One new and one oldish tune

Two more collaboration tunes for you.

The first is an oldish one Arryth
This is a rock song that unfortunately (In My Opinion) seems to have been forgotten about, or dropped, or something, but anyways I really enjoyed playing on it and am quite proud of the bass line I came up with (hence the reason it's up here) and I also really like the vocal performance - all in all I actually dig this tune a lot.

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Next up is something completely different to the above,
No Name Bossa is a smooth as silk latin jazz thing.
This tune really needs an upright (double) bass to do it justice, which I don't unfortunately have, so I did the best I could on my fretless, the other collaborators seem to like it anyways so here it is.

I'm not as familiar as I'd like to be regarding latin rhythms, but hearing the above I couldn't resist. This I find is the beauty about collaborating you can try stuff out and get knowledgeable feedback and crits pretty quickly, that is apart from the fun of making music, being able to change genre at will and "meeting" other musicians online.

I should mention this on all the posts I guess, but most of the tunes I post here are work in progress and not yet considered finished - unless stated otherwise

Passing Passion - another collaboration

Hmm, I seem to be getting a bit more busy on this blog - guess it's all well and good.
Anyways, I got myself involved in another collaboration on Kompoz called Passing Passion.

This is a bit of a pop/funk/jazz tune a la Incognito
Anyways here's how the tune stands ATM

Hope you enjoy

Two more Collaboration tunes.

I've been a little active on kompoz.com lately and laid down two "audition" tracks.

The first is with the fretless on a tune called
Zachary (You're Coming Home)
It had acoustic guitar and vocals to start with so here's my take

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The second is called
My Way Back To You
and is described as "80's style synth rock, ala Duran Duran, Missing Persons, Kajagoogoo." so as a complete change of style I dug out the fretted ... here's my take.

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Both of these are work in progress I'll try to remember to post updates if anything significant happens to them

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Keep Me Away From You (two versions)

First update for the year and it's only January :)
Sometimes when I have the time I join in a jam on the internet, known as a collaboration.
Anyways, every now and then as song gets "published" which basically means that that tune is now declared finished.
This recently happened with Keep Me Away From You (solo vocal version) which is a fork of Keep Me Away From You by Danny Milligan and was originally conceived as a duet.

The original tune

was published last year but dazzle fly, the female vocalist, liked it so much she decided to do her own solo version, so here it is.

Anyways, both versions have the same music, tho' I think I prefer the solo version.
I was kinda hoping for a re-mix as a bit of a timing issue crept in somewhere as the bass isn't quite as tight as I played it, especially near the beginning, and this (timing issue) was carried over into this project .... oh well, 'tis a small thing, tho' it irks me ... but on the whole I'm pretty proud it, and I guess most won't hear what I am, so excuses aside here it is.

Here are the links once again.
Keep Me Away From You (solo vocal version)
Keep Me Away From You (original version).

Any comments are welcome :)

Dodgy Diagonal D-flat Ditty

Dodgy Diagonal D-flat Ditty

Ok, this post follows on from the last I'm just seeing how SoundCloud shares things directly.... 2 posts in one day ..... amazing :)

Anyways, this is just a fretless workout, should be technically called a C# Locrian thingy but that doesn't illiterate as well.... anyways enjoy. Hmmm, the preview doesn't seem to include the player, so here you are ... the fancy one :)

A few more tunes

Here are a few more tunes I've been playing with. as well as just getting something up on SoundCloud. Firstly a couple more with Mood Indigo both of which are guitar and piano tho' we are working at more bass and piano pieces ... stay tuned :)

Summer Song by Mood indigo

Low C Boogie by Mood indigo

A little study in E Flat

Ok, I'm back with a study just before X-mass.

This is in Eflat Major (as the title says :) and has three main parts.

1) A bit of "clawhammer" with the Right Hand to start with.
2) A "tapping" section
3) Lastly finishing off with harmonics.

This is still a work in progress, and that's my excuse for some of the rough edges on the mp3 example that you can find here.

