DrScythe - the very reason why I make music: my father's 1974 Framus S-380

Vintage instruments often tell stories apart from their own one. And this 1974 Framus Jazz Bass copy (a black 12700 S-380) tells mine. It belongs to my father and without this bass I wouldn’t make music. I mentioned this story already but as I needed a drop-d tuned bass I asked my father if I could borrow the bass for a few weeks. And while the bass is here I just thought a lot about my path…

The Past

In 2004 the younger me wanted to play this bass. But due to his own experience my father said I had to learn to play guitar first. So we bought a classical guitar right after Christmas which I played until May 2005 when I bought my first electrical guitar as a birthday-present for myself. More details are in the first blog of the (hi-)story series. Although mostly playing guitar and writing songs I never forgot about playing bass and almost always owned one (atm the Epiphone T-Bird Pro you can see in the videos).

The bass

Thanks to Framus you can find information about this instrument:  FRAMUS HISTORY

Facts

It’s a Jazz Bass copy. A JB. First look: maple neck, rosewood Fretboard with almost no frets (one can see that they’re NOT worn so they always had been very flat). The tuners work excellently although they’re 40 years old. The body material remains unknown so you got to trust the website about that. On the electrical side: two JB-singlecoils, 2 vol-knobs, 1 tone-knob. That’s it.

Setup, playability (and condition)

The setup was still great and the bass would’ve been perfectly usable including the Flatwounds which are older than me (!). Adjusting the neck and bridge for the newer roundwounds wouldn’t be a problem (although I lack the proper tool). The overall playability (positions, balance point…) is business as usual with a Fender-inspired instrument. But…the neck is simply a baseball bat cut in half. I’m confident that it would take several hits before breaking. That’s not a real problem for me although I got really short fingers and had to sell a Schecter 7-string because I could barely reach the low B-string. Compared to the neck of my Epiphone T-Bird Pro the latter one is more like a toothpick…

What’s a little bit odd: the frets are extremely flat. And they’re still well rounded, my father didn’t play them down. So you got the raised difficulty of an almost fretless instrument especially on the thinner strings.

The pots are a little rusted on the inside with a scratchy feel to them. But your joints aren’t the best after 42 years either are they?

Sound

It’s a little dull but apart from that everything sound great. A typical JB sound (the difference to your definition of typical JB sound is to be identified by you…). Listen for yourself:

As I used this bass for a song you can hear it in a full context too:

As I won’t be able to buy another bass soon I will need this bass for several songs in the future too. I love it to use the reason why I make music for the songs I finally am able to record. It’s a circle that's closing now which feels great.

DrScythe Recording Blog - Part I or What do you pay studios for? (2016)

For most of the time that the modern music industry existed you’ve paid for the equipment they’ve got and for the experienced engineers. But nowadays you can build and setup your own small studio for 1k and achieve an amazing quality. And it doesn’t even take the thousand bucks if you already got a decent computer (no matter if win or mac) and let’s say a mic and an interface. Freeware sounds excellent nowadays and so you just need to learn how to use it. If you already got money to spend, no matter if you’re a solo artist or a band it might be better to buy some recording equipment instead of just ‘renting’ the stuff. You don’t need a 128 track mixing console to get good results. Owning the stuff yourself will pay off when you want to record another song/EP/album.

Recording and mixing music isn’t that hard to learn (but to master – which is another story). Basically it boils down to this:

-       Adjust your ears to the overall sound instead of just your instrument

-       Understand what which piece of equipment does (EQ, Comp, Gate, Verbs...)

-       Know your hardware (adjust ears to monitors, know your plugins)

-       Practice repeatedly

Throw in some diligence while editing and you’ll be able to produce a nicely balanced mix of your songs. The ‘old masters’ weren’t born mixing engineers – they learned a lot ‘on the fly’. New technologies popping up all the time back then, tons of analog hardware with different characteristics (even if it’s supposed to sound the same) and so on. If you read The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook (by Bobby Owskinski; no ad here, just a reference) you will notice that the most valuable part of this book is indeed the one containing the interviews. You’ll notice that almost all of the engineers are very vague about rules and fixed settings. They just know what they want and how to achieve it. Years of practice may come in handy if you want to get a certain result. And that’s what you’re paying for. Their experience and understanding of (your) music. So if you know a studio or engineer that repeatedly was involved in the making of records whose sounds you love and don’t have the time or interest to learn – go for it. If you have a very precise idea of the result yourself – learn how to achieve it.

I am not bashing studios here. If no one in your band (or you as a solo artist) is interested in recording and mixing then using their services is fine. If you got an album prepared and never recorded or mixed before you shouldn’t consider ruining your creative work by practicing on it. But if you are a/the songwriter/composer and if you can hear the final song ‘in your ear’ while writing it then you might be better off learning to record and mix yourself – at least in the long run.

