Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

The genius of Chris Squire
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miguelbass
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Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by miguelbass »



Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful Yessongs of all, and again, with one of the most fascinating basslines by Chris Squire. Many peculiarities about it as well. Chris played a Gibson Triumph bass, which is a short scale bass. The tone is quite different from the usual, more discrete and less aggressive. However, it allowed Chris to play the higher registers a lot, due to the large number of frets, going to a high F sharp. I asked my good friend Américo Silva at Music Light for one of his basses which had that range and I chose his beautiful blue Alembic Essence. The tone of the bass is wonderful and I really couldn’t seem to achieve the same “middy” timbre of the Triumph bass. Doing a lot of EQ would rather spoil the Alembic’s tone, so I opted to let the bass speak by itself. The bassline is, again, exquisite – not a single note is played with less care than the other, and often seems to leave the main chord tones, to derive as a counter melody, sometimes beautifully dissonant. In addition, the bass pedals work bring even more drama – as Chris plays also some very bold passages with scales provoking chord inversions, suspensions and yet more dissonance. I listened to several bootlegs and footage of the 1976 sessions to try to compute how the bass pedal line could be played, as the album version is almost criminally undermixed on the pedals (as it happened on some other Yes albums such as Tormato). In fact, I believe that there are more bass pedal passages on the song but the ones I played were the ones I thought had the best chance to be right. Let’s hope that more new formats of mixes will come out, as it seems to be a trend nowadays, and they this part of Chris Squire’s work will come to the surface so we finally get to hear more of his treasures!

Miguel
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Billsbro
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by Billsbro »

Oh my, Miguel! I want to say that I am at a loss for words...but we all know how wordy I am so I will try to pull together my thoughts.

That was simply stunning.

The song: Yes is capable of covering such a wide range of emotional and musical landscapes and "Turn of the Century" has always been a favorite. Seeing them do it live in 1977 was a high point for me. But importantly, as you state, the Going for the One album recording quality did not let the music fully bloom on our speakers. (Many of us anxiously await a Steven Wilson re-mix...what a day that will be when we finally spin that!) Chris' bass (and as you say,) his pedals, are seriously shortchanged on the album. Seeing them last August when they played the GFTO album allowed me to once again be enthralled by watching Chris and the band play it and get a true sense of Squire's unique bassline.

Your bass cover: I try to cover various music and so I have an inkling of what a challenge you have faced in figuring out Mr. Squire's lines for various pieces. This must have been especially difficult because of the way his sound in somewhat buried in the mix. As you always do, you have revealed the beauty and cleverness of Squire's harmonic and timing choices. I was taken aback at the various dissonances and harmonies. With your cover you have revealed what a genius Chris is and what a sleuth you are! You have such a good ear of harmony. The bass pedal work was fascinating too! (I adore bass pedals yet I feel like a "fish out of water" when I try to play my Taurus III's.)

The video: again, as an amateur video tinkerer, I am amazed at your lovely and tasteful work. Great backgrounds and angle choices...wonderful editing. And what a perfect way to include the bass pedals! Masterful!

The bass: seems like a great choice! I love the tone. Please thank your friend again (for us)!

The effect: my first inclination upon watching your video was to weep but I controlled myself! LOL. The second thing I felt was to want to give up on playing music because you are such a master! Well, I joke mostly. But third, and strongest, is for me to feel--as i always do when watching your work--a great sense of purpose and encouragement. You make me want to go immediately to an instrument and start working. You motivate me and as I have said before, what better thing can a musician do than to put out his work to enthrall, entertain, and especially, motivate?

Thank you so much!
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ram
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by ram »

Miguel.... you make that look so easy! Smooth..... thanks! I needed that after today. Love the bass pedals off to the right. Very clever!
The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions - George Berkeley
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RickyBubba
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by RickyBubba »

Wow…just amazing. As many times as I have listened to that song, I just never really realized how great the bass lines really were. DUH.

Chris really took the lead and sent Steve to the side in the mid section, and this is the first time I really noticed that as well.

But, I often get so wound up in the emotion of that song, I tend to focus on the lyrics.

I noticed that sooner or later in the video you too had to finally start singing along!
miguelbass
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by miguelbass »

Hello Stephen!

Thank you very much for your detailed comments and for sharing your feelings! It brings back lots of good energies to know your appreciation!

The video concept is always something like a compromise between my skills with the video tools, the processing capacity of my pc (to accumulate the video fx) and a lot of improvisation. Ideas come better or worse as I am going through the process. With this one I took on Winter and Autumn from the lyrics to go through the seasons on my backgrounds and carried them on with the song's dynamics. Other words throughout the song also inspire me to do a certain image transition, although not necessarily literally... just how it sounds to me, much in a way that Jon once told about the sound of the words.

