For professional reasons I have had little time to make a brand new clip, so I recycled an old bassline recording of mine. November is coming – Happy 40th birthday “Fragile”!!
This is an original song I made over the last weeks that I would like to share with you. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for sticking around! Miguel
The idea started while trying to make another (yet unfinished) song. I thought it was getting too complicated and took on some accidental playing on my guitar. I found the riff ok and thought it could be the base for something simpler where I could work out an arrangement with all instruments, as to prepare myself for finishing the first song.
Anyway ideas started flowing and it ended up a bit more extended than I initially wanted. The basslines (intro and pre and post solo) were made up a bit after, while I was having fun experimenting with a demo of the Ampeg SVX plugin.
Then the drums – I wanted to find something that would make it sound simple (in spite of having to deal with some odd meter – a blend of 7/8 with 4/4) – and anyway, something I would be able to play by myself. Then the middle sections came about while I was inspired to write some lyrics.
The choral section is a four-part harmony (2 tracks for each voice) that starts – intentionally – very “Bulgarian” and ends up a bit more CS&N (that’s a nice combination :) as to make a passage to the acoustic guitar section and the main poem that I wrote with my dad’s old Ramirez – still sounds incredible. Some more arrangements were made by then, especially the double-bass parts.
Finally the second harmony part, probably the most difficult bit, because my idea was to link to the finale that was already made. Again a four-part harmony but a different one, that finally melts with the kind of repetitions towards the end. The bass solo was the last thing to be thought of.
Well that’s part of my memory description for this song. Most important is that it’s ready now and I can present it to you!
Thanks for watching!
This clip includes the same audio that I recorded in 2008. The bass audio production was improved and slightly over-mixed to make it more audible. Youtube’s audio compression is much better than 2 years ago and that largely improved the results. Thank you very much Simon Gilman for another excellent contribution with the transcription!
This is an old cover from 2001 where I added some non-bass parts played on the bass, to fill in for “Disillusion” and the guitar intro of Würm. The tremolo effect is a Boss TR-2 pedal, while the final fuzz was done with the multi-effects Boss ME-8B, along with it’s octave effect at the very end. The transcription is another kind contribution from Simon Gilman. Hope you enjoy it!
A beautiful song by Billy Sherwood. Also a good example of how to make use of the 8-string bass, letting the notes shine, keeping it simple and focus on the timbre of the instrument. The top two strings are tuned in perfect fifths (just like “Changes” or “Hearts”)
