Christmas is coming, and my youngest son Will has spent this year going nuts with music. He's currently playing piano, cello, ukulele, guitar, and pretty much anything else he can get his hands on. His confidence extends beyond his abilities at the moment, but he takes such joy in it that it's only a matter of time before his abilities match his enthusiasm.
As I've done the past couple/few years, I'm planning to lay down some tracks to capture the current musical abilities and squeaky voices of my two sons. We'll share that with friends and family this time of year, it's a real joy for the grandparents. My main goal this year is to challenge Will to start adding some groove to his playing, while simultaneously documenting just how Will's and Riley's voices sound at this point in time. Riley's voice hasn't changed yet, but it's coming (he's almost 11). Riley is also still taking his mandatory piano lessons (Mama say 3 years, then he can quit if he likes), but I would describe his attitude as "waiting it out". LOL. I don't want to force it on him, so we're rolling with it. Will, though, is taking to it like a duck to water.
I've started laying the tracks for our annual family Christmas tune, and I want it to really swing for the first time. Our recordings in year's past have sounded like what you'd expect from kids who've been playing for just 1-2 years, it's been pretty straight laced and very "on the beat". This year, I've spent a fair amount of time programming the drums, trying to get them more lifelike that I usually manage. I also brought my Kurzweil PC-88-MX keyboard to work so the boys and I can actually play some keyboard parts here rather than simply programming them. I'm hoping some hopped up rhythm tracks will inspire some looser musical output from my boys. We'll see soon enough!
The tracks you're about to hear feature me playing the keys. I captured the MIDI output from my keyboard, and then I ran that through a "Rhodes" simulator. It's not too shabby; it's quite nice tonally, despite my meager keyboard skills.
Anyway, since I had this nice set of bed tracks handy, I decided to use them as the basis for recording these two latest Roscoe arrivals. In each case I recorded the bassline with the blend centered, and I recorded the melody track with nothing but bridge pickup. My signal chain was this:
Bass ->
A-Designs REDDI -> A-Designs P1 preamp -> M-Audio FastTrack Ultra 8R USB Interface
So without further ado, here's the fretless standard plus 5-string:
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Complete Mix)
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Rhthym Tracks)
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Bass Tracks - all FX & EQ removed)
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Melody Tracks - all FX & EQ removed)
And here's the LG-3000:
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Complete Mix)
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Rhthym Tracks)
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Bass Tracks - all FX & EQ removed)
"Over The River And Through The Woods" (Melody Tracks - all FX & EQ removed)
