In The Studio: Colin Bullock
I guess he liked what I was doing.
After a gig with him in November, and another last month, Colin Bullock asked if I could come and play bass on his new record – essentially all the tunes we’d been playing live.
I headed out to Room & Board Studios in Abbotsford, BC, which is run by Ryan McAllister. Ryan’s band some years back was called Dakona, and they had some success in North America, signing to Maverick Records and presumably playing a crap-ton of shows all over the place. Turns out Ryan is a great producer, and even though he was officially just engineering and playing host, his laid-back vibe and songwriting experience helped us over a few humps with parts of songs here and there. He’s having me back next month for some more recording on other stuff, so I’m looking forward to working with him again on that.
As usual for bed tracks, it was just bass and drums for those two days. Colin and his producer/roommate Francis were kind enough to have put some work into preparing good quality guitar/vocal scratch tracks. Much more helpful than playing to a click and looking at a chord chart while annoying MIDI pads drone in the background. The drummer was the same as the live shows, and also a guy I’ve played with in The Reckoners, another Vancouver band. His name is Sam Heard and he’s a motherfucker on the drums. For example, drop the needle on any classic Tower Of Power tune and he will not only play Dave Garibaldi’s drum part verbatim but sing you the horn parts while he’s doing it. Sick. The two of us are such jazz-funk-fusion dorks I’m surprised we got anything done amidst the yakkin’.
Fun Fact: this was the first record where I’ve played every single one of my basses at least once — the Lakland 55-01, Ibanez acoustic bass guitar, Fury fretless Anthem bass, and the Geddy Lee Signature Series Fender Jazz. I think the album is going to sound rad.
I’ll have some video up of the sessions soon, as will Colin, but I’ll wait for the mixes and try to sync the video with that so you can hear everything. In the meantime, some photos from the sessions (and some more on Flickr):
Check out my Flickr page to see more photos from this and other recording sessions, as well as from live shows and tours.
Recording: Colin Bullock
A couple weeks ago I played my first gig with a talented chap named Colin Bullock, a singer-songwriter and guitar-player from Australia living here in Vancouver. Just days before the show he asked if I would be able to throw down a bass track on a new single so he could release it at the show with the launch of a new music video.
I was happy to oblige, so I recorded a bunch of solid passes with some different ideas here at the home studio. Not wanting to make any executive decisions without the artist present, I sent all nine tracks so Colin and his mixing engineer could figure out what they wanted to use. Listening to the finished track, I don’t really know if the bass part is a conglomeration of a bunch of takes or if they just took one they liked and slapped it on, but it seems to work either way.
We have another gig coming up at the Railway Club here in Vancouver on Wednesday, December 30, so I hope to see you there. In the meantime, keep up to date by checking out Colin’s Facebook Fan Page.
And here’s the video for “Something Worth Smiling For”…
Recording: Ben Rogers
Earlier this year I got a call from Matt Rogers, a great producer/composer/guitarist I met at UBC in the Music program. He asked if I wanted to play some bass on a few new tunes written by his brother, Ben.
I’ve played some live shows with Ben and Matt sporadically over the years, and each time was some of the most fun I’ve had onstage — the tunes are well-written and Ben is without exaggeration one of the most engaging and entertaining performers I’ve ever worked with. (As a side note, there was one show I did with Ben and Matt that wasn’t as fun, but that had very much to do with the fact that I had had four wisdom removed only days earlier, and was thusly A) self-concious of my swollen face, B) a bit under-nourished for lack of solid food, and C) whoozy from the Tylenol 3s).
Ben himself might tell you he has many musical influences to his bluesy folk tunes, but I think that Woody Guthrie and Tom Waits are pretty safe bets. I was stoked to hear some gospel singers added on the final tracks — great harmonies and such a rich, heavy sound. Because it was at Baker Street Studios, I was able to play the ’60s Hofner Violin Bass with the 30-year-old flat-wound strings again.
Ben has got some stuff cookin’ with a record label in Los Angeles, the details of which I don’t really know, but I was happy to head over to Baker Street Studios to spend the day with the Rogers’ and my buddy Ryan Stewart, a phenomenal drummer and producer in his own right.
Here are the finished tracks. Let me know what you think in the comments.
River At My Back Door
Time Will Tell
To see some more photos from this studio session, check out this Set on Flickr.
