I enjoyed this tune (above), Les. I wouldn't even comment if I hadn't, if that gives you any confidence that I'm not just blowing up your skirt (not that blowing up skirts is a bad thing).
The "fretless bass" surprised me. It was convincing in the mix. Are you using a sampler?
Thanks! I hope to hear your work - pull it out of the vaults and get it out there!
The bass -- I used a sampler on that, which is unusual for me, because I can play bass. But I don't have a standup bass (or fretless), and I felt like that tune needed one. If memory serves, it was from a third party bass library that works with Native Instruments' Kontakt, which seems to be the most compatible software for third party samples. To give it a little more realism I used an SPL transient shaper so the attacks sound a little more natural - the idea is to have notes sound more like it's produced by fingers than keystrokes. I find with bass samples that when they have a player play a note to sample it, the player is naturally going to want to give the note a good pull so the tone is clear, etc. But when you play real bass with fingers, the attacks vary between notes, because our fingers don't do that, they pull a note differently with every stroke in sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle ways. So to vary how the notes are attacked when using samples gives them more realism.
I know that guys who make sample libraries will try to have the player vary the attack with different velocity levels, and different sample layers, but it still sounds stiff to me, so SPL makes a nice tool that allows me to get in there and add a little more realism here and there.
I probably also used a little parallel compression.
This tune was another one of those "period" pieces. I was thinking "cool" jazz, not bebop or other jazz styles. Stuff like that was coming out of CA and NY in the 60s. Pharaoh Sanders might have played on something in that style, though of course his work was much better. I wish I'd had a sax player for that one. I hate sax samples, so I won't use them. They're like guitar samples...they don't work at all.
This song is more what I expected by the description in your first post. But I enjoyed the first song more. In the same way chefs stray from safe food and usual flavors (presumably as a means to cure boredom), habitual musicians tend to stray from usual tones and chord progressions. In that regard, I'm guessing this song is more fulfilling for you to play than the first one.
I can't help but wonder how it would translate (as the listener) with a grand piano sample instead of the synth. I blame the first song for that.
Well, that tune came about in a kind of weird way. I was playing around with one of the soft synths from Arturia that emulate the old analog synths, and found a patch that sounded a lot like the fusion that was coming out in the late 70s and early 80s, with one of the oscillators tuned a fifth higher than the other one. Hence the title, "Welcome to 1982." I really wanted to do an early 80s thing.
So I started tweaking the patch to be even more 80s, and began noodling around in that style. The noodling turned into kind of a melody, so I recorded it, and then decided to add bass and drums to finish it to have guys be able to play around on the Forum with it. Without the patch with the oscillators set to different frequencies, the melody would be pretty boring.
It's one of those things like a tune that sounds good on guitar, but falls flat on piano -I doubt it'd work with piano, but I'll give it a whirl and see.
The new stuff I'm working on isn't jazzy-1980s fusion, it's contemporary; some edgy, some ambient. I'll post some of it once I've registered the copyrights.
I appreciate the kind words, Hans!