Friday, February 13, 2009

Bass done; tuner tip; weekend off (kinda)

Smooth sailing yesterday tracking the bass parts - now done for all (10) tunes. Was the first real use of a new bass (to me; actually "used" but in good shape) - an Epiphone "Les Paul Special". Sounded mostly great, and was pleased the intonation is good. For the recording geeks (like me!), signal chain was from the bass into the direct input of Chandler TG Channel (preamp/eq) into a Distressor compressor (set to "optical" mode). I think the sound is pretty good, but will scrutanize further come mixing.

Here's an old-school tuning tip when doing bass/guitar overdubs (in the "control room" or in front of the DAW) - Set up an aux send or similar from the bass/guitar input and patch the aux output into a tuner. MUCH easier than plugging/unplugging to tune. Did this using the audio interface's (MOTU 828mkii) little "monitor mix" application to send the bass/guitar input signal directly into "output 7/8", and then just a 1/4" cable from Output 7 into the tuner. Doing this on the MOTU (instead of in the recording software) worked great as there was always signal to the tuner and I didn't have to do anything in my recording software itself or in each song-project.

So with bass and drums done (and rough mixes to prove it :-) I'm taking the weekend off from RPM (kind-of) to chill and spend some quality time chillin in a woodland cabin with Ms. Mile Long Post-It. "Kind-of", you ask? I won't be doing any recording, but do plan to learn and rehearse acoustic and electric guitar parts (just playin' along to the aformentioned rough mixes). Well, and maybe start recording the acoustics later today (Fri) and after we get back on Monday. Can't really "turn off" RPM, can ya!?!

Rock on!

(Cross-posed to RPMChallenge website: http://www.rpmchallenge.com/component/option,com_mamblog/Itemid,291/task,show/action,view/id,11302/)

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