Recording: AJ Woodworth
Photo by Kris Krug
Photo by Kris Krug
In late February I was privileged to be asked to play some bass at recording session for the lovely and talented country singer-songwriter AJ Woodworth. I met her through my good friend, the irrepressible Jesse Tucker, who co-wrote a few of the tunes with AJ and played electric and acoustic guitar on the tracks.
I had gotten some demos of the songs and chord charts ahead of time, but I had never actually witnessed AJ singing in-person, nor had I met the producer for the session, Paul Shatto, drummer Kyle Radomsky, and keyboard player Simon Kendall who were also working the session out at Vogville Studios in Port Coquitlam, BC.
This is actually the kind of scenario that I love for one main reason: Even though I hadn’t met these folks previously, I knew them by reputation and résume and therefore knew that they were all excellent at what they do. That means that I get the thrill of making music with people I’ve never worked with before, all the while trusting that it’s probably going to turn out totally rad.
And I think I was right.
(Judge for yourself by listening the totally finished mixed-and-mastered tracks below.)
For anyone curious about the nuts-and-bolts of the day:
We did four songs in total. AJ sang a live scratch track for each take into a mic in the control room and Tucker played scratch guitar tracks in there as well. Bass and wurlitzer and drums were all set up in the same room, which I like because I can watch the drummer to make sure I lock in with what he’s doing. We did four or five takes of each song on average, everyone helping to make slight arrangement and harmonic adjustments as necessary. For two tunes I played my Lakland 55-01, and for the other two I played a 1970s Fender Precision bass (with strings older than me) that was graciously loaned to me by my buddy Dave Hall. Both basses sounded killer through the Avalon M5 preamp and perfect for their respective songs — the Lakland a bit more slick and growly for the poppier stuff and the Fender to get a bit more of a vintage R&B-style tone. Simon did some more keyboard overdubs (Hammond organ, etc.) on a different day, and all the guitars and final vocals were done over the course of a week or two after my session.
To see some behind-the-scenes photos of the session go to my Flickr page.
AJ is a tremendously talented artist who is moving up fast in the Canadian country music scene, so expect to hear her name again if you’re into this kind of music.
“Get Away Car”
(M. Pulver/C. Thorsteinson/D. Ruttan)
“Real Best Man”
(J. Tucker/A.J. Woodworth)
“Love Like That Too”
(J. Tucker/A.J. Woodworth)
“Right Our Wrongs”
(J. Tucker/A.J. Woodworth)
Recording: Cory Woodward
In February I got a call from my friend Matt Rogers, an accomplished producer/composer/arranger here in Vancouver. He was producing an album for a singer-songwriter named Cory Woodward at Baker St. Studios in North Vancouver, B.C.
Maybe this says a little something about how “picky” I am about projects I work on, but I hadn’t even heard any of Cory’s previous work when I replied to Matt with an immediate “Yes please.” I was at UBC in the music program at the same time as Matt. We spent some time in the Jazz Band together there and he pulled me to play bass on an album he produced a couple years ago. The stuff Matt works on ranges from music for TV and film to demos to full albums of all different genres. That said, if he’s stoked about a project it usually means that he’s going for something original and something that maybe people haven’t really heard before. Even better. Not only am I “in” but now I’m excited about it, too.
After a couple rehearsals, a personnel change in the drum department resulted in Ryan Stewart coming in at the last minute to learn 10 tunes in one night. If you had to have a drummer learn 10 tunes in a night you would probably want it to be Ryan. These days Ryan has his producer hat on more than anything. Among other things, last year he co-wrote and produced the debut album for Canadian Idol finalist Carly Rae Jepsen which had a couple hits on radio. Having someone like Ryan who is listening and thinking like a producer to the entire sound of each song and not just hyper-focused on drum parts is a major bonus.
The tunes? For lack of a better description I’ll just repeat was said to me: Arcade Fire-meets-Born In The USA-era-Springstein. Cory is a great songwriter with a really awesome voice like Springstein and maybe a bit of early Tom Waits in there too. Make no mistake – this isn’t a retro act. The songs are modern and quirky and original. Even if they borrow from classic rock paradigms, something always gets turned on its head.
I got to play the studio’s bass: a 1960-something Hofner violin bass (AKA, a “Beatle bass”) with strung with flatwounds that are older than I am. Sustain was almost non-existent, which was perfect. It sounded rad, finger-style and especially with a pick, which is not something I play with very often.