Eflat Major study mp3




pdf is here

Tone wise I have VERY old strings on ... not my fault I can't seem to get D'Addario EXL165 bass strings anywhere in Cape Town for some reason (quite miffed) and this is what I use ... any donations welcome :) .

I use a GT-PRO into REAPER, the latter I've mentioned before, and I'm still blown by what it can do ... everything I need so far and more besides, for the GT-PRO I tweaked a patch I found somewhere on the net GT_Pro-Jazz.mid GT_Pro-Jazz.gtl and kicked off the delay.



There are a few gotchas in this piece.

Section 1) I use my RH index, middle and thumb for all but the string skipping section where I use my ring finger instead of my middle.

Section 2) Apart from where it goes down to B it's a "Victor Wooten" type pattern that recurs in major and minor arpeggios.

Section 3) I really struggled and failed with my software to notate this nicely, so you'll just have to do the best you can listening to the mp3.
The first harmonics can be natural at the 5th fret ...or... fretted at 5 and pinched at 24 which you need to do anyways for the others (ie. fret at 6 and pinch at 25) the high harmonics are pinched near around 32 or so ... near my neck pickup, you'll just have to find it for yourself. The LAST harmonic may be resolved easily by fretting the G# and pinching the high note ... or in a more flashy manner, reach over with your RH and a) tune up the string : b) grab the string behind the fretted note and bend (it's surprising how FAR you have to bend it for a semi-tone)

If anyone reads, and can make sense of this, have fun with it, comments appreciated.

A coupla tunes

Hi again,
After the (by now usual) long silence - been a bit (real world) busy in the meantime, here are a couple of tunes I've been working on.

The Elephant Song I did with Hugh Coutts, a really cool songwriter, he played guitars and sang, in a few different keys :) before we settled here.
He recorded the guitar and vocal tracks at home then brought them to me, I added and mixed the rest with a bit of backwards and forwards in between.
I'm more of an engineer than a producer when it comes to recording so I took it to a good buddy of mine Pete Stanford who then added a few deft touches, whilst giving me a lesson in things audio, thanks Pete, and here it is, comments welcome.

Looking Back (at you) I did with Lamecia who I used to play with back in the late '90s, her voice always impressed me, but we lost touch for years, then we connected again (via FaceBook), she said she has some songs, so I said lets do it.
This is one of quite a few songs, but The BarleyCorn was having a song-writing competition and as this was the one nearest completion we entered it. Again any comments welcome.

Just in-case the above links to the tunes don't work properly, you should be able to find them here.
http://www.reverbnation.com/hhhza


'till I next add something ...

Last tunes for the year

Hi again,

Please click here to listen to tunes.

This is probably my last post for the year, been quite productive even if this blog does not really reflect it ... other than by its absence of entries.

Anyways I'm quite impressed with reverbnations management tools, so I've created my own hhh profile


The couple of songs in there to get it going were recorded mostly just to have fun and learn some tools at the studio - hence Gello.
Gello Studios

Elliot doing most of the sequencing and keys, John doing vox, his son Matt on lead guitar, myself on bass and rhythm and Matts Gfriend doing fem vox.

quirky

Ok, hello hi again,
Tho' this blog has been quiet I have been a little busy ...
I've moved house, tho I'm still in Cape Town South Africa ... which has had it's own power/political etc... crisies and drama, thogh we live to tell the tail.
Anyways, since I started this blog my brother in law and a buddy heard some of the stuff, so we decided to record it and see where it goes, Ive been looking around for how to host stuff, so this is more or less a test to check out how it embeds from reverbnation.com.







I will be adding more tunes and see how that goes ... who knows perhaps thois space will become busy again. :)

lil loop

On http://www.guitarforum.co.za they are running a little competition for a theme tune and yesterday Sepheritoh came up with a cool idea around the South Africa Guitar Forum.

So building on this I spent a loopy afternoon recycling a drum loop to 110bpm.
Then a clean dry bass line, it will be nice if someone uses this, it's played a bit off the beat but is split on the beat so it can be worked easily.
Then lastly the sketch.

