Comments on: Emptyeye.com Week 13/New Song and Other Thoughts

By: emptyeye

emptyeye — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:02:21 +0000

Well, my comment about my initial response was something of a joke, heh. :) Your first comment actually did force me to stop and think for a second though, about “Is there really a good reason to put a five-minute bass solo on a CD?”. So thanks for that. It was going on before anyway, but now I feel as though I have a well-reasoned argument for it beyond “It’s my CD, I’ll do whatever I want to dammit!”

By: James

James — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:10:24 +0000

Heh, hey it’s your CD :) I have lots of of tracks of just bass or guitar that I personally like too, though it’s hard to say if anyone else would like them. Will “5 minute bass solo” scare them away? Who knows?

By the way, I wasn’t criticizing your playing– the song itself has some neat stuff in it. I do, however, really like the sound of bass chords and always seem to tune in when you use them, so maybe you can throw a few more in there!

Sincerely your cousin, Simon Cowell.

By: emptyeye

emptyeye — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:00:13 +0000

Well, my initial reaction was something to the effect of “HOW DARE U I R GRATEST BASS PLAYAR EVAR!!!” ;)

Then I sat down and thought about it some. I still disagree with you, as to what to do with the song as far as putting it on the CD versus not, but here’s why.

Okay, from the title of the song, it’s pretty obvious that I wrote and played it mainly for me. So then why put it on a CD? Well, because I can pretty much. Or, more accurately, because I can without sacrificing an equal or better song. A CD can hold, give or take, 80 minutes or music. Very, very few artists consistently even come close to using that amount–post-Black Album Metallica (Hmm…perhaps a good argument not to use all that space…), Dream Theater, and I can’t really think of a whole lot of others at the moment. I know I certainly won’t use all of that, even with the five-minute exercise in vainglorious wankery that is this solo (I’m aiming for something like 60 minutes all told).

There’s also the fact that you can hear (Rough, unproduced) versions of the songs, for free, on the site. In short, I think the positives outweigh the negatives–my theory is that more people would, having heard all the tracks on said CD, decide to buy it as a result of including the song than would actively decide not to buy it due only to this song. Yeah, it isn’t exactly commercial, and is probably excessively self-indulgent…but then so is the entire project, which will, if I have anything to say about it, be a bit too varied to effectively pigeonhole anyway, even without the solo.

So in short, it’s not going on at the expense of something better (Or anything else at all, for that matter), and I don’t think it’ll actively turn people away by itself (The worst thing that happens is that people hit “skip track” on it…oh well), so I don’t see the harm in including it in some form closer to this than to the limited two-minute form you suggest.

By: James

James — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:07:03 +0000

Hmm… here’s my thought on solo stuff. Most of my recordings of this type were made specifically for me since, let’s face it, there’s not a huge audience dying to hear extended bass solos. If you plan on releasing a CD, you might want to consider leaving such an indulgent track off. From a marketing perspective, you DO want to give people something they want to hear. If you feel inclined to put a bass solo on the CD, make it short — 2 minutes or less — and try not to refrain too much.

The few times I’ve enjoyed bass solo type stuff, it’s usually heavy on chords/echo etc. to give a fuller sound than single string bass notes. Again, I’m not sure if this is a song you want to release or just play out of the pure pleasure of playing.

Just my thoughts.