BassDress Blog

In celebration of Vybz Kartel’s possible release from prison, I felt like putting together some dancehall tunes. Well, riddims really, but then lazily pasting some AI separated vocals overtop.

For the record, Vybz totally killed that guy but, what you going to do?

The first one is a remix of Spice “Under Fire” and it’s probably the most successful of the bunch. Modern, poppy, dancehall beats. Lots of fake drum rolls and gun cocking samples. Bassline is a Behringer Model D (I love this thing man, go buy one!), drums are… I can’t quite remember. I know the kick is a Jomox MBase01 processed through a Waldorf 2-pole filter. Other than that I can’t remember Lots of Eventide H9 in the background which makes a basic mix sound quite big. I should have compressed the bass on this a little more, it’s a bit ‘big’ sounding for my tastes now but there’s worse things to have in a mix than a big wobbly analogue bass.

Second tune is Irah “Program”. More of a classic riddim this one. Draws heavily from the classic Cough & Spit riddim by Rythm Tracks. Heavily filtered Korg Polysix bassline and chunk box guitar sample processed with a few guitar pedals and bit of spring reverb from the Vermona DSR-3. I think the vocal is amazing, but it’s doesn’t quite sit right for me. The riddim is good and solid though. Lots of folly percussion for atmosphere – gotta get my money out of that spring box.

Last tune is the weakest. It’s the first one I made, but I guess I didn’t quite have my ear in. Too busy and messy. Initially I was riding the effects on the snare and tweaking as we went, but it was just too big so I gated the tail quite aggressively and it’s removed a lot of the effect. Some nice harmonising in the chorus on the outro though. riddim works well on it’s own, although you can hear there’s too much going on in the background.

Anyway, there they are. If nothing else, it may interest some people to go checkout the originals.

Peace to Vybz Kartel (don’t shoot me!)

There’s a gulf of under appreciated work in Bowie’s career, somewhere between ’93 to 2000. To me this is some of the most experimental and nostalgia-less work Bowie ever did. It’s certainly some of my favourite, and I think it is very successful in decoupling Bowie for his earlier endeavours (for better or worse).

With the development of new AI tools (Jesus Christ, have I really become a blogger who harps on about this AI bullshit now? Is that what this is?), we can, and reasonably cleanly, separate the vocals from these session. Or indeed any session or recording.

I wanted to build something from the 1. Outside album. Not traditional remixes, but sort of sound scapes that encompass the tone and atmosphere of the original recordings (I’ve completely disappeared up my own arse). Harsh and unforgiving. Experimental and inaccessible, but interesting. I want them to be challenging and unique. The acid test for this is to have a casual listener say the words “is this even music?!”

With that in mind, here is my remix (I hate that word) of “Hearts Filthy Lesson”. It’s unfinished, unpolished, unmastered, and that’s how it’s staying. I think if I work any more it’ll lose its uniqueness.

This was made with a Waldorf Microwave XT, some percussion instruments, some guitar pedals, a Mackie mixing desk and a Vermona DRM1. Oh, and some effects, like the TC Electronic Firework and Jomox T-Resonator and an Eventide H9. I think that’s it. The kick is sampled from my Jomox Base 01. Not that the gear is particularly interesting, as most of the sound comes from the editing.

I don’t know how I feel about this. It’s noisy and aggressive, it’s really a very difficult listen. But I’ll be damned if I don’t say there’s something about it I like it a lot. It’s the type of stupid, intentionally weird and challenging thing I’m proud of making. It’s horribly self indulgent and I expect almost no one else to like it.

And actually, that’s fine with me because even I’m not sure if this really is music.

As many of you know, I’ve been struggling to make my studio work for me. I had an ageing (ok, antique) Mac Pro, lots of hardware and little time. I ran a multiple MOTU 24IOs, but they became unsupported on more modern version of MacOS and even with tweaks, were never really fully reliable.

Constant fixing, tweaking and head scratching caused a huge drop in my productivity and enthusiasm for what is, if truth be told, one of my only true passions.

I sold the 2008 Mac Pro cheese grater and 24IOs, bought a Mackie mixer (really good btw, would recommend) and moved to a two channel ADC. This worked, and allowed for the “hands on” things I’m looking for. However, it was slow. Like really slow. Recording a single track at a time and in one shot was too much of a compromise. It allowed access to my gear, but in a very limited capacity. It was ok for live jams, but that’s not the point of what I’m doing.

I think moved to an iPad with Logic. This was wonderful, it was silent, cheap and worked shockingly well. It really is the future. However there are two show stoppers for my production – I can’t record directly to the sampler (as in the full fat MacOS version) and it was a pain to bounce midi tracks to audio. I quickly found it to be inefficient.

I then entered what I’d like to call the “fuck it” stage – blindly throw money at the problem. I bought myself a Mac Studio M2, a MOTU 24ai and three Behringer ADA8200s to use as ADAT expansions. This gives me a total of 48 inputs and 24 inputs. Running some of my synths in mono, this was enough.

So how does it all work? Well , the learning curve for me was tough, setup was difficult and I had to try and understand what the hell AVB was. The MOTU connects to the computer over Ethernet and the Behringer are connected directly to the MOTU via ADAT fibre optics. Unbelievably, this all works flawlessly. The latency is rock solid and is equal between all input and outputs. Everything is very transparent sounding (it’s 2023, there’s no need to worry about that type of thing now).

But yes, I feel like I’m back in business.

I also moved my monitoring system to a pair of Genelec 8341s and a Genelec 7350A sub. It’s all calibrated and configured specifically for the room and sounds wonderful. I’ll maybe do a post on that soon.

What an expensive, time consuming nightmare this has been, but we made it. I’m done. It all works, it all sounds good.

Made from snippets of old recordings, somewhat rescued from an old dying (now dead) HDD.

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