Studio blog: First studio session as a bass player

We'll be spending a few weekends in the studio for an album recording. This coming weekend (june 1st and 2nd) we'll be focusing on drums and bass, and I'll be playing both instruments.

I've been a drummer for 15 years and I'm comfortable in the studio behind a drum kit, and I love studio sessions in general, but this will be my first session as a bass player.

I'm pretty new to bass still (only really played it for about a year), but I feel so at home playing it. I've played guitar for 25 years (only at home, not in a band), so I wasn't exactly starting from scratch when it came to knowing the fretboard, but it's still a different beast.

Our engineer is also a bass player, so I'll have access to a lot of great gear, and he'll presumably also be able to help me out with sugeestions for parts if my stuff isn't working as well as I think they are.

We'll see how it goes. I'll keep this thread updated with pics, clips and experiences if anyone's interested.

To start us off, here's a picture of the studio space - Polyfon Studio in my hometown of Bergen, Norway:

 

Thanks!

We're sort of a dark-ish rock vibe, all lyrics are in Norwegian. A lot of inspiration from the old goth scene, and also from the local black metal scene (although we are definitely not metal in any way).

No live stuff unfortunately. We don't have a full compliment of members yet, which is a bit of a b***ch. We'll be searching for a new member once these sessions are overwith, but it's really hard to find new band members around here these days. I'm really hoping to move over to bass permanently, so we'll primarily be looking for a drummer. However, if we find a bass player in stead, I'll be moving back behind the kit.

We've got two singles out. We're going to be rerecording the drums for these as part of this session, and then remix them to fit with the other songs we're recording. Both songs are on Spotify, iTunes, Google, etc.

Here's our uptempo rock song, featuring Niklas Kvarforth from the Swedish band Shining:


And here's a much more mellow number:


These tracks feature Hoest from the black metal band Taake on bass. We won't be rerecording the bass tracks for these two tunes, only the drums.

 

So the drum and bass sessions are done. Time always flies so fast in the studio. I often envy guitar players, who are allowed to sit there and add layer upon layer of guitar parts, while us rhythm section guys are only allowed a single part per song (usually).

Anyway, we started off doing the drums, and they sounded absolutely immense in this room. Really looking forward to hearing the full drum mix. Here's my kit set up in the room:


After that, it was time for bass tracking. Definitely a humbling experience after the familiar comfort of the drum throne, but we got some good results after a couple of passes.

I borrowed the engineer's Precision for the session, and tracked through an Orange Terror Bass and an Orange 1x12 cab. For the heavier parts, we kicked on my Ampeg Scrambler and for some parts my EHX Bass Clone. Pretty straightforward, nothing fancy. We also have a DI track of course, so reamping is always an option if needed.



I'd love to spend at least twice as long experimenting with parts and sounds, but the studio time is coming out of our own pocket so we really have to move pretty quickly.

We should be getting some raw mixes of the drum and bass tracks in a few days, and then spend a couple of weeks on continued preproduction of guitars, vocals and probably some keys here and there. We'll be back in the studio at the end of June.

I think my singer has some video clips. If I don't look like a total ass, I might put them up