Studio time - what gear and how to prepare?

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Sunday update: Well, there’s nothing like cramming for something to just get some sheer hours of practice time, and some sore ass fingers on both fretting and plucking hands! I basically just told the guitarist, who wrote the songs: just write out the root notes in tab form (alt. tuning throws knowing note names out the window) that you’re using on each song. Bought a music stand and notepad.

These songs are complex! Theory wise, he’s going from aeolian mode to phrygian or others (thus changing the key?) sometimes, mid-song, but I could care less right now, I just need to know what fret to play and when. And there are weird intros/outros, riffs, transitions, embellishments, in addition to verses and choruses. But, hitting the root notes, and hashing out the rhythm is becoming second nature, just from all the trial and error, from B2B, to forum exercises we did together, to learning covers, to jamming, to the first band experience. For anyone new to playing bass - it does get easier over time, stuff you thought was impossible eventually becomes routine.

Only learned 4 songs today. And only 2 of those pretty well. Was just worn out after that, and my brain and fingers just couldn’t do any more. We may only get to record 4, or at most 6 songs, but they’re cool with that. Much thanks for the support again, Crew Bassbuzz, will keep you posted, and let you know any good stories :slight_smile:

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I think my brain would hurt the most. Memorizing 4-6 songs quickly is no walk in the park. Sounds like an awesome opportunity though. Just enjoy it!

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Better than waiting for the next episode in some cool detective series… :grin:

Haha, this key business really got to you… And…probably no, he is staying within one key and using different modes. But, really, this:

:+1:

Crew Bassbuzz is rooting for your, @Vik!!!

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Can’t stress this enough!!

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This!

And definitely, This!

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Truly feeling like the promised Badass in the Beginner to Badass course now, after doing a studio recording session yesterday - but I want to make this post for someone who has never recorded in a music studio before, and knows very little about it (like me, 2 days ago :upside_down_face:). I will try to relate some useful tips:

  1. We ended up going to a real studio, instead of just someone doing it out of their home. The cost was a little more ($260 for 4 hours, we went over a little, so, about $100 for each of the 3 of us). But the equipment, rooms, feel, and engineer just felt professional. We toured the studio the day before to make sure it was legit.
  2. Practiced a ton the few days before, but not too much, as I could feel the wear on my hands, and wanted to be sharp the day of. Also, ate a hearty meal before, and glad I did, as you’re in there awhile, and you expend a lot of energy just focusing, and playing over and over.
  3. Here’s what happens: You go in, and the drummer goes into an isolated room. A lot of time is spent just with him getting set up, and just right with the sound engineer. The guitarist also got an isolated room, but he just put his amp in it, and they put a mic in front of it. Then he came into the main room, with me, (I just sat behind the sound engineer, who is at the mixing board), so he could give me direction too, as needed, while we played. (They’re his songs). My bass was not mic’ed, it was DI (direct input) into the mixing board. I just used my Zoom pedal preset to #40 Ampeg Set, because I like that one. So just me in a stool, with my music stand in front of me, my bass to the Zoom pedal to the studio’s gear. Easy enough. Setting up took over an hour though.
  4. Once we started playing the first song, a bunch of adjustments needed to be made. The engineer can give a “click” (meaning a metronome type of click) to any of us, and the drummer wanted one. We went back and forth between 88 to 90 to 92 to 95 bpm on that song to get the tempo right, before agreeing to the best one, and, to keeping that tempo, as we were speeding up and slowing down slightly and inadvertantly. Then we played through the song, and we all made requests to the sound engineer to fine tune things. I just needed to hear my bass more through the monitors (speakers in the room where we can hear ourselves, and each other) so that it felt more like my own amp, and our jam sessions.
  5. We did multiple “takes” of each song. The engineer tracks each person’s instrument. Then, later, he can splice parts, for example: if you nail the chorus in a song perfectly on one take, but screw up the verse, they can use the verse you played in another take. We didn’t get this far with the bass parts, but the engineer did do a little editing along the way. But the easiest is just to get your part as right as possible by say, the 5th take. After that, I would just get sick of playing that song over and over. We took lots of little breaks too.
  6. In the end, they give you the files. You can then go another time for “mixing”, where they line up the sounds, clean them up a bit, and streamline them, (for example, compressing the bass sound, etc.), but that’s another session with the engineer. Further down the road, all your tracks are “mastered”, and made radio quality. We’re not there yet - for now, the guys want to get a vocalist to put in a vocal track on top of our tracks.
  7. It’s a ton of fun - No pressure on me, in a way, worst case, if I really screwed it up, they can just not use my bass track and get another bassist. But they liked mine, so we’re good :grin: :sweat_smile: So I just coasted along, asked questions along the way, learned a lot, felt like a rock star, lol!

