Somebody please add a bass line to this.

C

crazyhorse

New member
I've got a new mp3 up (128kBit compression 1:41 min. long 1.628 megs size). It is an instrumental with just drums (kick, snare, ride and crash), 1 main guitar line and 2 fuzzy drone guitar lines mixed low. Really simple with a lazy kind of feel at a less than galloping 54 bpm.
If anyone can come up with a bass line for this I would be most appreciative! I still have all the tracks seperated in Cakewalk so any tips on improving the mix would be great as well. There is some noise audible, especially at the end, but I plan to eliminate that on the final mix. Please, somebody help me out!

ps. I know the ride pattern sucks, it was really just intended to be a scratch track.

 
Crazy, Man! I'm working on a bass line right now, but don't hold your breath. I'm no bass player and have to know your tune cold to pull this off. That might take a few days.
Or I might just give up. But it did spark my interest. The levels were 4.0 - 4.6 dB off of normal values.
 
The bass line is already there... Already there.
Kinda reminds me of that Jane's Addiction song: "Summertime" somethingerrather...
The root notes you are playing spell it out man... I think any man would be careless to stray far from the root in this progression...
I might give it a go but what I would do is pretty basic...
S8-N
 
Well I gave 'er a try. I didn't have much time though because it's getting late. So if you're looking for ideas, then here ya go. If you're looking for the shit...well, then you can skip this :)

It seems that there's something in what you're playing that's dipping down into the lower frequencies. I don't know if it's a synthesizer or what, but it makes it very hard to add a bass...which to me means that you don't need one..as S8-N suggested.

Anyway, because of this I left the level of my bass track annoyingly high. I was losing low end and you couldn't hear the harmonics very well. Also I'm missing a note terribly during the changeup...yick. Like I said, not perfect :) Oh, and I hope you like my ending...


Slackmaster 2000
 
The Church was one of the influences that brought about my "Cleansing" of the faith... I was a loose aquaintence of Sternodox and Janor Hypercleets of Doktors for "Bob" fame... They hail from Little Rock, also...
The time of X-day approacheth nigh... And verily I say unto you: "Fuk 'em if they can't take a joke"...

S8-N
 
Slackman, thanks a lot for your troubles but I can't access your file! You know the story already but in case you don't, click your link. All I get is a blank page titled "atemp_slackmaster.mp3" - wait a minute - ".mp3" ... is that even possible?
Compound this weirdness along with the last 5 hours I've spent learning to create and input 3d sprites into the old Shadow Warrior buid engine and I must agree that it is GETTING VERY LATE! In fact, it's getting kind of weird in here.

Exactly what does your referance to the "4.0 - 4.6 dB off of normal values" mean? (I'm stupid.) I normalized all my tracks in Cakewalk but my program doesn't Mix Down Audio correctly so I have to send all my audio tracks out to a stereo wav file for mix down. Afterwards, I noticed that the wavs looked somewhat smaller but they sounded o-kay. I then ran them through a directx plugin called AIP Warmtube. That actually seemed to cut some of the highs and boost the lows a little but overall gave it a tastier sound.

The low freqs you hear are from a freaky patch I created in my Johnson Millenium running a compressor into a tremolo into a reverb. The whole schmeal came from the strummy part (with that patch) which was inspired by a funky guitar tuning I came up with. Low E dropped 1 step and G dropped 1/2 step. Barring all the way across sounded good and when I added some melody in the 3 high strings it just had that killer rainy day smoked out peaceful groove thing happening. Originally, I had the patch drenched in reverb. I got this neat effect where the low strings didn't hit too hard in the reverb but I could pop the high ones and meke 'em shimmer away. The cool thing was it sounded like two seperate lines. I was trying to get that on the song but I had to drop the mondo reverb way down cause I decided to add some cheesey fuzz guitar lines and ultimately an obligatory solo (eventually).
I suppose I could go back to the original deal and maybe just add some ambience (6 pack and a sheet of tin?) but I would really like to give a shot at finishing this version. I'm looking forward to hearing what you've done, Slackmaster.

S8-N, what up bra? You down with the Subgenious (hail Bob)? Everyone will wish they had donated when you-know-who shows up for the you-know-what. {secret anti-Yetysin script goes here). Something about your post makes me want to get up and burn an X in my head ...

