This past week, I was on vacation from work! Fun, huh? I suppose, although I wasn’t nearly as productive on the musical front as I would have liked to be. I did manage to finish a new song, a solo bass instrumental that you can get here. Given the title of the song, I think people are going to be directed here via some truly disturbing search strings in short order, even though the title just refers to the fact that it’s a bass solo, which are generally useless to the majority of the planet who aren’t bassists. Either way, though, download it and let me know what you think! There are comment links at the bottom of every post, feel free to use them!
Besides that, lately I’ve been getting into Let’s Plays in a big way. Most of these aren in picture form, but a search of the term on YouTube reveals some in video form beginning about halfway down in the results. There are some surprisingly obscure games there too, like the Magician one I’m working my way through now (Despite having played through the game myself long ago). Even some of the “static” ones are great to just read through–the Phantasy Star II one from the perspective of the main characters is great (RANDOM FUN FACT: I actually tried and failed to speed run this game. Well, not failed per se, as I got through a probing run with my main party at a final level of 18 across the board (And rest assured if you’ve never played the game, you are NOT supposed to beat it with levels that low), but got frustrated and stopped with practice runs for the sake of my sanity.), and some of the video ones are funny as well, my particular favorite bit being Part 10 of Scous’s Faxanadu Let’s Play where he dies and proceeds to start yelling at the game. The game’s response: “Don’t have negative thoughts.”
A brief note that the whole Let’s Play concept, like most Internet phenomena, seems to have originated (At least with that name; I’m willing to bet that video walkthroughs certainly existed before “Let’s Play”) with Something Awful (Not Exactly Work Safe), but has, from what I can tell, spread beyond SA.
I’ve been trying to get back into Dance Gaming of late, but my pad is making it difficult. Trying to clean it seems to have only made it worse. Oh well.
Until next week…
-EE
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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.
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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.
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.
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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!”