I enjoyed watching and listening to this SO MUCH! Great song, and great mix of old video and video of you (the use of shadow in the older vid was cool).
Iām a Noob when it comes to recording and mixing, but I wanted MORE bass! Iām greedy like that. You should probably take the advice from @terb and @John_E more seriously than mine.
Yeah, so itās been occurring to me that even though there is the ārightā way to play a song (which really just means āaccurate according to the original recordingā), there isnāt any reason to put pressure on ourselves to play anything right down to the original note. Unless thatās what youāre going for. Itās a good way to learn technique (a la the 50 Song Challenge) but finding different ways of complimenting a song can help you flex your creative muscle, which is equally if not more important. Just my two cents.
I was having trouble visualizing this, @JerryP , and maybe you knew what he was talking about, but I found this video for anyone else interested (havenāt even watched the whole thing, just wanted to know what that looked like):
My engineer side of me likes to replicate as close as I can get it, but am finding finally that I want to try to break out of this for certain things. This is a hangup of mine, even on recorded music. Any little āoffā thing drives me nuts.
I bought a YES 3LP set becuase I thought it was a greatest hits, it was a live album. I had to get rid of it. I couldnāt stand it cause I wanted to hear what my brain told me I liked. Which is odd becuase I like a lot of other live/studio stuff but for YES for me it had to be studio. Same goes for Kate Bush āThe Directorās Cutā where she re-recorded a lot of her greatest tunes - nope nope nope nope, give me original Kate please.
All that said, I am noodling with Come As You Are in the 50 song challange and was just thinking to try something a bit different than the original tone. I am slow, but I will get there, haha.
I envy the more free thinking creative types that allow them to express things differently.
As someone with both Art and Accounting degrees, I will tell you a secret.
(leans forward, conspiratorially)
Creativity can be learned and developed. You may already know this.
(leans back)
Itās like anything else - repetition, and remembering to ask yourself, āIs this the only way of doing this? What way am I not seeing this done?ā
An example: I was participating in a writing challenge. We had to write a follow-up to a short story; the characters in the short story were a man, a woman, and a freeze-dried corpse. Everyone else wrote their stories from the point of view of either the man or woman. I wrote mine from the point of view ofā¦the corpse.
Ask yourself the two questions, and then go raise some eyebrows.
I have been told my entire career that I am a very creative engineer (oxymoron if you have worked with enough of them) and in that arena I think I am. It translates slowly to other areas, which is odd.
Cooking - I spent a great deal of time cooking my way through college and absorbing every book and show and spec of culinary skill I could as a hobby, and ultimately gravitated towards Alton Brown - who deconstructs the āperfect wayā to cook something from a science perspective - go figure. I enjoy following recipes but will mod them until I think they are even better. I have devised what I think is the absolute perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, by many iterative experiments. Most I share it with agree. Same goes for a number of things. But throw me a box of ingredient and tell me to go create - ugh, thatās not me.
This has alway held me back on sax, the most expressive instrument used in the most expressive way mainly through time. I can mimic, but not express. It has made it a hard journey but I do not give up. Period. Through bass I am starting to think of ways to use sas differently and get something different out of bass too, but this damn work thing really gets in the way of having the time. It will come, I just hope not when I am 84.
Thank you! I was visiting my parents and they got waaaay into it - they were a big help.
YES. IN MY MIND.
Dang it. I swear this is something Iāve been working on. Itās useful for muting, and I know I was raking across on the D string for that reason. But that repetitive G on the A? Probably guilty as charged.
Thank you for the feedback - really appreciated (special appreciation for commenting on the flowers)!
Yes and no. With engineering, often you need a very specific outcome, yes? With music, there are many many many outcomes. Sometimes there is a right one, sometimes thereās not. Itās MUCH harder to start and finish when you have a completely blank canvas and no boundaries or parameters. YOU have to decide what the outcome will be - and thatās hard, especially when working with no feedback.
Hereās a suggestion you didnāt ask for: when youāre in a mood (any mood - angry, ecstatic, frustrated - just not everyday-even-keeled) pick up your sax. Start with one note; play it hard, make it sound BAD, like really terrible. Add a few more notes. Give yourself permission to be truly awful, in a way no self-respecting musician would be.
Congratulations - you are no longing mimicking. Pick a phrase maybe you could work with out of all that awfulness and refine it. Make it yours.
Awesome! You know what my favorite thing about this video is? It is proof that you are doing something. Big points for that. Recording refinement will come later; just keep making proof-of-playing videos until it does.
Is that a Fender Deluxe Active Precision Bass in Surf Pearl? Dang it is beautiful.
Thank you! I thought the steels rounds were fine as well. A small note: in the video I was playing at the neck pickup, but for the actual recording (done after the video) I played at the bridge pickup to try and get closer to the sound of the guitar. There isnāt an actual bass in the original; Jack White is doing both in his playing.
Hahaha! The original video does show my face but, unfortunately, I have massive resting bass face. Need to work on that!
I recorded the video with my iPhone SE, used a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Studio to record the bass track directly into GarageBand, and then pulled it all together in iMovie. I used parts of the audio from the video file so you could hear the birds singing and the sounds of me plugging into and turning the amp on and off. Then turned that audio track all the way down for the actual song file from GarageBand.
Yeeeesssssss - the Ric! It sounds great, and seems very natural for you to be playing it. I like how abruptly the video ends, too - good aesthetic choice.
Sorry for taking so long to respond to this - Iāve been avoiding this thread because I kept not finishing my cover.
Thank you @kristine ! I appreciate all the kind words.
I canāt take the credit for shooting videos outside. @terb did it way before I did. I got the idea from him.
Sadly, Iāve returned from Hawaii so no luaus for a while. Iām off to Washington State (Whidbey Island NAS) on Monday morning, Traveler Bass in hand.
Ya itās really growing on me for sure.
This tune is part of thatās known as āThe Long Oneā which is a bunch of short bits of songs on the Second side of Abbey Road. The next step is to record Polythene Pam and redo She Came In Through The Bathroom Window with the Hofner and tie them all together like on the album. I like the three of them together better than the whole āLong Oneā but do think I might do the entire album one day.
Oh yes I am very familiar! About two lifetimes ago, I used to get together with a group of co-workers (drummer, a couple guitar players, harmonica player, anyone else willing to sing or grab a maraca or tambourine) and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window was regularly in the mix. Plus I just like the Beatles. My mom bought me Sgt. Pepper when I was 12.
I was at my momās friendās house. I must have been around 12 or 13 myself.
My momās friend had a daughter that I hung out with by default, constantly.
Good news is we got along great.
Better news was I remember she introduced me to two things musicallyā¦
The Cars
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour - the first Beatles thing I ever heard. I was hooked, demanded to go see Beatlemania (on Broadway, which was the bomb) and my lifelong love of all things Beatles.
On a side note, also spend most saturday nights there watching SNL, the very first cast years. Yet another love. Good years to grow up indeed.
