Having a whale of a time home recording!

[Philbiker]

My brother Andrew is doing a project for a term paper for school which is a progressive rock interpretation of the greek myth of Phaethon. The music is TERRIFFIC!!! I'm playing bass. He lives 75 miles away. He sent me the demos on CD, and has sent me gneeral MIDI files. I'm recording the bass tracks using Cakewalk Home Studio 9 and I'm going to mail CDs of my bundle files down to him.

I am having such a great time with this!!!!! My bass is recording into a simple Nvidia sound card, I'm going through an old dbx 166 rack mount compressor, then straight into the sound card. The songs are ridiculously complex, there's no way in a million years I could ever play them live, I'm taking the "Seargent Pepper" approach: the recording is my performance.

There are no vocals (though I know what they will sound like because I've got Andy's demos). The guitars are crappy GM guitars from GM, but Andy's going to have a shredding friend record real guitar parts, probably with a Pod or something. Andy's a very multitalented musician, a great songwriter, keyboardist, a fine bassist (I believe bass is the instrument on which he's most accomplished professionally), and a drummer. He's going to record his drums.

I will keep talkbass informed when the project is done, surely he'll make a CD.

[Bassman_Spike]

Sounds like a cool project...its cool that parts can be recorded and sent away and then all put together and stuff.

[Against Will]

A whale you say?

[DubDubs]

Originally Posted by Philbiker

My brother Andrew is doing a project for a term paper for school which is a progressive rock interpretation of the greek myth of Phaethon.

What an awesome project. That myth could make a kick ass song.

[DougP]

Sounds awesome! i am currently building out my DAW as funds allow, but i have found that i really like to record. maybe its a control thing.

i think we would like to hear the finished product of that project.

[Philbiker]

What an awesome project. That myth could make a kick ass song.

It is one! Especially as a 33 minute Genesis / Yes / Queensryche / Dream Theater epic. The overture alone changes time signature like 5 or 6 times. I'm trying to convince Andy to make the CD this song only with nothing else to crowd it up.

i think we would like to hear the finished product of that project.

I'll post a link here, I'm sure Andy will have some kind of web site selling CDs.

i am currently building out my DAW as funds allow

Unless you're making professional quality recordings, all you need is a good preamp (especially for vocals) and good outboard compressor. For recording bass only, I'm not even using a preamp, just plugging the passive bass directly into the compressor. My sound card is a toy not a pro card, and it works fine for this project. Cakewalk Home Studio is fantastic recording software, and inexpensive. I think they may have student prices.

It is so cool that we can collaborate like this through the mail and internet. I zipped up my bass parts for the first two "songs" last night and he'll download them and have them instantly. I'm glad I haven't sold my green Jazz bass yet because I used it last night for one of the songs, it was perfect. This is also reiterating my opinion that a passive Fender USA Jazz bass is one of the most perfect recording basses ever developed. Just plug it in and instant great sound. No fiddling required.