DrScythe Thoughts - Part V: Status update

Well…six months already. Eight songs done. I intended to stay motivated. I knew that my self-discipline is quite strong after more than two years of pushing myself through bodyweight exercises that became more and more difficult. But I also thought that I would struggle after the first two or three songs. Instead of struggling I sped up to release the 3^rd one just to allow myself to enter the D’Angelico endorsement contest. And that resulted in a third place and two fantastic guitars being lent to me. What a boost!

So month after month I kept my focus on finishing recording and mixing on time although my overall mood isn’t too good: looking for a job, no money – the usual sorrows. But what else should I do? Can’t apply for jobs all day long, there’s not even enough offerings for that. So making music is quite a thing to avoid wasting time (or: use it purposefully).

Eight songs that roughly outline where the whole DrScythe-music is headed with more to come that brings new nuances and colors to the project.  The first song just hit 500 views. That’s not a large number compared to other YouTubers, that’s not even a large number compared to some other musicians in the region. To me it’s incredibly cool. I don’t have hundreds of friends who watch the videos. It’s not even a dozen of people I know personally who watch the videos. So 500 is quite a milestone for me. Obviously I’ll celebrate the 1000^th one when it happens.

Before I give you a small status update I want to tell the story of ‘Home’, the 7^th song and ‘Mind Pirates’ the 8^th. Let’s begin with the latter one. The main melody goes back to 2005 or 2006. It just lay around for a while and then, during the Meinthat-era, I played around with it and the idea of using a violin. Then the band split up and the idea was buried until I began sorting out the songs for the DrScythe project. I instantly thought: ‘how could I ever abandon this?’ So it made the list. And I recorded it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1VrKJn66Uw

My fiancée has been asking me for years if I will ever write a song for her. I always said no, partly because I didn’t want to disappoint her, partly because I feared I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. When I finally came up with the idea for ‘Home’ I tested the ‘riff’ out of context and she liked it. So I began writing the rest and here we are. To cover up the recordings I pretended to work mostly on ‘Mind Pirates’ so that she wouldn’t notice the progress until it’s almost done. And it was successful. She suspected nothing (at least she said so), was quite surprised and loves it. Mission accomplished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgbOwBKYBUM

So what’s the next mission? Keep on releasing one song per month! Try to gain more fans by doing so. Improving my mixing skills, improving my videos. Releasing the first 14 tracks as album. And then, depending on what’s going on in my life and how much the number of fans grows, begin looking for musicians to perform live. But for now it’s more like trying to promote my stuff as much as possible without being annoying. What seems to be impossible...

On the one hand it’s a great experience to receive a lot of positive feedback and even get a manufacturer of fantastic guitars interested in you especially because every release is accompanied by the typical artist’s mixture of feeling: doubting oneself and exposing your soul. On the other hand is the stagnation of response to that. Only few new followers/subscribers, only the initial larger amount of views which quickly dies off to the slow increase over time. Don’t get me wrong here: I am incredibly thankful for what I achieved so far and I will keep releasing songs. But it’s a little weird to be encouraged to go on and nothing happens. I know that consistency is key on YouTube, but I fear for my computer breaking every time I boot it up – and that would be the end for the whole project for a while. No spare parts, no money, nothing. So my job situation is becoming a larger problem every week and drawing away my attention every time I make music – because I fear to be stopped by defective devices…

Well…that’s it for this week. Happy with the project, happily in love, anxious about the usual topic: money/job. Just like everybody else…

Small extension to the first FAQ

Downloads

I will definitely enable free downloads for the album. Until then I don’t want to spread the ‘not-on-spot’-versions as downloads out of context.

DrScythe Reviews III - Kuassa Cerberus

Intro

You could ask yourself: why even bother with bass amp modeling? Often enough the bass is recorded and mixed as a DI track. Even live some bass player don’t use an amp. So why spend time on creating a versatile piece of software for basses? Then on the other hand there are still a lot of bass amps out there so there are also a lot of people who’d like an amplified bass sound. Like me. And I am so happy that the team of Kuassa decided to create this. I know that giving away the final verdict at the beginning is kind of pointless but I would like to make something clear at the beginning: I bought this and I am just so satisfied with it that I wanted the world to know about it. So here we go…

I decided to do this review with the help of the screenshot so can easily see what I am writing about.

