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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#21,727
lucas303 said:
Lodi NY?
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Nope, Lodi CA! Near Sacramento and Stockton. Actually not too bad now, lots of wineries, and I enjoyed my time there - only an hour and a half from the San Francisco Bay Area.

monsterthompson said:
And not the cool Lodi The Misfits are from.
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I had no idea! Though I knew there were multiple Lodi-s because I had a girlfriend who thought it was about somewhere else - maybe the NJ one...
 
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#21,735
steubig said:
he’s reliably good.

quibble: doesn’t need skill? i call bs.
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I do too… actually takes decent skills to do what Minsk does… to have tribal drumming, vocalist yelling, three walls of fuzz with two guitars and bass plus synth and make the mix really audible to the point you can notice the subtle chord changes / synth effects… madddddd skill. Especially locking it all in time when it’s really slow tempo and any mistiming would be very noticeable.
 
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#21,737
JES said:
Thanks everyone. Have a seat with your *virtual drink of choice* and I will tell you my tale of woe. The round is on me.
***
Once tracking was done, there were arrangement problems that made some things impossible to mix, so we get into cutting parts. The lead guitarist and keyboardist are both very technically skilled but tend to run all over the vocals and each other. Luckily, my wife doesn't mind sitting with me and making aesthetic decisions about who to turn off when, while I work on the technical part, plus she says to blame her when people complain about their parts being deleted. Heart emoji.
***
This has been a learning experience for me?
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One learning tidbit that is so helpful here is this. (bold above).

I'm pretty damn skilled at mixing if I do say so myself. I had the great benefit of having an internship in a pro studio as a young adult* and had lots of nice opportunities to hang out with pros here and there.

But
  1. massively altering sources that are not arranged in a complimentary way so you can have a decent mix and
  2. accentuating the awesomeness of an already cohesive live arrangement
..are very different animals.

And I've been wholly guilty of 1 myself sitting on the other side of the window. Layers of drop tuned guitars and bass and kick and synth all fighting over the same space. It is easier said than done to keep in mind that the live room has so much more dynamic room and spatial freedom than an ultimate 2 track recording esp. with modern annoying loudness targets.

I am so privileged right now to have backup on all that. Drummer and guitar player are so disciplined about that, even more than me. There are just constant 'is that part/effect/etc. taking too much space there?' 'Is me playing the 7th there messing with your vocals?' One of the few guitar players I've had to ask to turn parts up. Mixing this group is a beautiful space of listening to raw tracks and not initially even knowing what I need to do, because it sounds pretty damn good raw.

So this is helpful for you to keep in your head even if you aren't doing the mixing. You're still part of arranging and now understand more intimately how a convoluted arrangement ends up being untenable.

*comically to your full post - it was because the studio was moving from reel to reel and ADAT to Protools..I was merely a musician they knew 'was good with computers' I didn't actually know how to use Protools my first day there lol...but I learning it by the time they were ready to test it.
 
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#21,738
Spectrum said:
I actually like some CCR. F anyone who has a problem with me liking what I like, you probably all secretly listen to Nickelback!

(Although Fortunate Son is one of their worst songs)
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Speaking of CCR, a dude signed me up to play a 'winter holiday party' at work once without asking me. The only holiday music I play is Halloween. He was a work friend, I really liked the dude and all, fellow musician, and he'd come out to see my band live and was like 'oh Scott can play this, easy peasy.' And shared some links of my stuff to the committee. I guess he forgot to tell me before a damn flyer came out.

This was the American Bar Association, I was a lawyer there in real public interest division, but a lot of the organization is kinda just to support the legal profession. They have lofty justicey goals, and they definitely do those things, but they are comprehensive so also support more of the money grubbing lawyers too.

So I played a song about Flint Michigan, poverty, etc., a song about hating small talk, and a few other subtly subversive tracks.
Dude that signed me up also wanted to play some together and I was always joking with him because he was like 10 years younger than me but he only really listened to music from, most recently, the 70s. So we did Have you Ever Seen the Rain, but I basically surprised him with a pretty heavy drum and bass arrangement. I think he thought I was just going to come with an acoustic guitar (because that is his whole notion of playing solo). It kinda rocked though, but he was like...woah...okay...
 
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#21,740
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