WEBLOG:
A few days ago, I recorded my first bass cover, of WJSN’s “You Got.”
I recorded using my new bass, the Ibanez EHB1505. It was recorded DI (Direct Input) into my audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 3rd Gen), through a software amp plugin (KUASSA’s Cerebus Bass Amp Simulator), tweaked to match the tone of bass of the original recording as much as I could, so you won’t be hearing the natural tone of the EHB1505. It’s more of a compressed and punchy sound, which suits the song well.
I had stopped doing music seriously for almost ten years ( been focused on writing novels instead). But suddenly I got this itch to play bass again towards the end of 2018 (I played a little bit of bass for a few years in the past, but never got far with it). The bass was always my favorite instrument to play because it’s more visceral than guitar and not as fiddly. It requires more varied techniques than keyboard, and has a strong sense of groove like drums, but with melodic and harmonic possibilities. Also, there are plenty of songs that don’t have guitar in the arrangement, or keyboard, or drums, but very few songs don’t have a bassline (the only real exceptions are acoustic songs with just one accompanying instrument like piano or guitar). So this means as a bass player, I can pretty much play on any song and not sound out of place, no matter what genre it is.
The main motivation for me starting bass again after all these years, was to do bass covers of songs I love. I was never into doing covers, and had done extremely few in all my years as a musician. Original music was always my main focus, as I enjoyed composing/arranging the most, and because of that, I never put much effort into practicing instruments, so I was never a very good player. Now that more than half of my life is over, I’d like to master at least one instrument at an advanced level for my own enjoyment. I still have far to go, but this is the first step. I’m not too happy with the cover as I think the timing could be better, and maybe in the future after I’ve leveled up more, I’ll try covering the same song again and see how much better it will be.
