What’s up! I’ve been bad about making and uploading stuff the past few weeks. The southern pollen really took me out. I’ve been feeling nonstop icky. I’m back now!
I realized a part of my brief hiatus in making music is that I (once again) am getting too ambitious with my weekly commitments to myself. I said I wanted to learn or improve 1 thing a week. I was out here expecting myself to do 5 things a week. Learn a whole new song on 2 instruments AND record it! NO MORE!
GO SMALLER!!!
As I reflected (and I’ve said this many times before) I want to learn music production. I felt progressing on 1 song over a period of weeks makes more sense than working on a bunch of half done songs. So I added a new part to an existing recording for Old Joe Clark. I add the bass in.
This required me to learn more about basslines. In bluegrass, the bassist generally plays the root and the 5th on the 1st and 3rd beat. However, you will notice I spiced up my bassline.
I played with the octave for my 5 chord and added turnarounds in G at the end of each section. I thought of using chromatics (in this case F or 7b), but did not. The B section straight up includes the F chord.
Then I played around with the velocity so that the notes on the 1 beat were higher than the rest of the notes.
Finally, I added an effect? I mastered my bass? I made it sound more springy and authentic. I added in some error. I’m not sure what I did, but it made my bass sound better and that’s what counts.
