BEHIND BAD CHATTANOOGAN: HOW WE MADE MAPLE WOOD INTO MUSIC
02 — MAKE IT INTO A 12-INCH DISC Each piece of maple is CNC-machined into a precise 12-inch disc. At this point, it looks like a record, but it doesn’t sound like one… yet. ↓
03 — TOAST IT. The maple discs receive a custom 24-hour toast, developing the flavors the whiskey will eventually pull from the wood. ↓
04 — TURN SOUND INTO GROOVES. Here’s where it gets wild. The song’s digital audio is converted into one continuous line, then wrapped around itself into a record-shaped spiral. That spiral becomes the digital engraving file. ↓
05 — LASER-ENGRAVE THE MUSIC. Enter Ben Rosenstein of Mountain View Engraving — the 81-year-old local was the only one willing (and persistent enough) to help us figure out how to actually make this thing work. Ben loaded the files into his laser engraver and spent roughly two hours per disc cutting each song into a single piece of toasted maple. Fifteen records for “Bad Chattanoogan.” Fifteen for “City I Love.” Thirty playable wooden records in all. ↓
06 — DROP THE RECORD INTO THE BARREL. After engraving, the records went directly into the whiskey barrels, where they spent 30 days finishing Bad Chattanoogan. The song didn’t just inspire the whiskey, it became part of it.
DID IT WORK THE FIRST TIME?
Absolutely not.
Our first few prototypes sounded awful. The problem wasn’t the wood, or the laser, or even the turntable….
We had mapped the audio onto the spiral in the wrong direction. So when we dropped the needle, the song played… backwards.
For a minute, we couldn’t figure out what we were hearing. Then it started sounding suspiciously like one of those old Beatles records everyone used to play backwards looking for hidden messages.
We reversed the programming, tried again, and there it was. Music coming out of maple.
30 WOODEN RECORDS.
2 HOURS OF ENGRAVING EACH.
24 HOURS OF TOAST.
30 DAYS IN THE BARREL.
One very Chattanooga way to finish a whiskey.
BAD CHATTANOOGAN
OCTOBER 23