In August I was able to do some brief recording at Oxbow Studios in Massachusetts. Normally we try and record twice, but due to schedules and time constraints, we could only record bass and drums one night. As usual it was 95% improvised, or spontaneous composition (a term/concept I borrowed from the German group Can), by my drummer Greg DeGuglielmo and myself.
I recorded a few tracks with my
Telembic - here's my favorite:
ostronato (alpha-omega mix) It's the P-Bass Activators through an Alembic F-2B preamp, a dbx 162 compressor, then into ProTools. Until this song I had been playing with my fingers, but switched to a heavy pick. I had the filter pretty open, and as soon as we started playing, I realized that it sounded kind of too trebly with the pick. I remember turning down the filter as I was playing, and thinking that I had ruined the track! But I kept playing. In hindsight, I think it sounds great! The different filter settings totally change the mood. To illustrate, here is the isolated bass track for the middle section (which is the first that I mixed):
ostronato bass Here it is with everything else on top:
ostronato extract Obviously Greg's drumming has a lot to do with the different moods, but I think the variety of tones that the Activators make possible had a huge impact too.
I guess I should point out too that the Rhodes electric piano is also going through the same signal chain, with a Budda Phat Bass distortion as well. Most of the keyboard parts were improvised and overdubbed afterwards - the section in the extract took several overdubs to get right, so not as spontaneous as the rest.
Thanks for listening!
