Session Bassist

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: I love Analog and I love digital. I could go on and on about the pros and cons. But when it comes down to it; Analog sounds great, is fun to use, costs too much to run and maintain, doesn't always work when you need it to. Digital (PC or MAC), pretty much always works, doesn't cost an arm and a leg to equip, Sounds exactly the way you record it (Pro) but can sound exactly the way you record it (Con).

Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?

A: Rickenbaker 4003 Bass, Fender Tele, Fender Blues Deluxe amp, Korg Kronos and Sennheiser e835 I love my Ricks. They can be just as flexible as a Fender J or P bass. The Fender Tele is a solid guitar. and you can get just about any tone from it. If you upgrade the speaker in a Fender Blues Deluxe, it can sound great on Bass or Guitar. I've even used it to add some dirt and reverb to vocals. The e835 is a good mic that can take a beating and sound good on most all sources. The Korg Kronos is a good workhorse if you don't have a full studio at the ready. You can record tracks into it, and do all the other neat synth stuff it can do.

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: Sylvia Massy. She isn't so much a musician artist but a engineer/producer artist. Go watch some of her videos on YouTube or pickup one of her books. The recording industry has this issue with conforming to normality. Example: If you mic a drum set, you will use, Shure SM57 on Snare, Sennheiser MD 421 on toms, AKG 414 for overheads and a Shure Beta 52 and Yamaha SubKick on the kick. If you mic a guitar cab, Shure SM57 and maybe a Sennheiser 421. Its become a cut and paste type of world. Sylvia does use the standards, but she will also go way out and bring in an old Hello Kitty karaoke system and run it through the mixer just to see what it sounds like on a full Marshall stack at 11. Or go record in a nuke power plant cooling tower. I love that idea of breaking from the standards and just see if it will work or not.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Give yourself limits. Limit yourself on how many tracks, how many takes, how many plugins, how much time etc. This day and time in music and in recording is a awesome time. We have all these tools at our hands (most the time for free) that we would have never dreamed to own only 10-20 years ago. However I have seen a lot of projects crash because the lack of limits. A favorite story was about Arcade Fire's Suburbs album. They had recorded so many parts that when they sent it to mixing, the engineer stripped out over half of the recordings as it was too cluttered. If you don't apply limits to your project you will only make a mess of yourself, or of the project.

Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?

A: I have a huge list of Bass players I can sit with a pair of headphones and study everything they play. But the one that stands out is Pino Palladino (John Mayer Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Jeff Beck, D'Angelo and The Hennessys). The man's ability to fit into any type of music is by far the best we will ever see. He can play some of the most difficult runs, but where other players it would sound robotic, he somehow can make it sound buttery smooth.