Onward - A Rickenbacker Kiss

[miguelbass]

An idea that was inspired by the story (many of you may know) behind the very end of Safe (Canon Song).

I am playing my 4001 CS bass which is unplugged. Holding it against the back of my (plugged) 360 guitar... a Rickenbacker Kiss.
I experimented with different guitar tunings that would resonate well with the song's tonalities. Onward is a based one the I, VI, V and vi of C major, and modulated a step higher afterwards.
The guitar tuning I did (eventually using a capo) was selected to accommodate all these chords. Ones sound better than others. B minor was, for example, a bit less successful, as well as all passages with an F sharp.
Then I adapted the whole piece - melody and a sort of accompaniment with the lower register which is not related to the actual bass line. The initial riff is my transformation of the original intro, and the coda.. I came up with a way to modulate back to C major. A bit dangerous too cause B flat (G minor) and A flat (F minor) were used... but then finally I got the best resonance spot to end the piece on an improvised Safe-like finale.

One very interesting thing is that - after tuning both instruments with the tuner, I found the resonance wasn't happening... so I fine tuned on my bass by ear, and found the resonance spots for each string... maybe a few cents lower than the "right" tuning. I know it's still not perfect but it's a fact that it wasn't working with both guitars tuned by the tuner. I think this has to do with the tempered scale of the fretboard that is "fighting" with the natural harmonics of the guitar's open strings.

While not optimal, I decided to post it to show you the idea. It has some interesting sounds and with more time I will come again to it!

Tunings (bottom to top)
Bass - E A D G
Guitar (Capo 8th fret) - C F A D G B

Greetings to all!

Miguel

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URLs:

http://miguelbass.com/2010/03/14/onward ... cker-kiss/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpdLtRsqVnE

[ajish4]

TOTALLY AMAZING!

What more can be said?



Beautiful, just beautiful.

[miguelbass]

Thank you Tony!

[ram]

Miguel, could you post a link? I only see an icon with a could geometric symbols in it.....

[miguelbass]

Hi Tom, here goes and i'll try to edit the post too

http://miguelbass.com/2010/03/14/onward ... cker-kiss/

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpdLtRsqVnE

Miguel

[Happyface]

What a haunting but wonderful tone. You always amaze me!

[ram]

Miguel cool effect. Reminds me of the FOOW the very end of Safe....

[johnallg]

What a haunting but wonderful tone. You always amaze me!

+1 I saw this Saturday but didn't have decent speakers till today. What a concept, and indeed haunting.

[chrisdski]

Wow. That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

[collin]

Wow, that's brilliant.

Well done, Miguel!

[gibsonlp]

Wow, this is awesome!

[jps]

Wow, this is awesome!

+100000000000000000000000000000000000

[just_bassics]

Two Thumbs up, Miguel. I hope Chris has a chance to view this soon.

[miguelbass]

Thanks everyone for your warm response so far. I'm starting to work on finishing CttE now. Much harder to hear the bass on the last half compared with the first one Also it seems that every available footage has the step-down modulation that it's not on the original recording... am I right?

Greetings to all!

M

[Billsbro]

Yes, I know I am commenting on an old Thread but I was knocked out by your mesmerizing timbre and playing in this clip, Miguel! I was stepping through the old Threads here and realized I somehow missed this one. And I wasn't sure I knew what the "story" was about the end of "Safe" so I looked up the Wikipedia article on the album and read about Chris playing that moody 'coda' on a doubleneck with the only active pickups being from the six-string. Fascinating! And of course it makes sense now that I think about it.

Fish Out of Water is absolutely my favorite album. Ever.

Perhaps some folks who have not heard Miguel's wonderful work here will hear it now that I have "bumped" the Thread.

Miguel, you are amazing! Thank you for your work!