But what about the mix, my speakers really suck so I'm just wonderin. I don't have a bass and would be happy with anything that someone is generous enough to provide me.
Simple or fancy, I don't care. I can always rework what I've got to make room.

I've got a few hours worth of two guys on hallucinogens "makin some weird fckn sounds on the guitar man". Recorded with a 10$ mic over a Rush tape in a home stereo, of course. The music is uh, well, you ain't gonna go around hummin this stuff. But the guy doin the butt naked free fall into an improvised volcanoe of pyrotechnique vocals is freakin hillarious. If anybody is interested, I could port some stuff in and post it.
 
Just that the file wasn't normalized. No big deal at this stage, but when you're finished, the max levels in the tune should be 0dB on both channels. This file was -4 dB on one side and -4.6 dB on the other side. Slackman's remix was available when I checked...
 
It's there. You'll get a blank page which is nothing to worry about. After a few seconds the file should start downloading. What browser are you using? Maybe you have security settings to high or something. Maybe it was just slow when you tried...

Slackmaster 2000
 
S8-N wow, you know I always thought the Docs had one of the band better names but I never made the connection. I guess I was still floundering amidst the great too-washed then. I've got a Sep '89 magazine called Shred which features an article on the amazing artwork and life of one Stanislov Szukalski. He had a full blown theory on man's evolvement from the primal Yetinsyn through the Great Flood (represented by primitive cultures' use of face paint lines which mimic the scum lines of the Flood survivors.) The magazine also features many "Bob" related themes, the "Uh" cult,interviews with Jackson Browne and Love and Rockets, a black velvette art gallery, essay on the Flat Earth Society with map. There is no referance to actual "Bob"ist preachings and I wonder if I have a kind of dead sea scrolls thing here! I also found at the Pine Box (my buds love that) Library a compilation of bizarre old mail order adds which, according to the book's forward, were the rocks that the gospel of the $ True Church $ were built on. I'm gonna have to check it out again and lose it.
 
Slackmaster2K

I'm trying Getright now but I keep getting a busy server message. I'll keep on till I get it. I'm using IE 5 and I do have my security set pretty high. I'll go that route if Getright doesn't connect soon.
 
Getright might not work in this case as you don't have a "direct" link to my file. I'd be interested in knowing whether that's the problem or if it's juston.com's problem. Juston looks like a great service for sharing mp3's but if you're having a hard time connecting....

Well, I just tried again and was able to start a download. Why not just download normally...it's only 1.8MB.

I just installed Getright. It will not download the file so you'll have to do it the old fashioned way....

Slackmaster 2000

[This message has been edited by Slackmaster2K (edited 11-17-1999).]
 
I lowered my security settings and now I get a request to install Microsofts Virtual Machine to view the page. I will install it if I have to but I'd rather not. Any thoughts?
 
Oh, that's odd. "Virtual Machine" is either referring to Java or VBScript virtual machines (or both, who knows) which are probably used extensively on Juston. I can't believe that this wouldn't be installed by default with IE5 though.

Install it...should be no big deal. Should just be a dll or two containing the interpreter code for whatever languages are supported by the "Microsoft Virtual Machine" (which I am obviously unfamiliar with). Have you had trouble in the past looking at pages that contain scripts? Lots do these days.

Are you still using Getright? If so turn it off.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I somehow managed to get through and get your mp3 finally! I would love to use it if you have more time to do a couple of things for me.
Re-record (please!!!) your bass line. At 0:40 sec and 1:06 sec you kinda lost the key, not that my terrible intonation on my ancient guitar strings helps any. You also jumped ahead of time in a couple of places but once again who sits around playing songs at 54 beats per minute right? Lastly, did you use any compression when you recorded? I probably have something to run it through if necessary. I dig the tone and the melody, they fit just right! I also loved the little brake at the end. I wondered where the piece needed to go and you solved that problem perfectly. Any chance on developing more? If you are able to redo it, please through that in at the end. I can always copy/cut/paste sections of that into a whole new piece.

Thanks a lot for everything you've done so far!

I'm signing up for a Juston account as soon as I finish downloading the 4 1/2 meg Virtual Machine crap. I've had to restart the download/install process 5 times cause it keeps dropping out. I couldn't even sign up at Freedrive and I tried everything. Which meant, of course, that I couldn't download the Silver bells mp3 that bevins posted a while back and I really wanted to try my hand at a guitar line for somebody else.

