Me.. recorded.. some advice?

sounds pretty cool. here's a few suggestions right off the bat - (i haven't finished listening to it yet)...

this is a jazz bass, right? try rolling off on the neck pickup volume about 25%. you should get a bit more of a plucky tone - not a ric, but at least a bit more plucky and articulate.

look for a midi file of the song somewhere on the net. see if you can find something that is about the same speed, and then record yourself with the midi drums/click going on. it's really hard to get a feel for what's going on when your playing just by yourself, and the tempo on that song varies, so a simple click by itself is going to be difficult to play to - parts of the song won't sound right.

i wish that someone told me, when i was your age , to really practice to a metronome and record myself and listen to it. have you ever read tony levin's book? he has a great discussion about "the beat" and how to set up groove and feel based on where the bass falls in relation to the drums - remember that beats in music aren't singular hits, like this | | | | | | but rather pulses with some width to them , like this ^ ^ ^ ^ ^.

where the bass falls in relation to the drums on these "pulses" is what defines the feel and groove, and consistency in "beat placement" helps give a passage a solid groove. one of the best ways, imo, to develop a command of "beat placement" is to practice songs that you know, like this yes song, along with a click or a drum machine, and then listen to it - really get into the playback, and hear where you are in relation to the click, which is a "singular hit" type beat, | | | | |, so all your mistakes and mistimings become glaringly obvious.

so, in short, my advice in a nutshell is to try and find a midi file of the song, where you can turn off all the instruments but the bass, and play along with the drum/click. then rerecord it and let's hear it again .

i'm still listening, though, so i'll add more

 

yeah, that's pretty cool.

attached is the midi file for long distance runaround. i don't know how accurate it is, but it's a place to start.

change the ".txt" to ".mid" and you can play this and play along to it. if you have any kind of sequencer (check out www.cakewalk.com, they may have one for free) you can turn off the bass, and then play along with the sequence without the bass - you can even record yourself doing that.

give it a shot, see how it goes.

 

sorry, i didn't realize that that midi file was incomplete.

yeah, work that pinkie! seriously, i would play it to a metronome if you can't find a midi file and record both of them. listen to how well you line up with the beat of the click - that is, afterall, a major primo aspect of playing bass, right?

all in all, the recording sounded very good. if you had a click with it, we could be more critical you could hear where you might be rushing or dragging, as well as where you might have stumbled on a fast riff - you'd be amazed what you can hear in your own playing when you are playing to a click. it's hard to tell, otherwise, where exactly that you are rushing or dragging.



oh, and did anyone notice all the PO0P in that sequence? i wonder what's up with that.

 

record the metronome that you are playing along with, using an ambient mic instead of playing direct would be one way. another would be to record into a sequencer like cakewalk, that has a built in metronome that you could play along to that would then line up with the recording on playback also.