What do you need to begin is a PC or Mac (tablets can do the trick but for handling more than say 6-8 tracks I wouldn’t bother), some sort of interface and a DAW (recording software). There are a lot of ‘recording beginner buyer’s guides’ and as they change constantly due to new hardware I suggest that you just search for those or head over to sites like gearslutz.com 

As soon as your system is up and running and you grabbed all the free plugins (e.g. vst4free.com) you need/want you should begin recording and mixing. Not the full tracks but riffs and parts. Try a little automation. Get used to your monitors. You don’t need a pair that costs 2000 bucks and is the most neutral one can buy. It’s more important that your ears know what they’re hearing. So listening to your favorite tracks (sound wise!) isn’t a bad idea. If your first mixdowns sound like you want them, choose the song with the simplest structure and fewest instruments involved to practice. There are many small traps ahead. I will let you know for which ones I fell in a future blog.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. It is right if it sounds right. Of course there are many ‘ideals’ you can aim for (‘hear everything clearly’, ‘punchy and tight sound’ or ‘warm and vintage’ etc.) and there are some basic qualities which separate the ‘decent quality’ mix from the ‘well-I-placed-a-mic-and-pressed-record’-mix. But the ‘sound’ of a song (or a whole album) is part of what the listener experiences so it might as well add some character (your character) instead of being a generic production. Just to clarify that: a studio will (should) add character too. But it might not be what you originally intended. That’s another reason why I chose to do everything myself. It might not be the best possible quality in the ears of some but it’s closer to what I want than any mixing engineer could ever achieve. The only thing I would give away is the mastering. A second pair of ears for the final polish cannot be that bad.

So long

DrScythe

PS: I mostly trained on soundsamples I made. Just like this one here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvEV8QcL0Q

Or this one (for a competition):

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

The future of DrScythe

Welcome back! To conclude the blogs about my personal story I want to tell you what’s going to happen with DrScythe. I will sort this by topic as it seems the most logical structure for this – a kind of prophylactic FAQ.

Overall

Release songs, grow the channel/fan base and see what happens. I have thought about a lot of stuff (see below) but for now I will just keep going no matter if win or lose listeners. That sounds arrogant but the objective was to release my songs and be happy if someone likes them. If someone has good ideas or constructive criticism to offer – great. If someone just likes pop or death metal better – not my problem. As easy as that.

Songs

There are about 30 almost fully written songs left and according to my plan of releasing about one song per month I got material until 2018. Considering that I will write new tracks on the way you can expect a new song every month for three years straight from now.  The first 13 to 14 tracks are intended to be an album called ‘Light People’ which will include two exclusive interludes. Although I plan to release this until the end of the year I won’t stop my own creativity. So if an idea strikes my mind and it also got some relevance to things going on in the world right then I’ll release it instead of the planned track.

Videos

As I was already asked about that: there will be a video for every song. There are several reasons for that choice but mostly I want it to be more personal. As I do everything including the singing I feel better showing myself doing so. Also other platforms are focused on remixes (not intentionally) or lack the option to really communicate with listeners which I want to do. So YT was the obvious choice. And as I don’t like lyrics videos at all I chose to do this kind of performance videos. And I’ll keep doing this.

CD/LPs

There won’t be any. At least not if I don’t become super famous or something like that. As I live in Germany it’s quite complicated and/or expensive to release physical stuff containing music and it’s just not worth the effort for now. I might reconsider it one day in the future (under certain circumstances and with help of kickstarter).

Live

You might notice the difficulties of playing live for me alone. So it’s not an option right now. But I enjoyed playing live in the past and if the interest is large enough I will try to get this on the stage. As there are a lot of different scenarios I cannot predict how it will be. A slowly growing fan base and musicians I keep working with might lead to something like a classic type of band that just had a different beginning. Exploding numbers of fans all over the world would definitely require some hired professionals who can play the songs after listening to them once or twice. So: live – yes! How and when – no idea.

Merchandise

It’s never been easier to sell merchandise. If the demand is high enough I am prepared to use the logo and variations of it (thumbnails on YT, album cover) for that purpose and then team up with someone who is able to design proper stuff.

Covers

Not gonna happen. I enjoy playing other peoples’ songs but on the downside are tons of covers already out there and the licensing here in Germany is just a mess. So as long as I live here and I don’t have the best idea ever there won’t be any recordings of me covering famous songs.

Vlogs/Reviews/Tutorials/…

Basically videos that are not songs. Will happen if the requests for that emerge. For now it’s not really adequate and would cost too much time.

Next blog will be some band advices. So long,

DrScythe