Oct 21, 2021 3 min read Loft

D8 Skills #20 & D9 | Unit E | Recording Band, Loft | Session #7

The only member of the band to turn up was the bassist. After comping together two bass takes to create a really good take, we realised that there wasn't enough top end during the choruses. We played around with the tone on the amp and managed to get an incredible, bright sound. Since the bass guitar being used (a Rickenbacker) has a stereo output, we decided to hook it up to two amps in order to record two different and separate tones simultaneously which we could later blend together in the mix. The signal into one amp would be picked up from the neck of the bass, and the other from the bridge. This already creates different tones. Neck pickups produce a warm, smooth sound, whereas bridge pickups are brighter and sharper. Our aim was to have one amp very bassy, and the other bright and sparkly.

There was a low pitched buzzing sound coming from the amps. We tried changing everything including changing the cables, switching on and off the horn on the back, changing which outlet the amps were plugged into, and changing the jack adapter going into the bass until the bassist eventually realised that the cable coming out of his bass was plugged into the mono output whereas it should have been in the stereo. Plugging it into the stereo output solved the issue.

Going through this problem-solving process allowed me to learn about the horn on the back of guitar amps. Before today I didn't know what it was, however after researching about it I discovered what it was. It toggles the tweeter on and off, adding higher frequencies.

The bassist played chords throughout the track, and after we'd got a recording the bassist was happy with, he wanted to over-dub just the root notes over the choruses. While recording, we looped the chorus and made sure to check 'Automatically Create New Playlists When Loop Recording' so that the bassist could efficiently record over and over again until we got a great take. After this was all done, I created a group with all the bass tracks in.

The rhythm guitar player finally arrived, and we recorded her part, using an SM57 on-axis pointing directly at the centre of the speaker, extremely close to the cabinet as she wanted her guitar to sound bass heavy. This technique took use of proximity effect.

As I regularly do after our sessions, I bounced down a rough mix of the track and sent it to every member of the band. Since I had a lecture in about 5 minutes time, I had no time to comp together takes or mix whatsoever. So, here it is: