I had that bass walk stuck in my head for weeks.
Anyway, couple of notes. Selso provided two tracks, one "vocal" and one "bass/guitar." But because the vocal was recorded with a live mike and the bass track playing, there was serious bleed over from one track to the next. That is, you could hear the vocals clear as day on the bass track, and you could hear the bass and guitar clear as day on the vocal track.
I did the mix on this using Reaper, which is now my most favorite tool ever.
This is what I did to the mix. I ran the vocal track through a highpass filter to remove as much of the bass from that track as I could, and then used an EQ to bring out the frequencies of Selso's voice, and then added just a touch of reverb for effect. I ran the bass track through an EQ to bring out as much bass as possible, and then ran it through a compressor to get a little bit of pop, and give it that "fretless" feel. The problem is that any time I touched the bass track, it effected the vocals as well, due to the bleed.
Because the track was recorded live, there is just a hair's bit of tempo drift in the song. It rumbles between 104 and 108 beats per minute. It's enough to make using a drum machine harder than using a live drummer. I have a live drummer, so he was conscripted for the job. We recorded him on two microphones using our Fostex MR-8. We pulled his kick mic out a bit to pick up the entire bottom end, and used a condenser directional mic up high to pick up the high hat and cymbals. There was a small glitch in the recording, though. A fault of the MR-8 caused a few microseconds of squeal and pop. I was able to pull it out and substitute in another section of the track. I don't think I did a good job of it, though. If you pay close attention right around the 1:27 mark you can pick it up. Anyway, we're thinking of doing a couple more drum tracks the next time we get some spare time.
Here's a shot of Jeff, live in Studio A, recording the drum track for this.
As far as the lots of bass/no bass sound goes, I've learned that there is no way to satisfy every speaker system. I mixed this up using a pair of KRK 5" powered studio monitors, and the bass really comes out on them. If I plug in my crappy PC speakers, you naturally lose some of that.
Anyway it was very fun, and I learned a whole lot. Many thanks to Selso for not only writing this nifty little tune, but for giving me the opportunity to play with it. If you're ever up Seattle way, we should bring you into the basement and record some good quality tracks. It really is a good song.
Someday we'll win this thing...
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