Functionalities

1. I’d call this the ‘management panel’. Input, Input level, Presets, Gate, Quality-Switch – you can see them so I won’t list everything in detail here. I love the option to compare presets and the master CAB-switch. While it works I’d say that the preset window is somewhat clumsy in terms of handling but I don’t know any better examples (or at least none with other flaws) so I’ll let it pass. Personally I tried the Dry-Wet-option once but to be honest: it only makes sense if you really change the sound via Cerberus.

2. Now it’s time for what you could control on the real thing (if it were the pictured rack device). VALVE gives you an extremely rich and fat tone and if you crank up gain it will slowly begin to become something on the border between heavy saturation and overdrive. It will keep an extremely low punch if you don’t cut out the bass via EQ or Cabs what is really great. FET behaves a lot more, well, behaved. It’s clean to hell and back. It can feel a little sterile at times but you have to force that. It’s a lot more flexible if you’re willing to use all the other controls (including those on your bass). DRIVE is self-explanatory. It features a slightly generic sound but it’s usable. Personally I would put TSE B.O.D. in front of VALVE or FET and call it a day. COMPRESS does is job subtlety but effective. You can use it as a nice support up to noon and from there it acts more and more like a ‘drunk bassist’s best friend’. I don’t use CONTOUR myself a lot. It feels like a scoop at the mids which cleans up a little but I prefer shaping my tone with the EQs.

3. What more of an EQ-section do you need? LO effectively controls the bass its working point was chosen very well. The Boost really adds a lot of punch. I wouldn’t use it unless your bass sounds really thin or you want to have fun. But for recording tasks it just blows up the whole bass too much. Maybe if you’re using a pick and a pickup close to the bridge. LO MID and HI MID will help you massively adjusting Cerberus to your liking or manipulating the sound to quite extreme settings, especially when using the FET mode. HI and its boost option can be used for slightly dull basses and I really like to use those when playing with my Epiphone T-Bird Pro. Especially while recording because I can remove too bright sounds quite easily but not recover them from a rendered but dull signal. Excellent work here!

4. To answer the introductory question of No 3: A graphic EQ! I am not particularly fond of those but after I tried a Mesa Mark V I know that they can be really helpful. In this case I have to say: I don’t need it. It works fine but I am happy with what the regular EQ does and so I never switch it on but for reviewing purposes. If you want to know something specific about it you might want to check it out yourself as you can download Cerberus from kuassa.com

5. CAB and MIC selection and a MIX bar. I like most of the included cabs and mics although I mainly use the 8x10 one (which most probably is a SVT-cab-simulation). This section is quite unspectacular but functional so…that’s it. Better to hear some stuff later on.

6. The mics can be positioned freely although one can hear the changes quite intensely. So I think it would’ve been better to just offer 3 or 4 distances and the two angles. Maybe a choice between cone and cap but that’s all you need. But it feels and looks nice. So no complaints here ;)

7. If you don’t like the included cabs you can load yours here. There’s also a Limiter and a Master Output Level. They all work perfectly fine. There’s not much to say about here because I don’t know which IRs you would want to use and I only checked the function once.

Sound

So now over to some samples. I used my father’s 1974 Framus S-380 (Jazz Bass) and my own C-tuned Epiphone T-Bird Pro. Settings were as shown.

First the pure DIs

Preset01



Preset02

Preset03

Preset04

Preset05

Preset06

Preset07

Preset08

Link: http://www.kuassa.com/products/cerberus-bass-amplifikation/

Conclusion

I love it. Do I need to say more? It’s really fantastic. VALVE, slight compression, Contour off, EQ adjusted to T-Bird or Framus, 8x10, done. Pure fat and warm growl.

Overview

Pro	Neutral	Con
Sounds (!!!)	Preset management	Nothing
Ease of use	Drive a little boring
Lots of options Looks Available as Standalone Price and value

PS: I used it on every DrScythe-song since 'Destiny':