Matt and Cory are likely still working hard on finishing the record. There was talk of a horn section, big synths, guitars, string arrangements — I don’t exactly know what they will be layering on top of our bass and drums, but I can’t wait to hear it.
Check out more photos of the recording sessions on my Flickr page.
I also have some video that I will put up here when the songs are finished. Stay tuned!
No Recipe: Part 2
Below is the first pass of the new music for my friend Pasquale’s animated short, “No Recipe”. The piece begun as a school project for Paz, but the chance to screen it after the fact was motivation enough to bump things up a bit with new music and sound effects.
What you’ll see and hear in the version below is original dialogue, new music, and new scratch sound effects the Paz did just for the screening. Those sound effects will be the next things that I’ll be replacing, and there are some definitely some spots where I could add some more music as well.
I did the music in Logic 8 with the available software instruments and a USB MIDI keyboard controller, and I’m not going to pretend that the orchestra doesn’t sound a bit fake here and there, but Abbey Road Studios was booked and I couldn’t get in there with the LSO on short notice. My bad. Throughout the writing and tracking (which were simultaneous processes in this case) I had a few web browser tabs open with YouTube uploads of old Looney Tunes and some newer stuff from the Cartoon Network that Paz suggested, like Dexter’s Laboratory, as inspiration. No, I did not plagiarize anything…even if I had wanted to it would have taken me longer to try and duplicate that music than to come up with my own.
Not in my wildest dreams could I ever come close to doing what guys like Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn did in their time. These two gents were the geniuses behind the classic Warner Bros. cartoon scores, and in case you’re inclined towards brushing them off, I invite you to watch this and listen closely to the music, thinking about the fact that each and every sound was thought up and then written down before being performed by an orchestra to a click-track (that they invented) and synched to the animation basically on-the-fly as it was being recorded. Skill, folks, skill and talent. Stalling wrote a full score every week during his two decades at that job.
I remember when I was at school I talked to Dennis Esson, a local trombonist (tromboner?), about performing these type of cartoon scores. He is a very accomplished musician both in classical music and jazz, and he said that without a doubt it is some of the hardest music to play because of the rapid key, tempo, and time signature changes, and because advanced techniques in the extremes of the range are called upon for each instrument on a regular basis: Stuff that’s really high or really low or really squeaky or growly or weird, etc.
Back to me and Logic 8. That particular software package doesn’t give me access to any samples of the kinds of zany things that instrumentalists are called upon to do on a session for a cartoon, not that I would necessarily know when and how to employ them if it did. I haven’t done anything exactly like this before, but it was fun jumping in the deep end with a deadline looming. Coming up with snippets of music that corresponded with the action on screen was the hardest part, and I found that in order to get the timing right I had to sort of start at my desired ending point and work backwards with the writing in order to figure out how many bars I needed at a given tempo. Details such as that are not normally a concern whilst playing bass in a country band.
So here’s the lastest iteration of “No Recipe”, a work in progress:
No recipe, remastered from darkmotion on Vimeo.
Check out a good article about the genius of Carl Stalling here.
No Recipe: Part 1
My friend Pasquale D’Silva is an illustrator and animator who lives in Brisbane, Australia. We was also instrumental in getting this very website off the ground.
There is something truly special about having friends in creative fields, because you can have conversations that might go something like this [DRAMATIZATION]:
Me: “Wow, Paz! Thanks for creating that awesome illustration you completed in just 6 minutes! That’s amazing!”
Paz: “No problem – anytime. It’s fun and I’m insanely good at it.”
Me: “Hey, if there’s any animation projects that you need music or sound design for, just let me know. I’d be happy to work on something like that.”
Paz: “Sure thing. I’ll take you up on that sometime soon.”
That time has come, so I’m going to see if I can put together a score for a cartoon that Pasquale has been working on. I think I’ll try to do my best Carl Stalling impression, taking into account that he was a genius and I’m a bass player.
Fun, eh? It’s bartering, but at the end you’ve participated in making something awesome, instead of the usual type of bartering where you get an old goat or something from medieval times.
Here’s the video as it is now, with the original music and sound effects. We’ll see how it plays when I’m done with it. It’s a grand experiment, but I’m happy to have a go at it, and I’ll try an post newer versions if time (and Paz) allows.
No recipe from darkmotion on Vimeo.
