Robert is from Washington DC and he sent me a load of guide tracks over a few months to record bass on. The tracks were the kind of groovy, pop, dance music that is amongst my favourite genres to play.
I will very often be given a backing track with no vocals and the minimum of instruments to record to and this was the case here. The brief was a dream come true. He said ‘I love James Jamerson and Jaco Pastorius, I want some of that influence’. Now clearly I’m no Jaco or JJ but I was excited that Robert wanted the bass to be quite prominent on his tracks so I just free styled it!
I used my 1978 Fender Precision and recorded a couple of takes, really just improvising grooves and melodic lines. Mixing and editing was taken care of by Josh Woods and Tim Biery played drums on a few tracks on the album. Tim is a monster drummer who has worked with guitar greats Danny Gatton, Frank Marino, and Nils Lofgren.
I always send a clean DI and a slightly fatter signal; either a tube preamp signal or amp track. That gives options when mixing. I don’t know how Josh mixed my Precision bass but I love the sound he got here.
The final mastered tracks sound so different to the ones I played on and highlights the true online collaboration that happens between a remote session player, composer and mixing engineer.