The bass pedals were put in the end, and I took the concept that I had used previously from Machine Messiah - I have some colours that I associate with each note :)

I really do hope a better mix will come out - I am happy with all the records as they are, no problem, but to do an exercise of remixing such masterworks is something that is at least deserved - of course with the artists' wish.

I didn't add too much effects to my bass precisely not to blur even more the final mix. I thought ok if I play the note, then I will still have some echo from the original, I don't want echo over echo. I did put some reverb, quite decent, from the audio application (Reaper). On the octave leaps section I tried my CE-2 chorus and it worked very well but I didn't use it. I tried later to find a chorus plug in and I didn't find a good sounding one. The best I got was using a pitch shifter just using a slight detune amount - and I guess it could be also the case of Chris, as he was playing with his then new Eventide!

Once again, thank you very much!

Miguel

Billsbro wrote:Oh my, Miguel! I want to say that I am at a loss for words...but we all know how wordy I am so I will try to pull together my thoughts.

That was simply stunning.

The song: Yes is capable of covering such a wide range of emotional and musical landscapes and "Turn of the Century" has always been a favorite. Seeing them do it live in 1977 was a high point for me. But importantly, as you state, the Going for the One album recording quality did not let the music fully bloom on our speakers. (Many of us anxiously await a Steven Wilson re-mix...what a day that will be when we finally spin that!) Chris' bass (and as you say,) his pedals, are seriously shortchanged on the album. Seeing them last August when they played the GFTO album allowed me to once again be enthralled by watching Chris and the band play it and get a true sense of Squire's unique bassline.

Your bass cover: I try to cover various music and so I have an inkling of what a challenge you have faced in figuring out Mr. Squire's lines for various pieces. This must have been especially difficult because of the way his sound in somewhat buried in the mix. As you always do, you have revealed the beauty and cleverness of Squire's harmonic and timing choices. I was taken aback at the various dissonances and harmonies. With your cover you have revealed what a genius Chris is and what a sleuth you are! You have such a good ear of harmony. The bass pedal work was fascinating too! (I adore bass pedals yet I feel like a "fish out of water" when I try to play my Taurus III's.)

The video: again, as an amateur video tinkerer, I am amazed at your lovely and tasteful work. Great backgrounds and angle choices...wonderful editing. And what a perfect way to include the bass pedals! Masterful!

The bass: seems like a great choice! I love the tone. Please thank your friend again (for us)!

The effect: my first inclination upon watching your video was to weep but I controlled myself! LOL. The second thing I felt was to want to give up on playing music because you are such a master! Well, I joke mostly. But third, and strongest, is for me to feel--as i always do when watching your work--a great sense of purpose and encouragement. You make me want to go immediately to an instrument and start working. You motivate me and as I have said before, what better thing can a musician do than to put out his work to enthrall, entertain, and especially, motivate?

Thank you so much!
miguelbass
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by miguelbass »

Thanks Tom! Glad it brightened up you day! Thanks also for your votes there :)

Miguel
ram wrote:Miguel.... you make that look so easy! Smooth..... thanks! I needed that after today. Love the bass pedals off to the right. Very clever!
miguelbass
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by miguelbass »

Thanks William! I did sing along some of the vocals, although in a quite squeaky way, as I saw later :D

Miguel
RickyBubba wrote:Wow…just amazing. As many times as I have listened to that song, I just never really realized how great the bass lines really were. DUH.

Chris really took the lead and sent Steve to the side in the mid section, and this is the first time I really noticed that as well.

But, I often get so wound up in the emotion of that song, I tend to focus on the lyrics.

I noticed that sooner or later in the video you too had to finally start singing along!
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johnallg
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by johnallg »

Beautiful.... just beautiful. Thanks.
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woodyng
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by woodyng »

Fantastic job on one of Chris's more esoteric bass lines. The Alembic was a great,happy choice,and since Chris is using his extended range Tobias bass to play that song nowadays,probably a very similar sound. ( active pickups,multi lam neck throughs,etc.) Kudos on another great production!
miguelbass
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Re: Bass cover clip - Turn Of The Century

Post by miguelbass »

Thank you Woody and John, thanks to everyone who's been supporting me!

It seems the first stage for voting ended so now there are left 32 clips. I still didn't see any pause in the voting so I guess it's still counting for the final 16. Here are the rules

This round ends Monday August 11, 2014 at 5:00 EST!
Round winners are determined by a team of Judges and each judge makes up 1/3 of the vote.

Thanks again!

Miguel
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