How To Write A Song! 4
by Jayme Gutierrez
I forgot to mention about the end of the song..
Obviously I had already written the ending, before I started putting the complete piano and drum tracks down. Sometimes an ending can be quite hard to come up with and it can take me days!
For this song I’ve decided to end it with everything dropping out, apart from the guitar (which I haven’t written yet, but I kind of have an idea of what I want, in my head) and letting that go one for a bit and then fade out.
So, after all that is done, I start to write the Bass..
First off, before I do any writing, I start finding the right bass sound and tone for the song. I forgot to mention this about the piano and drums (especially the kick and the snare). It is SO important to choose the right sounds, and that they go well together.
It’s like cooking; Some flavors taste lovely on their own, but when mixed with other flavors they taste HORRIBLE! ..and vise-versa. Putting in just one wrong sound can completely change the whole flavor of the track!
So a lot of time needs to be spent in getting the sounds right.
For this song in particular I have decided that it needs real bass, as opposed to analog or digital.
Now, seeing as I don’t have loads of different basses to choose from, I’ll have to conform with the only one I have, which is a jazz bass. Lucky for me, this should to fine for this song!
So, first off; fining the right tone:
I usually set up a mono audio track and patch it through a stereo group channel track with “Guitar Rig 4” on an insert. The reason for this is because it’s a stereo effect and the bass is mono, so if I just simply made a stereo audio track, I’ll be recording in stereo. That means that the audio file size will be twice as big as needed.
Once I have that set up, I then start finding the right tone. There is no method for this, just messing around with different amps, compressors, distortions, e.t.c. I do this in “Guitar Rig 4“. This can take quite a while…
When I’ve finally found the right tone, I can then start to write.
I like bass lines. They can be very interesting. In this song I’ve decided to keep the bass fairly simple. So that it basically, more or less, follows the chords without “going off on one”.
I like to coordinate the bass and the “kick drum” (Bass Drum), so I try to make sure that a bass note strikes wherever there’s a strong kick drum. I think it’s very important to listen to just the drums and bass together, just to make sure they gel together nicely. Sometimes I’ll find myself taking out or moving a bass note, or even adding a note because it doesn’t fit well enough with the beat. Sometimes I’ll end up changing the beat instead! If I do decide to change the beat, I have to go back to the previous project, change the beat, then re-bounce down the whole drum track again. Now, I know some people may be thinking; “Why don’t you just splice the part that you’ve changed, that way you don’t have to wait that long for it to bounce”? (Bounce down only the part I’ve changed and then cross-fade it in and out of the existing drum track) True, but I don’t think that it’s that much quicker, plus having no cross-fades means that your processor has one job less to do!
So, that’s the bass..
..stay tuned for more soon!
WordPress
Facebook
Google + 