Velvet Presley wrote:I fancy myself as a fairly decent bassist. I've had some fortune in and around Edinburgh doing what basically amounts to session work with bands in the local scene, but I've not got the time to hold a band together properly.
I too write and record, but purely to tape at the moment, and purely for fun because my songs end up as cack handed novelty fair with a fair bass groove. I've had no luck finding a decent recording software.
I think the sort of correspondence tribute album is a cracking idea.
I'd definately fancy participating but the means are more difficult for me than the method.
To be able to participate... all you should really need is your bass, an amp, a fairly decent microphone to point at your amp, an adapter to get the mic plugged into your PC, and a little bit of software that you and I can probably speak privately about.
For collaborating, here's how, I assume, it would have to work:
(first and foremost, in collaboration scenarios, it would be very highly preferable to work strictly with digital recording, since analog tape stretches and drags and fucks with your tempo, causing it to be nearly impossible to realistically use in a situation like this)
1. Players get together in groups and decide among themselves which song they want to cover, and how they want to cover it. They should settle on a particular tempo and tuning-scheme to make sure everyone is working from the same template.
2. Once a tempo is settled upon, someone creates a "click-track" mp3 which would be distributed among everyone involved. Each player could then practice their respective parts in time with the click track, and finally record themselves playing along with the click-track. As long as everyone is in tune with each other, and playing along with the click track, and settled upon specific parts of the song and how they're played, their parts should just drop nice and tight on top of each other for mixing.
A few issues with step 2:
a. A live drummer may require some rough/temporary guitar (and maybe vocal) tracks in addition to the click track, in order to properly play his parts.
b. anyone involved must have some sort of multitrack recording software or other means of properly hearing the click-track while simultaneously playing and recording their part WITHOUT RECORDING THE CLICK TRACK AS WELL. This is absolutely vital.
3. A predetermined person will receive all of the recordings (in the highest possible quality... preferably .wav files) and render a rough mix of the whole thing (per group/recording) to send to whomever will be recording the vocals. If such a "mixer" person is not available, I will be able to provide this service to anyone who needs it.
4. Once all of the vocal tracks are done, everything gets sent back to the mixer and he puts it all together into a nice pretty package.
5. Once the whole compilation is recorded and mixed all of the mixed songs will be sent to yet another person (yes, it should be one person for the whole album), to master.... which basically means adjusting each of the tracks so they're all the same volume and all have roughly the same audio dynamics. I can do this as well, but I think in a case like this it might be a good idea to find an actual professional.
6. If we're all happy with the project, maybe we could all pitch in and get a hundred or so CD's pressed and get some nice fancy cover artwork printed up and have something to sit up on the mantle and tell our grandchildren about.
The above steps are very general, and will involve a lot more as far as tiny details go... and I could be totally wrong about the whole thing, and if I am I'd appreciate if someone came along and set me straight.
