Tendon Levey

From the Tendon Levey website:

”My first and only electric guitar—a (Fender) Squier Stagemaster HSS (V1) in metallic black—was received as a Christmas present from my uncle when I was but ten years old. In 2007 I covered the guitar in glow-in-the-dark planet stickers in order to help with locating it since I was most often living (and recording) in complete darkness.”>

From the Tendon Levey website:

“I received my first multitrack recorder, a red Fostex MR-8, as a birthday gift in 2004 after years of recording via a handheld tape recorder. The buttons ended up breaking in 2007 from heavy use and I immediately replaced the device with the newer Fostex MR-8 MKII on my eighteenth birthday (with which I would record the entirety of the Tendon Levey discography). Over time, the Play, Stop and Record buttons ended up breaking once again from heavy use and I had to rely on a screwdriver to hit the triggers for several months in 2010. Once the triggers were sufficiently worn down and damaged from being repeatedly stabbed by a screwdriver I replaced the MKII with an identical model in October 2010. Although I stopped recording music in 2011, I’ve continued to use the MKII for mixing over the years (particularly in the case of unreleased track compilations) and, as of 2020, it is still in perfect working order.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I regularly alternated between two acoustic guitars for the Tendon Levey project, although the Ibanez AEL20E was always considered my primary instrument. It was purchased in the summer of 2006 with the money that I received from one of my first and only live performances (albeit with my band of the time). The pick-ups broke after about a year due to my habit of sitting atop the curve of the guitar when playing (often while spinning in a circle) and I was left in the end with with a regular acoustic which I recorded by balancing a microphone upon my knee during performances.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I purchased a Yamaha RBX170 from Lynchburg Music in 2003 at the age of fourteen. It was one of the only instruments that I ever purchased myself since I was young and unemployed and forced to rely on holidays when it came to receiving instruments or anything at all. I don’t think that I changed the strings even a single time during the life of the Tendon Levey project (2007-2011). A couple of the tunings pegs also broke off in 2008 or 2009 and tuning the bass became some obnoxious ordeal requiring pliers. For the sake of convenience I began tuning the guitar to match the bass instead of fighting to keep the bass in tune.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” I received the SQ-180 around 2003 as a hand-me-down from my grandfather who had held onto it for a decade or more without actually knowing how to play it. While not used nearly as much as the Ibanez AEL20E within the Tendon Levey discography, I kept it strung with old strings and turned to it whenever I desired a harsher, more abrasive sound.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” For my fourteenth birthday (2003) I received a Zoom Rhythmtrak 234 drum machine and I ended up sticking with it until the very end. After five or six years the buttons began to stick and malfunction, leading to a lot of foibles in my later recordings (since I insisted on playing them live during recordings, as opposed to setting aside the time to actually program patterns).”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” I received a Shure SM58 microphone for Christmas 2005, before which I was using some cheap and unknown model that I found laying around in the basement with the rest of my father’s old equipment. Nearly all recordings of mine (2006-2011) were made using the SM58. It took my abuse quite well, including being filled with firefly carcasses for several months between 2009 and 2010. I used the microphone so frequently in those years that I regularly had grille marks pressed into my palms (since I held it by grille during recordings so as to alter equalization with my hand).”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” I purchased an Alesis Micron in 2005 with the money that I had made from my painting job. I liked it alright, although I often wished that I would have picked up the microKORG instead, which was similarly popular and similarly priced at the time. I used the Micron mostly for my pre-Tendon Levey projects, since the main knob broke off in early 2007 while being driven around to and from band practice and that made it pretty difficult to change or customize the patches thereafter. I had to use a pair of pliers to get it to work, and even then I could only manage the organ sound as heard on Ear to the Oven and the keyboard sound (and vocoder) heard on The Gredients. In the summer of 2008 I accidentally hooked it up to the wrong adapter and it fried the synth.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”Over the 2008 holiday season I picked up a Rogue RM-100A mandolin, a doumbek, a pungi flute, a glockenspiel and some mizmars (the latter of which I never ended up playing) in an effort to diversify my sound. The mandolin featured frequently within the music of early 2009 (beginning with Pallo With Thee) although its usage waned in the years that followed.