[PLAYING] An interesting session

#1 · September 17, 2015, 5:39 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on September 17, 2015, 5:39 pm
Posted by: prezbass <prezbass@...>

Apologies for the length-

Last month, I got booked for an album session (playing this time) for a pretty well known jazz trumpet player, Jackson Rice. I played on 3 tunes of his last album, "Firefly" and Jack decided to pull out all the stops for his next album and hire a pretty killer band- bassist notwithstanding. It was a Who's Who of Seattle session players- myself, John Morton (Kenny G, Tower Of Power) on guitar, Mark Wilson (Truth, The Imperials) on guitar, Kelly Carpenter (well known Christian songwriter, writer of "Hold Me Close To You") on keyboards, Kevin Blackwood (Karen Hesse, Lucas Nelson- Willie Nelson's son) on drums and yours truly bringing up the rear. We tracked at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline- this is one of the preeminent studios in Seattle, and has hosted Dave Matthews Band, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Heart, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Death Cab For Cutie, Presidents Of The United States, 3rd Eye Blind- just to name a few.

Jack is really into some strange music like Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman as well as some newer fusion stuff like Yellowjackets and Weather Report, so I knew I was gonna be in for a hard one. Early last week, I emailed Jack and asked him to send over any charts he had as well as any preproduction tracks, and he complied.

Oh, boy.

There's 11 songs on the album, but only 2 of them are in 4/4- EVERYTHING else is odd and multi-metered stuff ranging from 7/4, 9/4, 7/8 to clustered chords (think Stravinsky or Varese) with metric modulated ostinatos- and all of them are seriously bass centric. And- here's the best part- every, single, solitary bass part is notated down the correct rest. One of the tunes has an ad-lib section, but the chords are marked out as Bm7/F#11/Ab11, which means I get to pick which chord I play- YOWZA. So, I locked myself in my studio and began to use brain cells I haven't used in years. I shared a couple of the charts with some folks onlist- and, they will attest to how difficult these things are. After 3 days of grueling woodshedding, I considered myself "ready" and gritted my teeth- the sessions were Tuestday and yesterday.

Now- I'm doing a session with literally the cream of the crop of players (all of whom, save for the drummer, I have played with before) and I had high hopes that everyone else had gotten under the hood like I had- and I was sorely disappointed. None of the other players had really taken the time to shed at all, so the going was SLOW. It took us about 18 hours of playing to get 10 of the tracks done, and I have one tune to overdub at my studio this weekend. It was interesting- what ended up happening was that I ended up basically directing the entire session and coming up with parts to play for everyone. That might sound like fun, but let me tell you- it was NOT.

I never say this about sessions I play on- I simply crushed the entire 2 days. I had my parts done in no more than 3 takes on any tune and I was extremely happy with everything I did. That's a rarity, and it's good to know that I can still do these kinds of sessions when I need to. My point here is that getting under the hood and prepping for a session (or a gig) cannot be underestimated.

And- for the gear- here ya go:

Regenerate VRB fretless 4

Regenerate M5 Custom with Honey Badger pickups

Azola Bug Bass upright

All that into a Little Labs PCP Distro DI (that thing is COOLER THAN SNOT) and out of that to my Markbass Tube 800 and into my Markbass NYC 15 and miked with an EV RE20. The RE20 went into a Summit Labs Dual Tube preamp and into a silver faced UREI LA76. The Little Labs went into a Focusrite ISA 110 and into a silver faced UREI LA4A, and both channels went into an SSL 4000G console and into ProTools, which was being run at 192Khz. The bass tone was probably the best sounding I've ever had in all my years of recording- due in no small part to the engineer, Jaekel Tristam, who was one of the senior engineers at The Record Plant in New York City for many years. (He was one of the engineers on John Lennon's "Double Fantasy" album.)

So- if anyone wants charts and pre-prod tracks to really challenge themselves with, let me know. This stuff will absolutely melt your fingers and your ability to count. I'll even throw in some of the approaches I took to some of the tunes if you like.

All in all, a very fun and challenging project and I cannot wait to hear the final result. I will definitely let you know when this project releases- it's like nothing I've ever played on before.

--

-Marc Miller
prezbass@gmail.com
http://www.eadgpoet.com

--

To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: churchbass-unsubscribe@welovegod.org
To unsubscribe from digests, send ANY message to

<churchbass-digest-unsubscribe@welovegod.org

Posted by: prezbass <prezbass@...>

Apologies for the length-

Last month, I got booked for an album session (playing this time) for a pretty well known jazz trumpet player, Jackson Rice. I played on 3 tunes of his last album, "Firefly" and Jack decided to pull out all the stops for his next album and hire a pretty killer band- bassist notwithstanding. It was a Who's Who of Seattle session players- myself, John Morton (Kenny G, Tower Of Power) on guitar, Mark Wilson (Truth, The Imperials) on guitar, Kelly Carpenter (well known Christian songwriter, writer of "Hold Me Close To You") on keyboards, Kevin Blackwood (Karen Hesse, Lucas Nelson- Willie Nelson's son) on drums and yours truly bringing up the rear. We tracked at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline- this is one of the preeminent studios in Seattle, and has hosted Dave Matthews Band, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Heart, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Death Cab For Cutie, Presidents Of The United States, 3rd Eye Blind- just to name a few.

Jack is really into some strange music like Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman as well as some newer fusion stuff like Yellowjackets and Weather Report, so I knew I was gonna be in for a hard one. Early last week, I emailed Jack and asked him to send over any charts he had as well as any preproduction tracks, and he complied.

Oh, boy.

There's 11 songs on the album, but only 2 of them are in 4/4- EVERYTHING else is odd and multi-metered stuff ranging from 7/4, 9/4, 7/8 to clustered chords (think Stravinsky or Varese) with metric modulated ostinatos- and all of them are seriously bass centric. And- here's the best part- every, single, solitary bass part is notated down the correct rest. One of the tunes has an ad-lib section, but the chords are marked out as Bm7/F#11/Ab11, which means I get to pick which chord I play- YOWZA. So, I locked myself in my studio and began to use brain cells I haven't used in years. I shared a couple of the charts with some folks onlist- and, they will attest to how difficult these things are. After 3 days of grueling woodshedding, I considered myself "ready" and gritted my teeth- the sessions were Tuestday and yesterday.

Now- I'm doing a session with literally the cream of the crop of players (all of whom, save for the drummer, I have played with before) and I had high hopes that everyone else had gotten under the hood like I had- and I was sorely disappointed. None of the other players had really taken the time to shed at all, so the going was SLOW. It took us about 18 hours of playing to get 10 of the tracks done, and I have one tune to overdub at my studio this weekend. It was interesting- what ended up happening was that I ended up basically directing the entire session and coming up with parts to play for everyone. That might sound like fun, but let me tell you- it was NOT.

I never say this about sessions I play on- I simply crushed the entire 2 days. I had my parts done in no more than 3 takes on any tune and I was extremely happy with everything I did. That's a rarity, and it's good to know that I can still do these kinds of sessions when I need to. My point here is that getting under the hood and prepping for a session (or a gig) cannot be underestimated.

And- for the gear- here ya go:

Regenerate VRB fretless 4

Regenerate M5 Custom with Honey Badger pickups

Azola Bug Bass upright

All that into a Little Labs PCP Distro DI (that thing is COOLER THAN SNOT) and out of that to my Markbass Tube 800 and into my Markbass NYC 15 and miked with an EV RE20. The RE20 went into a Summit Labs Dual Tube preamp and into a silver faced UREI LA76. The Little Labs went into a Focusrite ISA 110 and into a silver faced UREI LA4A, and both channels went into an SSL 4000G console and into ProTools, which was being run at 192Khz. The bass tone was probably the best sounding I've ever had in all my years of recording- due in no small part to the engineer, Jaekel Tristam, who was one of the senior engineers at The Record Plant in New York City for many years. (He was one of the engineers on John Lennon's "Double Fantasy" album.)

So- if anyone wants charts and pre-prod tracks to really challenge themselves with, let me know. This stuff will absolutely melt your fingers and your ability to count. I'll even throw in some of the approaches I took to some of the tunes if you like.

All in all, a very fun and challenging project and I cannot wait to hear the final result. I will definitely let you know when this project releases- it's like nothing I've ever played on before.

-Marc Miller
prezbass@gmail.com
http://www.eadgpoet.com

To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: churchbass-unsubscribe@welovegod.org
To unsubscribe from digests, send ANY message to

<churchbass-digest-unsubscribe@welovegod.org