Jamuary 4th
Like so many suburban youth, my high school friends wanted to start a rock band. My interest in music was minimal by the time I reached 14: I’d spent my life to that point listening to Aerosmith and Weird Al Yankovic exclusively, and I had never considered that this (or any) music was made up of different interlocking parts. All the same, my buddies decided I would be the bassist. The brother of one of these friends was away at college, so his green Ibanez SR series was thrust into my hands, and I was taught the opening bars of RHCP’s “By the Way”. I was hooked.
The prompt for Jamuary 4 was “Grooves,” and it felt like kismet. I was somewhat short on time, having returned to work after a COVID-19 infection, so I decided to return to basics. I had so much fun playing with the “HQ Funk Kit” on the FPC plugin the day before, so I loaded it up again and played some simple funk patterns. I grabbed my Epiphone Les Paul and plugged into my pedal board. I sent the guitar signal through the EHX Silencer, a Joyo Dynacomp, and a Mooer E-Lady directly into my audio interface. The E-Lady is a budget imitation of the EHX Electric Mistress, and it does a great job of capturing those 70s organ vibes. I’m generally a fan of using cheap copycat gear; I don’t have a particularly strong affinity for intellectual property (or most other forms of property for that matter), and clone gear has a democratizing effect on the barriers to musical hobby. All that said, I do wish I had read this vice article before grabbing the U-phoria UMC404HD from Behringer. I don’t have the heart or the budget to smash it with a hammer.
So I played a little slow vamp progression on the guitar and looped it. Then, I put a strap on the Shavo Odadjian signature Epiphone Thunderbird bass which sits in the corner of my studio. My partner, too, was in a rock band in her teenage years, and her band played lots of Kittie songs. The Thunderbird is a beast, with an aggressive low end that really shines in rock settings. I took a few minutes to stretch out and loosen up. I haven’t really touched a bass guitar in multiple years, but soon I was limbered up and ready to slap. I recorded a few takes and got to work combining them into one solid bassline. The bass signal chain was the same as the guitar, just without the E-Lady. After recording and editing, all that was left to do was some minor EQ tweaks.
I regularly sample little bits of dialogue or sound design from things that I’m watching. Any time a performance sticks out, for whatever reason, I’m compelled to snag it and archive it for later use. I’ve gotten more disciplined about organizing these samples in recent years: it’s much easier to find some esoteric bit of audio if it’s properly filed away. This sample from 1982’s Poltergeist is a big hit in my household. The preview of Poltergeist that autoplayed on some streamer or another featured this innocuous scene near the beginning of the movie in which one of the Freeling children expresses desire for pepperoni pizza. My partner felt this was very relatable, and we’ve tossed out the line frequently since. For the video, I just went with my gut and combined pizza with ghosts.
