Greetings.
For those of you that don’t know, I’ve taken up music as a hobby and am teaching myself to play guitar/bass (as if my Facebook profile picture, constant status updates about it, and constant talking about it [for those of you who are unfortunate enough to associate with me in person] didn’t suggest otherwise). I’m taking the classic approach of learning by emulation.
One of my greatest mentors once told me that if you want to learn a specific style/technique of doing something, start trying to emulate that style exactly, because you’ll find that you won’t be able to emulate it to the letter. Subtle hints of your personality will influence the emulation and eventually you’ll have something else entirely. Well, surprise surprise, I’m learning by emulating what is, in my opinion (that I have made very clear [sorry to all of you who have to keep hearing about it]) the greatest band in the world: Muse. It’s the standard deal: pick a song, learn how to play it.
One of the many songs I’ve practiced is Interlude, the 7th track off Muse’s 3rd album Absolution. This track is a 38 second masterpiece. It takes Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and compresses it into a quick, eerie blend of heavily distorted guitar and bass with a hint of haunting falsetto. One of the reasons I picked this song is because it is a great starting song to get your feet wet with playing multiple parts, recording, and mixing, and the song’s simplicity tries to hide the fact that it’s really 30 seconds of tremolo picking (really really really fast picking of the strings, so that it sounds like one continuous note [think Miserlou or the intro to Knights of Cydonia]. When I wanted to practice increasing my tremolo picking speed, this song was the first choice.
So the other night, I’m messing around with my guitar and I notice that over the last few months that my stamina and speed had increased significantly, so on a whim, I recorded myself playing it. Well, I thought it sounded pretty good (which is surprising, because I usually think I sound like shit), so I grabbed my bass, hashed out a few takes of the bass track, and mixed it together (no haunting falsetto, though. I could record it, I just can’t imagine anyone would want to hear it):
Interlude (Cover).mp3 (1.47 mb)
It’s pretty much two tracks mixed together. The guitar part is my Ibanez S320 running through Guitar Rig 3 with a Quad Delay and a Studio Reverb effect chained after an Ultrasonic Aggressive [overdrive] amp/cabinet preset combo. The second part is the bass (a cheap Crate that I’m soon replacing with an Epiphone Thunderbird IV (sweetwater doesn’t have any in stock at the moment) with the same effects, just with a Bass Pro Distorted amp/cabinet instead of the Ultrasonic. Here’s the two separated tracks straight from Guitar Rig 3 (my bass picking is very uneven, and you can hear it in the track):
Interlude (Cover) [Guitar Track].mp3 (1.47 mb)
Interlude (Cover) [Bass Track].mp3 (1.48 mb)
They were mixed together with Adobe Soundbooth and a few more effects were added (some equalizing filters and more reverb for the guitar; some equalizing filters and an additional delay for the bass). There’s some obvious differences between my cover and the real deal: first and foremost, mine lacks the haunting falsetto (maybe I’ll add it in later). Second, the album version’s guitar part breaks the tremolo half way through the song to slide down and back up the neck and then continue the tremolo. I left this out on purpose, because I think it sounds better without it. Otherwise, it’s just minor differences (album has more fuzz and a more predominate guitar ending note, but then again, I didn’t record mine in a studio and I don’t really know jack shit about recording/mixing audio, I’m picking this up as I go).
Also, while I’m at it, I may as well post this other recording. It’s an emulation of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind riff that Bellamy uses as an intro to Knights of Cydonia during the Wembley Stadium performances on the HAARP DVD. When Bellamy plays it, it’s just the five notes from Close Encounters with a reverse delay effect and some fuzz, but Guitar Rig 3 doesn’t have a reverse delay that’s as smooth as the one he uses, so I started fidgeting around with various effects. I recorded this about a month ago, so I don’t even really remember what effects or branching is going on here (the Psychekiller FX preset in Guitar Rig 3 is the closest thing that reproduces the sound). Anyway, I think it sounds kinda funky/sci-fi:
Close Encounters Riff.mp3 (1.60 mb)
So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to these last few months. If people like these, I’ll post some other riff recordings I’ve got. And if anyone wants more info on how it was recorded/mixed/etc, I’ll gladly fill you in.
I just ordered a Fuzz Factory pedal from eBay. Once it gets here maybe I’ll upload some more stuff.