I'll tell you a little handy bug about Getright. There are many links that normally don't seem to trigger Getright. You can always copy the Url and paste it in but you can also usually right click, select copy shortcut and getright will pop up with the address in it's window. Drove me crazy till I realized how handy it was. later
 
Cool. Glad you liked it! You should check out what Drstawl does before you decide what you want though.

Like I said, it was done pretty quickly and I knew that I got off key. Man all that wacky chorus or whatever really fools the ear (and mine isn't good to begin with)! What's the root at :40 and 1:06 there? I had like four different ways of playing that and they all sounded "almost" right. I've never played this style before.

I did use a compressor but my bass is an absolute piece of crap running into a SansAmp DI box running into my piece of crap guitar amp where it's finally mic'd. The lower tones just die so I tend to really nail em making the sound somewhat uneven.

With this tune, however, I could try just DI'ing it...might help considerably with the level.

Oh, and the end was just a little "joke". I was screwing around and left it in there. Listening to it again....sounds like Soundgarden's Rusty Cage. If you want to take the end of the song down the dirty grunge trail we could work something out though...it'd definately be strange.

Don't know when I'll have the time for this. Since it's not something for me I'll probably get nervous and have to do a couple hundred takes :) I'm currently working on some web page design (icky grunt work) for a local company and I'm behind schedule. Maybe this weekend I can fart it out or something but I can't make any promises. Do you have a bass? If so I can tab it out for you too.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Crazyhorse,

Nice, laid back tune! I'm not much of a bass player, but I'll try adding a line this weekend and get it to you. Really liked the mellow, clear sound of the guitar track you recorded!
Ranger
 
I forgot to mention, anybody who hooks me up here could you please pan your bass line hard oneway and the tune the other way (if it's mono.) That wat I can extract it straight from the mp3 into Cakewalk for the final mix. If you're pushing some kind of stereo effects then just leave the tune out and just post your bass line. I kind of prefer mono cause I can only play back 6 audio tracks at a time so every stereo set eats up a third of my programs range.
My wife calls this 'her song' for some reason and she didn't like the idea of anybody else collaborating ont it. That was until she heard Slack's contribution, now she digs it! Thanks again everybody.

Ranger, thanks for the compliment. Sorry I took so long to reply, I crashed my hard drive and had to reinstall Windows & everything else like 10 times about a week ago. I'm gonna sit down tonight and come up with some ideas on Wasteland. I'll probably just work on some tweaking and rearranging of your two versions but I might break out the axe and do a little doodling. later
 
Gave a bass line a shot while waiting for a drummer. Noise at the start, and a click in the middle, but can be easily removed with an editor if you decide to use it for anything. Neat song.
www.freedrive.com
drive name: testmusic
password: 123456789

Emeric
 
Emeric, thanks :D a lot!!
After jumping through my own anus 9 times backwards I finally got onto Freedrive and downloaded your files. I had to get 'em both 'cause I didn't know what was what. I haven't checked out the other file yet, have you posted any links to it here before?
The bass line for my crap was right on. Cool the way you hit 5ths or whatever instead of rooting all the way through. I can tweak out the noises no problem. Also, thanks for the hard pans.
I'm gonna sit on everything cause a few other folks are supposed to be getting back to me and I'd like to give them a chance to finish their stuff or say screw it or whatever. You know, when I started this, I never thought about having to choose between several people's generous contributions. I figured I'd be lucky to get anything at all. You guys rule!

Slackmaster2K,
I had to go out of town, sorry I took so long for this...

@ 0:40 if you're dropped to D, you could play a E down to D (2nd fret to open on E string) or a F# to E (4th fret to 2nd) cause of my wacky tuning.

@ 1:06 this one could be D down to C (7th fret to 5th fret on E string) or once again, the same pattern two frets higher.

Now that I think about it, there is some pretty weird harmony going on here. I think the slow tempo and lazy feel are what makes it work, for me anyway.
 
Yeah I was using a dropped-D. I was playing F D F G# A# C. It does kind of work once your ears get used to it but I must admit that it does really clash the first time you hear it. I could try F# D F G#...or E D F G#...some interesting possibilities. At 1:06 I was pretty much doing the same thing, F D G# C...it's the F that's screwing things up.

Anyway, I could probably redo it if you're interested. If not then let me know. This has been kind of fun honestly. First time I've ever done anything musically over the net.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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