My happy birthday to Bill Bruford!
Bass: Rickenbacker 4001CS
Strings: Rotosound Swing Bass RS66LD (45-105, stainless steel)
Signal conditioning: Boss LM-2 (limiter)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→LM-2→BDDI→PC
Montreux’s Theme (Rickenbacker)
Here is the Rickenbacker version of Montreux’s Theme, which came second on the poll in which the Fender Jazz Bass has got more votes as we were trying to guess which bass was used by Chris Squire for this beautiful instrumental.
For the recordings I chose to boil old Rotosound strings, which sounded better that brand new ones from other brand, as I was trying to find a possible lower cost substitute for the Rotos – with no success.
I will soon post something about how I boiled the strings, for those interested :)
Bass: Rickenbacker 4001CS
Strings: Rotosound Swing Bass RS66LD (45-105, stainless steel)
Signal conditioning: Boss LM-2 (limiter)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→LM-2→BDDI→PC
Tokushima Children Choir
It’s unusual that I post on my channel clips from other performers but this footage from a show that I attended was one of the most fascinating musical experiences that I witnessed. This is the children’s choir of Tokushima, Japan. I love choirs and vocal harmonies and this brilliant performance really touched me. I am also posting this clip, hoping that some of my dear viewers would help me to find more music from this fantastic group. This choir came to Portugal to celebrate almost half a century of the relationship between Japan and Portugal. I learned from this show that it was also our ancestors who transmitted many of the European musical traditions to Japan for the first time. I hope that you enjoy this excerpt of the show and, especially for our Japanese friends, that you could send me more information about this beautiful musical group. Thank you!
Montreux’s Theme (Jazz Bass)
Here is my first take using a Fender Jazz Bass, which was the most voted bass on the poll that I created.
I will make another version with the Rickenbacker, which was the runner-up.
Thank you so much for voting and commenting! Hopefully Chris will provide us the correct answer!
Bass: Fender Jazz Bass 1975 Re-issue, MIJ
Strings: Rotosound Swing Bass RS66LD (45-105, stainless steel)
Signal conditioning: Boss LM-2 (limiter)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→LM-2→BDDI→PC
Montreux’s Theme bass quest
Montreux’s Theme is one of the most graceful bass lines written and performed by Chris Squire, with such a great interplay along with Alan White and Steve Howe. Do you know which bass did Chris play? Would you like to have a guess? Please take a listen to the sample more below and take your vote. Thank you very much!
Miguel
Looking Around (remastered… and expanded!)
New year has begun! I have been busy with work and new projects and, with the few time I had, I did yet another “remaster”, this time with Looking Around, from the very first Yes LP. As we approach the first anniversary since our dear Peter Banks passed away, I took the opportunity to decorate the green screen in the memory of Peter.
I also discovered on my computer that I had kept a test video which I had recorded on the day before while I was still practicing. Strings are out of tune and camera loses focus but still I thought it would be interesting to show you how I was rehearsing.
Towards the end you will be able to see how I was beginning to experiment with very rudimentary graphic effects. I used a Yes cartoon designed by brazilian graphic artist Milton Trajano, which featured on The Ladder Tour program. Milton is in fact who suggested me that I should go and try to make a video clip of Chris’ basslines on YouTube, and helped me with the artwork of my early videos, like Parallels and A Venture.
Bass: Rickenbacker 4001CS
Strings: Warwick Red Label (45-105, stainless steel)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→BDDI→PC
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Here’s a remastered version of the 2008 clip, hopefully with a better encoding.
In any case, a good reason for expressing here my wishes of Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!
Bass: Rickenbacker 4001CS
Strings: Rotosound Swing Bass RS66LD (45-105, stainless steel)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→BDDI→PC
The Solution
Time to re-discover another OYE song – The Solution was always one of my favourites for the beautiful vocal interplay between Jon and Billy nad the tricky odd-time meters. Chris’ bass does have a mighty tone here. I wonder which bass was used… the Tobias extended scale? The 6-stringed Carvin? My friend Américo Silva from Music-Light lent me his new-old bass, made by JP Custom Guitars, here in Portugal. – a beautiful sounding bass.
As usual I took the bass notes by ear – some parts I wasn’t absolutely sure of the notes. Perhaps the most difficult part for me was that groovy riff around E – to understand the notes played and fingering pattern… well, I hope I didn’t miss by many. All in all it’s a bassline full of interest, contrasts and a thunderous tone!
Bass: JP Custom Guitars “Luso”
Strings: Elixir
Signal conditioning: Boss LM-2 (limiter)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→LM-2→BDDI→PC
Universal Garden
Universal Garden has been a sort of “forgotten” song for me, since I had so many other favourites on “Open Your Eyes”. When it came the time to rediscover this album, I thought I should give a chance to this song and hear carefully what was going on with the bass. When I finally noticed that Chris was playing the 8-string bass and detected the “Ranney” tuning, that’s when things started to become interesting.
For those who don’t know, Chris developed an alternate tuning with his Ranney 8-string bass. Instead of having all string pairs tuned as octaves, he decided to have perfect fifths above the D and G string. On his “starlicks” video interview, Chris describes this as a “gothic” sound, and songs like “Changes”, “Hearts” and more recently “To Be Alive” and “It Will Be a Good Day“.
The bassline is a bit hard to hear in places. I had some doubts in the opening section, deciding whether the notes were played on the E string (as octaves) or the D and/or G strings (as fifths). The is a guitar overdub that plays on a similar register and confused me a bit. I decided to play a mix of the two versions but to be honest I am not sure about that intro. For example, on the Conspiracy live DVD Chris plays his “second” Mouradian 4-string and he hits the same notes using fifth chords on the D and G strings (G#, E, A, G#).
For the video, I did a very basic concept that I actually think of many times… only I forgot to write down here. I just googled for “universe” and the name of a colour and I selected the images I liked the most. I remember I looked for red, orange, blue, purple… maybe the same as Jon Anderson’s Yesshows “pre-Ritual” speech :) So I just applied the effects to those pictures. Finally I included Yes members pictures and applied a colour to each one… I thought of which colour to associate to each member. Billy – Purple; Steve – Red; Jon – Gold/Yellow; Chris – Green and Alan – White! :)
Bass: Zon Sonus 8
Strings: Zon 8 String set and D’Addario EXL 280 piccolo strings (for the fifths)
Effects: Amplitube 3 – Ampeg BA-500
Signal path: Bass→PC→Amplitube
Fortune Seller – BASS AUDIO
This is one of my old bassline attempts from back in 2001. Fortune Seller has always been on of my favourite tunes in “Open Your Eyes”. The song is very dominated by it’s bass riff which, to me, has a strange “odd-meter” feel, although in reality it’s in plain 4/4.
The effects applied were also notable since flanger and octaver effects were rarely used by Chris with his Rickenbacker (more often with his MPC Electra on Cinema, Leave It or City Of Love). However, on the Open Your Eyes album, especially the flanger was used on some other tracks: Open Your Eyes (Rickenbacker) and Wonderlove (flanger and octaver, maybe here it’s really the Electra).
Bass: Rickenbacker 4001CS
Strings: Rotosound Swing Bass RS66LD (45-105, stainless steel)
Effects: Boss ME-8B (Octaver, Flanger)
Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)
Signal path: Bass→ME-8B→BDDI→PC
Miguel Falcão (miguelbass) 