The Bass Geek

We’re only about a fourth of the way through the first Metalocalypse DVD, as far as episodes go. I did, however, stumble across a few of the easter eggs (press “up” from the first menu choice and look for the red highlights on eyes, a moustache, and the Dethklok logo), and the one that hit home was the guitar lesson. It captured PERFECTLY the instructional videos I used to horde when I first started learning bass guitar. They were helpful, but they aligned themselves in a lot of ways with the “shredder” style of playing. They got the tablature on the screen, the uncomfortable dialogue, and the potential alcohol problems down pat. It pleased me greatly, and it made me want to dig out the Stu Hamm tapes again (he could play the “Star Spangled Banner,” man!).*

Hell, I almost want to try playing some progressive metal. Break out the 7-string bass and let’s jam some Fates Warning, man!

Next DVD rental? Most like “Flight Of The Living Dead.” While I’m disappointed there won’t be a theatrical release for pure “Snakes On A Plane” pleasure, it should still be a fine viewing.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I still break out the main riff from “Country Music (A Night In Hell)” occasionally, whether it’s covering for a broken guitar string or just wanting to annoy my bandmates.

I’m still getting used to some new software - the new edition of Reason is now loaded on my laptop, and I’m try to play around with the new features a little bit. On first blush, the new Thor sythesizer is pretty spiffy - I was able to tweak some interesting sounds out of it, even though there’s a dangerous amount of knobs and controls on it. Since the primary use I have for Reason is live performance, the soft synth capability is key to me. I can appreciate the new tweaks for lanes and vector-based envelopes, but I’m not sure how much I’ll use that on stage. Same for the ReGroove function, although I could see the arpeggiator making its way into some of the live patches.

Oh, sure, there’s the possibility of using it for actual recorded tracks, but I’ve learned something about myself - as a songwriter, I seem to make good ringtones. Thirty or forty sketches, about thirty to forty seconds long, and that’s what I’ve got. The scoring project was a step in the right direction, I think, but even then I used more loops than I was really happy with. There’s some more music work coming down for me to handle, and I’m going to try and stretch a little bit on that. It specifically involves a lack of loops, so there goes that crutch right there.

I think I’m just used to creating bass lines for the songs I play on. Once I’m past that, it gets a lot harder. Not so much that I want to actually play guitar or anything, but I do want to see what else I could put together on top of the rhythm section.