I have to say, I like the idea of getting some songs recorded professionally, early on, if you’re in a band. The sound comes out way better than just on your phone or something. Plus, each person will bust ass, really learn their part, and sync on the whole song, since it’s on your dime. And even these rough recordings are pretty presentable, if you’re in a band. I would have liked more time to practice, but, you can always go back to the studio and “overdub” a better bassline later, if you change it, or practice it and get better at it. I ended up recording 4 songs with them, and they did 2 more without bass, because I knew I just wasn’t ready on those. It all takes some time and money, but, on a more serious project, is probably worth it. Just a good experience too, to learn how music is really made :slight_smile:

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So here are some of the songs! Feedback is appreciated! (Trust me, I am so aware of when I’m rushing or dragging now, grrrrr, why can’t a take just be perfect?!)

This one has a spot where it’s mostly just bass starting at around 2:10, this is where the chugging lesson from B2B came in handy!

Edit: Sorry, I had to delete these! Don’t want to ruffle feathers! This is rock n roll though, take the good with the bad!

Some pics, lol:

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IMG_0401480×640 108 KB

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Killer! those sound great! Will probably be more awesome after mix.

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Damn! This is great stuff @Vik! Congratulations, man.

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Thanks so much for sharing, @Vik! What a cool experience! And I am impressed how much you guys got out of 4-5 hours in the studio.

We are slated to record in early May now. We have two times 8 hours and when talking to the engineer last week, he said “realistically, that should allow you to record two songs, perhaps three, if you are well prepared!”. We had been hoping for four songs and perhaps even one more… we’ll see how that goes :smile:(At least, I don’t have to press-learn a couple of songs within a week or so like you did!!)

Awesome job, @Vik - I hope they bring out the bass some more in the final mix! (Have only listened through my laptop speakers so far…)

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Excellent post . . . :+1:

Hey, @Vik :slight_smile:

Not everyone will ever get to have that kind of experience, so thank you very much for your thorough and detailed description of what goes on behind the door!

Wishing you continued success, Joe

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Great Job @Vik! You are!

So glad you did this. I was a bit concerned when you decided to do this when the original bass plater was a “no show” and the studio cost you mentioned seemed to be a bit on the shady side…

So glad and so happy for you!

Keep on Thumpin’!

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Thanks All!! No matter what musicians I hang out with, the best is always to come back to the bass playing community :slight_smile:

Yes, I’m curious to see what happens in each phase of this - I’ll post the tracks again if we decide to mix, just so we can see what the difference really is.

Can’t wait to hear about it, as well as the preparations you make for it in the meantime! I have a feeling yours will be much more refined. This experience was just really thrown together last minute, and on a budget, so, for that, I’m glad it worked out. But, I think your way is the “right” way to do it :grin:

I do too! I’ll push for that - after all, for this type of dark metal music, you need a loud rumbling bass!

Trust me, I am grateful beyond belief to have an experience like that just sort of fall into my hands!!

