracks within an efficient six months of first cracking open the iBook box. Beloff released Ritz’s “No Frills” in 2006 under his fledgling Flea Market Music label, with graphic artist Liz Beloff designing the CD cover and all related marketing materials on the Mac. And Verve brought the story full-circle by remastering and releasing the CD version of 1957’s “How About Uke.”
Ritz fans were excited to hear a brand new recording from the man they consider an icon. Beloff was delighted to play a role in the process and was impressed that Ritz was inspired enough at this stage of his career to embrace completely new technology with such enthusiasm and drive. “Here’s a man who’s spent more time in recording studios than anybody I know,” says Beloff. “He’s a perfectionist. He was really undaunted in learning the software, and he found a sound that he really liked. He really is amazing.”
Ritz, left, and Martin Sheen recording voiceovers at Ritz’s studio and bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills. Ritz scored two films for Sheen in the 1970s.
Ritz is thrilled with the result. “I’m so happy with it,” he says. “There are areas of the computer I haven’t even ventured into, but for what I do, it’s wonderful. It’s a dream come true to have the facility and the control over my destiny. I can actually make it happen — I can play notes and they’re going to record and they’re going to sound good.”