With the drums done, the foundation for Alroight Bab is set. It’s time to build on that with some bass. The last post took a closer look at the bass in question, now it’s time to put it to work.
I wandered around Astoria to record drums, but now, I’m back in the comfort of the apartment for recording bass. It’ll be a very simple affair: probably the simplest instrument to track in terms of setup.
Bass: rig run down
- ASUS Chromebook Flip C100PA
- Samson Studio GT monitors
- Beyerdynamic DT-100 headphones
- Cort Gene Simmons Axe bass
- Pig Hog 10′ sea foam green instrument cable
- Bass strings: Ernie Ball Regular Slinky
- Jim Dunlop Gator Grip 1.14mm picks
This is easily the simplest set up. I’m sticking with BandLab – it would be weird to sack it off at this stage.
Preparation
To be honest, the most preparation that went into this was figuring out what to play. I intermittently widdled around in the previous couple of days trying to figure something out, but I was still figuring it out before and as I was recording.
I don’t have any kind of bass amp or preamp or DI box, or, well anything really, so I just kind of plugged it directly into my audio interface.
Recording
I muted the guitars from the scratch track, and reduced the vocals so they were barely audible, in order to focus on the drums, and playing in time with them.
An annoyance with BandLab is the phase issues. Listen to this video – the first half is playing along with the monitors; the second half is what BandLab played back to me…
I might be missing something, but I can’t find how to stop this. It’s annoying to have to keep dragging what I just recorded back, but considering all I’m getting from BandLab, I’ll STFU.
Another little shortcoming of BandLab is its effects list. In dedicated DAW software, I always stuck on a bunch of compression to give it some welly. But this is all BandLab could offer up.
Conclusion
| Pros | Cons |
| Setup: I don’t know where it’s going to be any easier than this | BandLab: That phase issue and the limited options for things to apply to your bass sound |
| Recording in the apartment: It’s just great to be able to do it | No bassist: as with drums, it’s loads easier if you have a band with people dedicated to doing their bit |
| A-Design Reddi: I don’t have one |
Here’s where I’m up to. I’m probably most excited for the next step: guitars!
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