This was unexpected.
I was cleaning up and deleting files on a laptop yesterday when I came across a file called "Fences_Draft3.mp3." It's a piece I wrote several years ago and had since forgotten about. Besides being the very first thing I ever recorded on a DAW, it was to be one of three songs for an initial EP.
The concept of the EP was that each song had something to do with a border or some kind of containment. The aforementioned "Fences" denotes, obviously, fences and separation. There was a piece called "Box," which I wrote in the late 1980s - yes, the late '80s! - and the third song was called...well, the name doesn't really matter. I will publish "Box" here at some point. The other song is destined for another project. But I drift...
All three pieces are very different from a bass guitar perspective. One is played using a finger and plucking style. One is entirely tapped out. The third is a combination of slap bass and finger style. "Fences" is the strictly finger style piece. I wrote it after watching a bunch of Jeff Berlin videos and then reviewing the music theory concepts in lesson with Brett. To make the theory "real," I often write a song or piece incorporating the concept. That's how "Fences" came about.
The piece is split into two. The first part is non-metal with lots of chordal bass. The second part is all metal, with no chordal bass. The original transition from non-metal to metal was a lot more abrupt. Brett suggested a more graceful transition and ended up writing a really cool bridge between the two parts (he also wrote all the other non-bass tracks; thank you, Brett). The second, metal part is not in this early version of the piece.
For a video, I had this idea of a constant stream of fences, from nice and lovely (the first part of the song) to menacing and dark (the second, metal part of the song). This video does not have that. It has a freely available motion graphic that approximates a fence. Kind of. Hey, what do you expect? It's a recording of a forgotten, unfinished demo!
Maybe I'll revisit some day. I'd like to include the second, heavier part. I'd also like to fix my mistakes :-)
- DD
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