Run With The Fox

As Chris would say it – “Alan and I”, or as Alan would say it – “Chris and myself”. We wish you a Merry Christmas and another of many years sticking together! Merry Xmas everyone!

Machine Messiah

This was the 1st practice take with video and I decided to keep it and didn’t make subsequent takes! But I practiced a lot over the last week. Since I can’t go to the shows of the “In The Present Tour 2008”, this is my way to celebrate the comeback of the great “DRAMA” to a live Yes concert!!!!

Bass: Rickenbacker 4001 CS

Strings: Warwick Red Strings (45-105, stainless steel)

Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)

Signal path: Bass→BDDI→PC

New Pictures

“Alternate tune”… I dared to include on my channel this little tune for 8-string bass. This song is still, though vaguely, Yes-related as it was my contribution for the alt.music.yes CD called “Cyberian Khatru”, released in 2000. The bass tuning was inspired by Chris Squire’s Ranney 8-string, with a slight change on the top string: E(e8),A(a8),D(a8),G(e8). I tried to explore the pureness of the instrument’s beautiful sound using open strings and some harmonics and keeping it simple, letting the bass sound freely… the sound is direct with a touch of reverb only. Hope you relax, meditate, but don’t fall asleep ;) Thanks for listening, friends!

The Remembering – High the Memory (ii)

For this half of the song I tried to find a somewhat mellower, yet distorted tone that would be closer to the unique bass sound of the original recording. This bassline is technically demanding and exhausting, but it’s a joy to play, with superb note choice, and great dynamics. In a word – intense. I’m very glad I rediscovered this song “in the days of summer, so long”, and hope you too enjoy my cover and take a chance to dive deeper into the original masterpiece, into the Topographic Ocean.

The Remembering – High the Memory (i)

I guess I’m trying to bring back songs that haven’t been played live by Yes for ages, and somehow present some visual performance from them for all Yes fans. The “forgotten” Remembering has always the song that I gave the least amont of listens from this album. Maybe because of that, when I started playing “Tales From Topographic Oceans” in my car, I started to rediscover the song – This happens a lot with Yes. I started to focus on the fretless bass – a quite personal approach to the instrument from Chris Squire a lot of surprising little details that are so great to analise, and play. My bass is a cheap j-bass copy and the frets were ripped by me “a la Jaco” many years ago. The neck has a lot of dead spots and harmonics are weak, so the overall sound is not the best. I hope to get it right on part 2, to follow soon. This time I used a Sadowsky “outboard bass preamp” for recording.

A Venture

Unlikely maybe, but there is something of a “hidden gem” about “A Venture”. It’s a song written by Jon Anderson from The Yes Album that hasn’t been played live like all the other songs on that record. The bassline begins very self-contained on the neck pickup, and then begins to come out of the shell until it bursts on a very cool and distinctive blues/pentatonic solo. For that, I assumed the bridge pick-up was used and also thought maybe Chris played it behind the horseshoe. NOTE – for the time being this may be the last clip I upload until YouTube removes this awful audio compression scheme that many of you may have noticed. I searched around for days trying to fix the problem, but sadly this version was the best I could manage, mixing a sine wave of 10Hz. You still hear some noises on both ends of the video and still some YouTube dumb compression that I am not responsible for, aside deciding to upload the video. My apologies to all and still hoping you will enjoy my work. Thank You.

Looking Around

In this clip I had to find the fine line between playing note by note and getting a natural feel. As a result there is some “ad-libbing” but I hope the feeling should compensate that :) “Looking Around” is one good example of how Chris Squire was inspired by elements of soul/R&B from the era: syncopated playing, incorporating octave leaps, yet adapting it to his own taste, picking style and that thunderous Rickenbacker timbre, resulting in a wonderful groove and great fun to play along. I hope you enjoy it like I did!

You can also view the remastered and expanded version :)

Bass: Rickenbacker 4001CS

Strings: Warwick Red Label (45-105, stainless steel)

Preamp: Sansamp Bass Driver DI (BDDI)

Signal path: Bass→BDDI→PC

Astral Traveller

Bassline for Time and a Word’s “Astral Traveller”. This one totally drives the whole song. Actually the whole album is very “bassy” thanks to a very generous mix (if all Yes albums were like that…!:) This song turned out to be more exhausting to play than I expected. After a good deal of takes, both hands started to give up, especially on those high-register 16ths!

Oh btw, in case you haven’t noticed, I couldn’t really play those high ‘E’s at 2:36 and 2:42. Chris played a 21-fretter back then. The 4001CS is a regular 20-fret… I pressed the neck after the 20th fret anyway and it sounded something like an E… although without any sustain. What you hear there is mostly the original bass. Hopefully I will try to do it one time on a 21-fretter!

This time I brought a little patriotic element making this one and associated the concept “Astral Traveller” to a travel back in time, to the late XI centrury, illustrating the history of my Nation through the evolution of our Flag. Funilly enough, today is June 10th, our National Holiday so I guess it all comes together pretty well:) Hope this does not become too distractive. Thanks for watching!