Morris Hayes
Engineering Better Funk Grooves With BIASBy Randy Alberts
If asked, Morris Hayes would likely admit his healthy passion for archiving recorded audio is not far short of obsession. Every band has their all-hearing archivist who keeps every minute of air time on tapes and drives forever and, for some bands, that man is Mr. Hayes. Performing with Prince for ten years, Hayes still works closely with him on assorted projects. During the last two years since leaving NPG to play keyboards with Maceo Parker-who happened to play with James Brown and Parliament-Morris has continued to define groove-funk keyboard performance.
It all comes around. Hayes also brings an almost child-like fascination and reverence for audio to his blossoming new role as an engineer/producer for young R&B, funk, and soul artists on the rise. He shared a couple of classic road and studio stories with BIAS about life with Prince, Parker and others, but given his druthers, Morris-who may be as much a techno-geek as he is ultra-funky-might prefer tallking about waveforms and loops and imaginary "G6's" than the glamorous life any day.
"Peak definitely teaches me about being a better engineer," Hayes says. He's in his home studio preparing for some European shows with Maceo Parker once the latter returns from a Prince tour. "I didn't know why or how certain things happened in the studio before. Now, it's a wonderful thing finding out with Peak and SoundSoap. Both are so good that I've almost been able to eliminate EQ. When I get the kick to sound as I like it, I don't need EQ."
Keeping The Groove On For Miles
Hayes learned most of what he knows about the religion of the funk groove from his years with Prince. NPG never really rehearsed so much as they were taught about respecting the groove and sharing it with some of the best musicians in the world. Hayes says that all the best music geniuses tell us to play our parts and nothing more when it comes to the groove time in a song. Each part of the groove is important to the whole. Prince's endless talent attracts many great artists for jams, including Miles Davis.
"Miles and Prince were tight about everyone playing their exact vital role in the overall scheme of things," says Hayes. "It's all orchestration, you know. One of my favorite Miles Davis stories is about a groove he built up with his band at a rehearsal. The groove was really flowing tightly until a keyboard player thought he'd jump out there and play all sorts of stuff on top of Miles' groove. So he stops everything and says, as only he could in his unique voice, 'Uhhh, whadyadoin'? The keyboardist told him the groove sounded so good that he just had to get in there and get some of that, so Miles said, 'The reason why it sounded so good is because you weren't playing!'"
Hayes laughs and says the story pretty much explains where he's coming from, too. He calls the perfect groove "Shangri-La" and says that in funk and groove it's about what's not going on in the music that matters the most. Morris came up in the mid-70s playing in Arkansas churches where he used to haul a gigantic Fender Rhodes 88 around in a '69 Ford Fairlane-the biggest backseat he could find. During the late 1980s he played in some great bar bands along the famous 6th Street in Austin, Texas. As Morris puts it, groove or no groove, he can turn on the gas as an out-front keysman any time Maceo or Prince or the songs ask him to. He likes to keep it simple in the groove but when it comes to archiving audio, Hayes keeps every little bit around.
Moving The Library Over To Peak
"Man, I'm like the National Archives in here," Hayes laughs. "I'm a guy that keeps everything, and I mean everything. Prince is the same way. He records and videos and then listens back to and watches every groove from a rehearsal making notes until 2 in the morning, every morning. I have digitized massive amounts of recorded material from the years with Prince and various other productions, and I can recall in my mind almost every single bit of sound I've ever recorded. Now I just call it all right up in Peak. From version 1, Peak has always been my weapon of choice."
Hayes carried a laptop and headphones around during his travelling days with Prince and the NPG to learn about Peak. He was taking advantage of all the gaps between plane boardings, hotel lobbies, sound checks, and t.v. appearances and, glued to his 'puter everywhere they went, he must have looked like a kid on a science field trip. He tells of a time when all the band members except himself were fidgeting and pacing around the green room waiting to perform on a French television show. Hayes, trance-like, was enthusiastically lost in learning a new Peak feature when Prince poked his nose in to see what his keyboardist was up to.
"He says, 'Well now, what are you doin'?'," recalls Hayes with a spot-on Prince imitation. "I looked up at him and said, 'I'm cre-ating.' I told Prince that Peak is so tight that it was like I was checking out background sound forensics at a crime scene for CSI or something. It's become a whole other new tool for me now, yet I can still look at Peak like the big instrument it is, too. You hear people say, 'Let's fix it in the mix,' but I say, 'Let's fix it in Peak.'"
Beats, SoundSoap & Forensics
Hayes says he also now uses Peak to do all of his sound and instrument creation work, and that he also edits all of his Akai MPC4000 drum samples, effects, and reverbs with Peak as the default editor, as well. "I still create my groove on the MPC, but now I use the new USB bus from it to take the audio right into Peak. You can rip on this 1Ghz Titanium of mine with Peak but already I can't wait someday for one of those G6's."
Imagined computers and sonic forensics? Maybe Morris is onto something here. After all, he is transferring years worth of classic legacy tapes from his musical archives to under his audio microscope in Peak. He thought those tapes and videos were all lost forever to the hiss, crackle, pop, and rumble of time and now thinks he has SoundSoap and the new SoundSoap Pro to thank for how well the restorations are going. A recent NAMM show visit with the folks at BIAS apparently made all the difference to Mr. Hayes' new forensic tool of choice-FBI, beware.
"I've just gotten hip to SoundSoap Pro, and it has just been crazy," Hayes concludes. "I told them at the booth there was no way to fix a very old and badly-recorded dialog recording, like the one I played for them there at the booth. I just told 'em it would be impossible and that I would have bet money against them being able to do it. Sure enough, they did it, and this demo of mine had it all on one tape: Noise, 60-cycle hum, rumble, crack, pop, fizzle, everything. Some of the tape sounded like someone poured a Coke all over the heads! But SoundSoap Pro totally wiped it all out and cleaned it up. It was unbelievable. Those people at BIAS are geniuses for coming up with SoundSoap. Who would've thought of it?"