Band gave me a chance to start the songwriting process

[51m0n]

So me and me band have been having a bit of a difference of opinion musically.

Mainly the drummer and guitarist start all the songs off, drummer comes up with lyrics often and then they come up with most of the rest between them, I get called in to create a b-line after the fact.

Trouble is they are 50 odd miles away from me location-wise and have a tendency to always rock out, bless em. Much talk is made of a desire to get more groovey, even funky, and yet left to their own devices it always ends up being a rockfest. Nothing desperately wrong with that, but thats not really where my strengths lie (cos I get a bit bored, and tend to think more syncopated as a rule).

Anyway the last couple of songs they rejected my proposed b-lines repeatedly until I went a bit mental. You know the sort of thing, 'This isnt my bag, and I'm fed up with not playing anything I like :('.

Seems I threw a bit of a gauntlet down, since the reply was, here's some lyrics, lets see what you can come up with.......

So I locked myself away with my Roscoe 5 (first real chance to record something I want with it) and came up with something. The nice thing is that the bass sounds pretty lush to me, and thats with very little post processing, just some tasty compression (other than that accident with the envelope filter in the chorus). The scary bit is this is 11 tracks of bass, but thats cos I want to be a horn section too

Drums are MyDrumKit vsti, f you're interested.

So here it is, what do you lot think???

[51m0n]

Wow - not a lot then!

Edited April 17, 2009 by 51m0n

[Eight]

[quote name='51m0n' post='465030' date='Apr 17 2009, 02:08 PM']So here it is, what do you lot think???[/quote]
Tis cool.

But I'd put a £1 on your guitarist hating it.

[josh3184]

oh the guitarist will hate it. I think its pretty damn good though!

[josh3184]

whats your EQ at btw? Been trying to get that pop tone for flipping ages...

[jmstone]

Yep. It's really nice (but you already knew that!)

James

[The Funk]

Did you write this with them in mind and leave enough room for them to play a role?

I like it and it sounds good but I don't see where they're supposed to fit in.

[51m0n]

Cheers chaps, thought that some of you guys might like this, my "worm is turning", track

Well I think the guitarist will feel this is like passing a gallstone. Similar to how I've felt with the last couple of tracks they came up with! He's well up for the challenge though, keeps asking me what he should play, so far I've said what he does to me - listen to such and such, let that inspire you. I pointed him to the Craig Charles funk show, told him to a listen to a couple of shows from start to finish, he'll be able to pick out something he likes and do his take on it. I know he can play funky when he's in the mood - he just doesn't unless we're jamming.

Yes I do reckon theres room for him, I intended the overdubs in the chorus to be replaced, just leaving the deep bass, for instance, they are supposed to suggest ideas of where I'd like the guitar and keys to go. Trouble is I cant help but really like what they sound like

I'm not averse to dropping out some of the fills too if he comes up with something tasty to put in there. This is very much the starter for ten, as such there is way too much bass on there, but until we run it through live its going to be tricky working out how much of it I wont be playing. I'm not changing that middle 8 though, it sounds pretty easy, but its pretty tricky to nail (took an evening to write it and then get that take!) and I really enjoy playing it (plus I love trying to do melodic slap stuff because its pretty unusual, my all time favourite slap line is probably Forget-me-knots).

My drummer is going through a huge Steve Gadd phase at the moment, although not in the songs they've been writing, so this will definitely give him a chance to give it some, again he really cant wait!

The different tones are all achieved with the onboard preamp. Absolutely no eq anywhere in post tracking mixing, no compression or other fx whilst tracking, as raw as I can get it. So we have:-

1) Verse: 100% neck pup, all eq flat, plenty of compression after the fact on mixdown though!
2) Chorus deep fingerstyle: 100% neck, eq flat, plucking over bridge pup (dont get carried away or you lose some bottom end and smoothness)
3) Chorus slapping (fakeclav): 100% bridge pup, -100% bottom on eq (rolled off so as not to crowd the deep bass)
4) Chorus env filter: 100% bridge pup (I think), bass rolled off about 50%, env filter is a classic env filter vst (which is free)
5) Stabs, various overdubs at different pitches, some bridge pup, some neck pup, some fingerstyle some slapped - I got well into it - sorry!
6) Middle 8: Slapped, 5% favouring the bridge pup, just enough to bet that slight nasal quality, eq flat.

All the bass tracks are grouped and going through a fairly mildly set broadcast compressor to help squish them into one nice overall sound.

Mainly though its the sound of a Roscoe Century 5 with stock d'Addarrio strings (pretty much killed them in the time it took to get this down unfortunately).

Its a sweet sounding bass though, which is why I ended up put so much of it down, really enjoyed finding all the tonal variations on this!

Thanks for commenting chaps!