Just thought I’d drop a quick post here to update you on the progress of my latest solo offering. Up until now it has been skulking under the Twitter hashtag #soloalbum3, but today I can reveal the album will be officially called [un]plugged, for obvious reasons.
This will be a digital-only release like The Knowledge of Things To Come, but rest assured I shall be using the wonders of Bandcamp to make available the absolute best-quality downloads. At some point the album will also be available on iTunes and Spotify etc for those of you that prefer the UI, but I would seriously recommend the Bandcamp route. For everything actually…
The entire album was recorded using my new Breedlove acoustic bass and the Looperlative LP1. I used the Pod X3 Pro but not quite to the usual extent. I programed three variations of the same basic acoustic patch and cheifly used those throughout the album so as not to mask the natural sound of the instrument.
The tracking was finished last week and today I shall be doing a bit of housekeeping and exporting the tracks ready for mastering with Steve Alexander hopefully during the week. Assuming my car doesn’t blow up in the meantime and leave me stranded at home…
So here’s a little treat for you. I have spent a lot of time on getting the artwork just so, and here it is to whet your appetites (to a small non-musical degree)
I’m really excited to get this album out there so watch this space (and Twitter of course) for updates. If all goes to plan [un]plugged may well be out by the end of the week. I hope you like it 😉
Yes indeed. It’s that time of the year again when I venture forth back into the studio to work on some new solo material for your collective listening pleasure. I’ve been tweeting about it over the last few days as work has begun here and I thought it might be a good idea to let you all know what’s happening with the new record.
During my time working on The Comedy of Errors at the National Theatre, I’ve grown rather fond of the acoustic bass guitar. I must admit I never thought this would happen as the instrument, by definition, is physically flawed. Such a small bodied bass instrument can never project like an upright bass, but it turns out that with the right preamp it can produce a fantastic and very individual sound. It took a long time to find the right bass but I eventually settled on a Breedlove acoustic from Guitar Guitar in Epsom.
I did a little test recording about a month ago which I posted to Soundcloud. The bass has a great gnarly sound and the preamp gives me quite a lot of control over how much of the fret noise I want. I want a lot… For those of you that haven’t heard it yet, here’s my demo track.
So. I wanted this album to be very different to the previous two. By deciding on recording an entirely acoustic album I have intentionally imposed a number of limitations on the way I usually work on the solo project. Most of the effects that characterize Mandala and The Knowledge of Things To Come simply do not work with the Breedlove. I’ve decided to mainly keep the sound of the bass relatively pure (well, it’ll be smothered in reverb and delays) and try to bring out some of the nuances and harmonics that you only get from an acoustic bass guitar. So the Pod X3 Pro will be having an easy time during the sessions. I have set up one patch will I will probably use for the entire album. It has a nice open reverb, some light chorus, delay and an octaver for when I fancy a bit of extra bottom. Gone are the distortions, pitch shifts and backwards delays. For now…
It’s also rather disconcerting going back to four strings after playing all my other solo material on the six. In many ways this is the greatest limitation on the process. A great deal of my solo/live-looping vocabulary is based on the extended range the six string offers. I am having the develop a new approach which relies less on the instrument and more on my own creativity. Which is a good thing.
None of this is to say that I won’t be making full use of the awesome talent-booster that is the Looperlative LP1. Most of the sound manipulation will come from the Looperlative this time rather than banks of guitar effects. Just a few days in and I’m finding out new things about the Breedlove all the time. For example; the best recorded sound comes from playing with a slightly sideways ‘double bass’ style right hand technique rather than proper bass fingerstyle.
This is turning into a bass geek-fest. I do apologize…
So anyway, the new record is going to sound very different to the previous two. I’ve also been listening to a lot of acoustic music of late for inspiration. Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger has proved a big revelation over the last few weeks. Apart from Jonas Hellborg I can’t think of any particular bassist that has fully embraced the acoustic bass guitar, so I’ve been listening to a lot of other instruments with similar characteristics such as the lute, sarod and bass viol. Hopefully some of these influences will filter through into the music.
That’s it for now folks. Here I am typing away when I should be toiling over a hot laptop. I’ll keep tweeting progress reports as I go along. I’m using the tag #soloalbum3 for now. Turns out my intended album title does not work as a hash-tag as it has brackets in it. Bugger. Feel free to use the tag whenever you like and help spread the word.
My latest album The Knowledge of Things To Come was featured in this month’s newsletter from Line 6. So I thought now would be a good time to say a few things about my effects setup for the solo project. Over the last few months since the album was released, a lot of people have been asking me how I get all the sounds and what effects I used. Let me clear that up for you…
After I finished Mandala, I decided that I wanted to further explore the world of multi-effects. I used my Lexicon MPX-G2 with the Looperlative for all the sounds on Mandala and whilst I loved some of the sparkly sounds and pitch shift effects, I couldn’t quite get the more guitar-orientated tones I was looking for. After much research online and faffing about in various guitar shops I eventually decided to invest in a Line 6 Pod X3 Pro (the rackmounted version). I also bought the FBV foot controller to give me some proper control.
The unit is dead easy to program and some of the presets (I use both bass and guitar presets) are astounding. They are also incredibly easy to tweak. I always found the Lexicon UI massively complicated and unrewarding, but the X3 Pro is very intuitive and sounds great. Each patch I program is like having access to a whole new rig and switching between sounds is fast and reliable, especially with the foot controller.
Line 6 have been very helpful and have been plugging the album since it’s release a few months ago. They asked me to upload some of the key tones from The Knowledge of Things To Come to their Custom Tone site so that other Pod users can download my patches and work with them on their own machines. So I uploaded six of the key tone patches from the album. You can download them all at the following address:
I hope you have fun with some of the patches. The L For Leather patch is particularly fun…
If you haven’t got your copy of the album yet, you can download it from the Music page, where you’ll also find Mandala (CD and download) and the Rejectamenta EP. I’ve still got plenty of CD copies of Mandala left, so if you want a signed copy just let me know when you order.
Here’s a little player so you can have a listen. Until next time…