If you're interested the posting is here.

Bettina

Ok, here's an oldish one (circa '94) called Bettina, it's pretty much a bass solo at the moment and started out as a tapping exercise, tho' it did come up as an intro for a tune called "Vibe" from one of my previous bands, so anything is possible.

For now I just did a quick take from memory... and then found that the tabbed version is not quite the same... but anyways...As with most of the stuff on this blog it's the ideas that count, polish can happen later if there's interest.

After my last attempt at formatting, the TAB it's now a plain text file, this can be opened with any word processor.
Bettina.tab

For the samplers out there this is a clean chorused bass at 120bpm.
Bettina.mp3

Lastly I've included the GT-Pro patch I used for this tune, after my last blog this now includes the loudness patch (FM curve) on FX1 which is set to off as default.
I use a Behringer FCB1010 midi foot pedal to change patches and such. For simplicitys' sake I currently use it on it's default V-Amp setting (1+6), if you have one of these also then rocking Expression Pedal A will bring up a dirtier/dryer tone with a Wha on Expression Pedal B.
Bettina.gtl

A bit with a Bass

Right Oh,
After doing the A Study thing, I decided to try a bass line for it, so here it is complete with the drumbeat that I used for a metronome.

A Study with bass


If you would like the bass tab or solo'd mp3 leave a comment.

A study

Ok, to kick things off here is a kinda study in A major.

Right click here to download.

For anyone wanting to use the sample it's a clean(ish) guitar at 100 bpm.

For guitarists here's the TAB, once you get the idea, feel free to play around your own self. I find using a half barre (chord) most of the time make it easier.

Phrase 1
E||------------------------|----------------------|------------------------|
B||--10----10----9----9----|--7----7----9----9----|--10----10----9----9----|
G||---9-----9----9----9----|--7----7----9----9----|---9-----9----9----9----|
D||--11----11----9----9----|--7----7----9----9----|--11----11----9----9----|
A||---0--------------------|--0-------------------|---0--------------------|
E||------------------------|----------------------|------------------------|

E Change A Change
---------------------|----------------4----|----------------5----|
--7----7----5--------|--5-------------5----|--5-------------5----|
--7----7----6--------|--4-------------4----|--6-------------6----|
--7----7----7--------|--6------------------|--7------------------|
--0------------------|-----------7---------|--0--------0---------|
---------------------|--0------------------|---------------------|

Phrase 2 Nice Open Chord
----------------------|-----------------------|--------------0-----------|
--2---------3----5----|-------5----3--3--2----|-----------3-----3--------|
--2---------2----4----|-------4----2--2--2----|--------0-----------0-----|
--2---------4----6----|-------6----4--4--2----|-----4-----------------4--|
--0----0--------------|--0--------------------|--0-----------------------|
----------------------|-----------------------|--------------------------|

A to End
--------------------------|--5----------------||
-----------2--3--5--3--2--|--2----------------||
--------2-----------------|--2----------------||
-----2--------------------|-------------------||
--0-----------------------|--0----------------||
--------------------------|-------------------||

A bit about

This blog is an experiment on a number of levels.

I am a bassist based in Cape Town South Africa, I recorded with a couple of bands in the mid '90s.
A few older mp3s.


My main instrument is an Ibanez Musician/Roadster which is a four string bass with 24 frets, and passive pickups but active electronics and so can be played either way. I mostly play passive but find the active useful if the sound dudes is having trouble.

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This blog, TABs mixes etc. are, unless otherwise mentioned, licensed under Creative Commons SA. which means that you may use them in anyway you like, but you must credit its origins, ie you put a link to your site in the mp3 comment field and on your site you place a link to this page. I think that’s how it works. It is also share alike so others can do the same with your work based or borrowed from this.

Please If i have misinterpreted or left something out post a comment, but if nothing else the above should state the intent.

Also should you want higher quality samples, other mixes, or something else similar to what is here, by all means ask.