I was wary too, but the drummer is a friend of mine from a long time ago. I probably could have had the other guys pay for the whole studio time, as they were happy someone willingly stepped in last minute, but decided to chip in, to keep it cool, and also have a say in it going forward, if I really pursue this. The drummer believes this music to be commercially viable, and he’s looking to get serious with it all, but who knows, could just be pipe dream! Keep on Thumpin’ :wink:

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sounds a bit like Karma To Burn. if you don’t know this band it’s probably worth a listening :grin: the riffs are killer (in the instrumental stoner style) but the bass lines are saddly not interesting at all, it’s 99% of the time the same thing that what the guitar plays. anyway the riffs are really worth a listening. I suggest “20” and “62” for a start (the songs have numbers as titles).

anyway that’s a great experience you had and you did pretty well with your lines ! well done dude ! :v::sunglasses:

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Just listened to them, yes, they are similar, will have to look into this genre some more, “stoner rock”, maybe from your posts in the Share Good Music thread. Haha, yes, similarly the bassline for our songs pretty much just follows the roots of what the guitar plays, but that’s fine with me, that’s good enough for me for now!

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You ready for some drama? Ok, here’s the latest chapter: (I somehow think that no matter what musicians you get involved with, there’s always going to be drama. Or maybe I just attract it, I don’t know!!)

The drummer calls me up this afternoon, he says he and the guitarist have been listening to the songs, they’re not going to use 2 of them (the 2 that the bassline was best on), but they want to use the other 2 we did (even though on one of those, I had just learned the song the day before, and wasn’t even close to nailing it). Ok, but whatever, sounds okay. I mention that I put the songs up on SoundCloud, to get some feedback. A little bit of a “you did what?” reaction, but I didn’t think anything of it. We were both a little pissed at the recording studio - they had promised us all the “stem” files (individual tracks for each person’s instrument) for our recordings, now they’re being weird about it, trying to charge us for them - plus the engineer told us we were “cool going a little over”, and took his time with things, then charged us up to the last minute at the very end. But okay, still in the realm of “normal” music stuff.

Then the guitarist calls me this evening - he doesn’t want his songs anywhere, until they are all fully completed, vocals, masters, the works, and copyrighted. (I have my own thoughts on the business of music, but held off) And if I thought other musicians I’ve met were opinionated, well, let’s just say that these guys get the gold medal for that. Because the drummer is an old friend, I’ll handle it with care, but, buh-bye - takes the fun right out of everything. I’ve always been up front with anyone I’ve played with - I’m pretty new, and I’m just here to learn and to have fun. Pretty simple. I can understand people being passionate about what they do, or wanting to realize a lifelong dream - but I have to say, I don’t need that, as it leads to people behaving, well, strangely.

Luckily, I can laugh about it, take the position of an observer again here. And, still, a real win of a situation, and didn’t invest too much time in it. I feel like though, after these experiences, if I’m going to be a part of a project, it needs to be my project, or I at least need to have a leadership position in it. I may not be a great musician, but I’m a pretty good organizer, and a get from point A to point B type of person. And I’m beginning to realize that that’s probably the more needed skill out there anyway, from the amount of self-sabotage that I see with otherwise talented people.

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I can’t get enough of these reports. How do you not laugh in these situations?

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works everytime when there are several human being concerned, not sure it’s only a musician’s thing :sweat_smile:

here it’s an organization issue : they should have tell you about that before the tracks ever existed !

that’s not cool at all. I don’t see why they would charge you if you already payed for the recording and the time at the studio

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Oh, man, you are really taking in the WHOLE experience… And, being friends with one of them doesn’t necessarily make this situation easier to deal with.

It seems, though, that they have some kind of ambition with where they want to go with their music; and, perhaps, that ambition is a bit too high, and they are losing touch with reality!?!

In any case, seems also that they didn’t treat you very nicely. They were happy that you could join them (and work your ass off to learn those songs), but they treat you like a “hired gun”, who wasn’t even hired properly, but gets to pay some of the fees, and then has no say in anything! Not cool!

Which brings up an interesting point: so, OK, the guitar player “composed” the song, but if you contribute with an original bass line, are you then a co-composer? How much do you have to contribute before you are??

So, before you know it, these guys hit it big and you can sue them for the royalties to come your way :joy:

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IMHO, that’s their “artistic” side coming out and dominating everything else :roll_eyes:

The “drama” in your reports can really take the FUN out of it all, @Vik . . . glad that you made it back into the band scene, but sorry that it gets ruined by interpersonal entanglements.

Hope you don’t get too discouraged . . . :neutral_face:

Cheers, Joe

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