“Wait, what? Why are we talking about vocals now, Benedikt?”, you might be asking. So you can not really use that as a tuning reference. You then probably stop recording and re-tune the guitar, but it’s still gonna be off, so you start questioning your guitar setup and all kinds of other factors until you realize that you have to re-record the bass.Ī scratch guitar track doesn’t always avoid this problem, because demos and scratch tracks are often done with instruments that haven’t been set up perfectly, or had old strings on them and the performances are also not perfect most of the time. ![]() If you do it the other way around, you’re likely to get into trouble, because a bass part that you thought was ok, turns out to be out of tune, as soon as you add in the guitar.Īnd sometimes you can not instantly tell, if the guitar is the problem, or the bass. If you then play the bass to a perfectly in-tune guitar, it’s so much easier to spot flat or sharp bass notes. If a guitar is out of tune, you instantly notice it, because it’s much easier to hear tuning issues in that higher register and also, because you’re most likely listening to chords, not only single notes, when you’re listening to a guitar. But you just might not hear that without context. What I’m trying to say is: The pitch is gonna be inconsistent, no matter what you do, so you should constantly re-tune. You can accommodate for that by tuning a little lower, but then softer parts might be slightly flat. Picking hard with your right hand (which you usually should do, by the way), causes the pitch to go up. Slightly bending the string, or putting too much pressure on the string changes the pitch dramatically. Especially if you’re not listening to chords, but a sequence of individual notes and intervals.Īnd there will always be sharp or flat notes, even with a perfectly setup instrument. ![]() The lower the notes, the harder it is to hear if something is slightly sharp or flat. You might record the bass right after the drums and you might think it sounds just fine. Nobody will question it and it’s gonna be much easier and won’t hurt the song as much to simply adjust the bass line or groove a bit instead of changing the guitar part. If you start with rhythm guitars (or at least have a really solid guitar scratch track to play to), all the riffs, licks and chord progressions are set in stone, as soon as you start to record bass. Because now, as soon as you add the guitars, you suddenly notice the difference and you only have two options:Įither re-record the bass part, or change the guitar part. Now, if you’ve recorded bass before guitars, you’re screwed. You’ve been thinking everybody is on the same page about how all the parts are supposed to be played, but in fact they’re not. You might not have noticed those kind of things in the loud rehearsal room and, depending on how well you did your pre-production, you might not have noticed it in the demos. A chord change might be a 16th note earlier or later, the picking pattern might be slightly different in one spot, or she simply played something that goes super well with the drums but in the end it turns out that it distracts the listener from the main riff or lessens the impact of a certain part. ![]() If you’ve done your pre-production right and listened carefully to how all the elements play together, you’ve probably come up with a bass line that not only sounds cool on it’s own and makes people move, but fits both the drum groove and the guitar pattern.Ĭhances are, though, that your bass player might have missed a small detail in the guitar riff. It’s often the characteristic feature of a part or song that the listener will recognize instantly. And if not, the guitar riff and pattern will probably still be more prominent and upfront in the final mix. Whatever it was, you most likely added a bass line to it after the guitar idea. ![]() Maybe a guitarist had a riff and you built upon that, maybe there was a cool lick, picking pattern or chord progression. Most of your songs and their individual parts were probably written on the guitar.
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