Back from tracking bass
Posted February 5, 2006
Yo. I am back from my first session of tracking bass. I was only able to record for 4 days because our producer Travis Wyrick had to leave town on Friday for the weekend. Nevertheless I got 13 songs and an instrumental tracked in those 4 days. Only three songs and another instrumental left to go. Rob is going to start doing some vocals this upcoming week while I hang at home. I am going to spend this week really listening to all the bass tracks I recorded and making notes of things that might bug me. Then I go back Feb 12th to finish up and redo anything. For those of you who play bass- I used my Geddy Lee 4-string tuned to drop C on all the new songs. Travis recorded me using several different signals that could be blended together such as from a Sansamp, Avalon pre-amp, direct, and through a guitar cabinet. We spent a lot of time tweaking tones for each song. In the past I used a pick to record over 90% of our songs. This time I used a pick 50% of the time and my fingers the other 50%. The stuff turned out killer. There are some really cool bass lines on this new album for those of you who appreciated Simply and Echelon. One of my favorites so far is tentatively called "Wake Me Up". Until Rob had lyrics the working title was "Samurai". The bass line reminded me of the movie Hero and The Last Samurai. Besides the killer bass line I've heard Rob's chorus on this one and its amazing. It will be one of the hits for sure. Another song with a cool bass line is tentatively called "Angels in Disguise". I am mainly playing bass chords throughout the whole song while Noah plays a lead guitar melody. Again Rob's vocals on this one are amazing. The lyrical content of this song are very thought provoking. On other songs I added bass fills that line up perfectly with each of Lester's drum fills, which there are many. When I go back on February 12th I am going to make sure all the bass fills are turned up in the mix so you can hear them. We should have news on a massive spring tour we will be apart of very soon. Also, there might be a chance for you all to get your hands on some new music before the new album comes out. But I cannot tell you now. Gotta wait for the news. We are still in the planning stages. -Kalel