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” In the month of February 2009, while rummaging through my basement, I came across my father’s old Ensoniq ESQ-1. I was totally unaware of its existence and I couldn’t understand why there had been no attempts to dig it out previously. With my previous synthesizer having died back in 2008, this ended up being a big deal to me. I was totally in love with this keyboard. It seemed endlessly customizable and I could get all sorts of weird sounds of it. I played it until it gave out on me five months later during the recording of Evil Guest List. I was devastated and spent the autumnal months attempting to make up for the lack of a keyboard with new guitar techniques and effects meant to mimic a keyboard.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”After months of mourning the loss of my ESQ-1 I was desperate for a keyboard and in the month of November 2009 I spotted an ad posted for a cheap Casio WK-1630 at the college down the street. They were only charging about $100-$150 so I decided to go for it. The sound quality was rather poor compared to what I was used to, though I really didn’t care about any of that at the time. I was just thrilled to have a keyboard again and I found ways of making it work with my music. I continued to use it regularly until I acquired my Korg MicroSampler a year later, at which point I switched to using VST instruments.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I had wanted a proper sampler for years and years. My hope was that I could eventually ditch my instruments altogether and rely on samples of my voice to provide the instrumentals. This seemed especially useful now that I was struggling with my voice and fearing that my days as a vocalist were counting down. Having no money of my own at the time, I had to wait until Christmas to receive it. I was so eager to add it to my music that it even ends up referenced in the lyrics of certain songs from that period. Sadly, I suffered a major vocal injury only two weeks before the holidays and wasn’t able to put the sampler to proper use until March of the following year. Even then, it didn’t take center stage until The Stomachic Chariot (and, to a lesser—but still notable—extent, Countertorch) and this would be the final time that it was used before I suffered my career-ending vocal injury just weeks thereafter and was forced to step back from music indefinitely. Apart from its sampling abilities, I used it as a MIDI controller to play VST instruments from my PC which were used for the final four albums of the Tendon Levey project (and the corresponding compilations).”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”Though I rarely ever used any sort of amplifier during the Tendon Levey years, relying almost entirely on headphones for recording and mixing, I used my father’s old Crate B-150 bass head whenever I played live or during general play (especially 1999-2007).”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I received a Crybaby Wah during the 2009 holiday season. It didn’t get a whole lot of use outside of the ‘winternecine’ but it does make some notable appearances in the albums of the period.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I purchased a DigiTech Vocal 300 pedal in early 2006 during the life of my ‘discocore’ project since I was using a lot of distortion on my voice (although the Zoom 505II was previously used to distort my vocals in the Gravedancers demos). When it came to the Tendon Levey project I ended up using it more as a multi-effects pedal for my guitar and as a way to equalize my vocals and it remained my primary pedal between 2006 and 2011.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” I used a Fostex MR-8 8-track recorder (original red model) from 2004 to 2007 until it broke and I replaced it with the Fostex MR-8 MKII (black). As with other MR-8 models, its buttons were its weak point (plastic buttons on a sprue) and it was easier for me to buy a new device altogether than to seek out and install replacement parts. This 8-track recorder was used for nearly all of the music appearing on the Baby’s First Bible and Mythologem compilations.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”My first guitar pedal was a Zoom 505II multi-effects pedal. It was already broken by the time that I began the Tendon Levey project in 2007 but it appeared in nearly all recordings between 2002-2006 where it was used for vocals as well as guitar.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”Purchased in November 2008, the (Angel) glockenspiel appears sporadically within the Tendon Levey discography beginning with Flesh Start.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”My uncle gifted me a Meinl HCAJ1NT Cajon for my twenty-first birthday (2010). It was rarely used in recordings since it didn’t record as well as my doumbek and five gallon water jug, although it can be heard sporadically throughout my 2010 releases.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I purchased a Boss Metal Zone pedal early on, and though it remained with me through the Tendon Levey years and provided most of the distortion heard on my recordings, I most frequently stuck with clean tones on my electric guitar and only brought it out for the occasional lead.”