Great post, and mostly true although I historically find that Stingrays are greatly preferred over the years... but even with Bruce Swedein I had tracked with a Jazz in the booth and occasionally in the great room after everything else has been laid <shrug>....I only quoted the above because its the only thing I disagree with (to a point)...I show up usually with 3 - 5 instruments, all with different string types and pickup locations because part of it is being ready for any situation and having a wide pallette to select from.....If you dont play with a pick, have some in your pocket because that will get asked quite a bit....... Im capable of getting a P-Sound with flats if needed.....oddly enough, my goofy little 1970 Sekova EB3 copy with flats I bought for 60 bucks has been getting a lot of time lately...this just happened at a different facility again last week....I would never use this thing live, but when I plug it in and ask "How's this?", both clients and studio owners light up over it <another shrug>
Hi, thanks. Most of my studio experience such as it was occurred in the late 60's and especially during the the 70's era. By the time the EB Stingrays started to catch on the sound company had gotten totally out of hand and I wasn't playing professionally anymore. I am not a musical savant like so many of the artists I knew from that era.
I notice there seems to be way more variation in tonality from the bass on the more modern recordings than there used to be. It's pretty obvious that engineers have way more latitude regarding what they can do with electric bass now than they used to, and, of course, the state of the art has advanced mightily since the Quad 8 days. Under the circumstances, it makes total sense that you would want to show up for a session with several basses, string combinations, etc. I'm not surprised, though, that producers still ask for a pick. For recording the bass, it seems to provide a more well defined attack, and makes the strings ring with a certain clarity I don't hear using the fingers. Good grief, I hope I don't regret saying that here on TB! I enjoy playing finger style more than with the pick. But...
You definitely have my respect and admiration for playing sessions in the present era. I would love to do sessions again. I am enjoying perfecting my reading and NNS skills though. It keeps my mind occupied, holds off the dementia (some would argue that point!) and keeps me out of trouble here in sin city. They don't call Las Vegas sin city for nothing! At this point, though, i'm just to cheap for all that high priced fun. Instead, I just acquired an Apollo Twin Mk.II Quad for my iMac which is totally loaded for bear, so I should have something online by the middle of next year.
Never recorded bass in a control room through big studio monitors. The control rooms at Wally Heider's studio B and Pacific Recording were pretty small, actually. Never was at the Automatt. The Music Annex had a pretty good sized master control room, but I never thought to play anything in there. I don't remember the names of several other studios. It's all kind of a blur, actually. I just stayed out of the booth and concentrated on my playing at the sessions. Which is probably a good thing, if you get my drift. Cheers brother!
