Dag 1104: I must have been blind

While pondering over how my new "This Mortal Coil" style musical project would start I dug out some of my old recordings from when I had a very small and very basic home studio setup. I soon realised that the music I was making back then already was pretty similar to TMC. Not many people heard what I recorded then, but I did send a four track demo to Home and Studio Recording magazine and when it finally got reviewed one of the comments was that the music was pretty sombre.

Back then I had limited equipment and recorded using midi, a 12 input mixing desk and a 4 track portastudio. I only had 2 synth modules (Roland D-110 and U-220) and I found that if I tried anything with too many parts they wouldn't be able to cope and timing would go to pot and various notes would get dropped. So rather than go about trying to write a load of new songs I decided to revisit my original collection of songs and re-record those that I liked the best.

In those days I used to subscribe to Home and Studio Recording Magazine and when editor Paul White left to become editor of the newly founded Sound on Sound I started a subscription to that magazine. HASR fell by the wayside, but Sound on Sound kept going and is still going strong today.

I started a new Sound on Sound subscription around a year ago, and it was in the December issue that I spotted The Korg Micro X.

I managed to get one of the limited edition white ones for my birthday. It arrived last week and I am really impressed with it.
I bought it without ever seeing one or hearing one in the flesh so it was a bit of a risk, but it has turned out to be just perfect for what I needed.
I have a number of other synths, but most of them are either monophonic, or have limited polyphony or are locked away in the attic.
This one is small and has a really neat case to keep it in and has some great sounds.

When I first switched it on I held down a chord and what sounded like a whole band started playing. Although the quality of the sound was awesome, I was initially a bit put off as my first thought was "This is one of those home consumer thingies that provides the accompaniment automatically". But I soon realised I was completely wrong. These patches are just showing what can be done using the built in dual polyphonic arpegiators. The possibilities are endless, and, I have to admit, it is great fun just going through all these patches and seeing what you can come up with.

For the style of music I want to record what I really need are some really good pad and string sounds and it didn't take me long to find quite a few that sounded similar to those used by TMC. It got me thinking that I would probably add the odd guitar part with my Shergold, which I haven't recorded anything on yet as the 1980s synth music of Strange Devotion did not require guitars. This then got me thinking about what I would use for bass. Before, I played all the bass parts on a keyboard and although they filled in the bass regions of the song, they didn't sound like they were being played on a bass. The bass guitar is quite often prominent on TMC and Cocteau Twins songs and I realised last week that, even though I've only just got my new Korg, if I was going to do this thing properly I also had to have a bass guitar and I needed one now.

once I was...

I used to play bass in a band when I was student and at the time I had a red Yamaha bass which I had really liked that hadn't cost a fortune, so my first thoughts were to get one of those again. I looked on the web and saw plenty of reasonable priced Yamahas, but the body shape was different to the one I had had. The new ones seemed sort of space aged to me and I didn't like the look of them. It didn't take long to find some Fender basses and although these were more expensive I thought I might be able to stretch to one, as after all it is unlikely that I will ever buy another bass again. The Fenders I had seen were made in Mexico and the world wide internet soon informed me that the Mexican Fenders are not the ones to go for as they are made of cheap parts and the ones to have are the ones that are made in USA. So I started looking at these. The trouble is they seem to be about double the cost of the Mexican ones and my initial budget was set at half the cost of the Mexican ones. I kept going back to look at various cheaper models, but the name Fender just seemed to be stuck in my head. By last Monday I had realised that my new bass had to be a Fender and it had to be made in USA.

I then started looking at the colours available. The first guitar I ever bought was a fender copy with a sunburst colour scheme and a white pick guard. It cost about £25 and it was a piece of junk full of buzzing frets. Most of my friends had similar guitars or basses and ever since then I have hated guitars in that colour scheme. It was obviously copied from Fender as most of those available seemed to be that colour. However I spotted a colour called Orange Sunset that only seemed to be available on the USA made Fender basses and I was instantly smitten. The trouble is this option adds another £100 to the cost so we are now looking at around £1,000 for a new bass. I didn't really see how I could justify this.

On Tuesday I decided I had better go and have a look in Music ground in Leeds to see what Fender basses they had in stock. Maybe they would have a second hand Precision bass in Orange Sunset for some ridiculously low price. On the way there I called in at Northern Guitars and had a look at their selection of basses. They didn't have too many and they were all budget makes which were all very reasonably priced. I could have got a perfectly decent looking one for under £100 pounds, but of course I didn't.

Instead, I went over the road and had a look at the basses in Music Ground. They had a good selection and plenty of Fenders. They had a fair few "made in USA" ones, but I just couldn't get that excited about them. I didn't really like the colour schemes of the ones they had, but I realised that not only did they look pretty similar to the Mexican Fenders, but they also looked pretty similar to all of the many fender copies that so many budget manufacturers make. I decided to go upstairs to the Music Ground guitar museum to cheer myself up. I had a good mooch around and spotted a Fender bass that used to belong to Sid Vicious. This was in terrible condition and parts of it were held together by sticky tape. I thought it looked pretty cool and I wondered how much it was worth.

I went back to work and realised that I now felt that the only bass that would do was a Fender USA Precision Bass in Sunset Orange and I would just have to save up for it by working plenty of weekends. All of the websites I could find that offered this exact colour and model of bass did not have any in stock so I kept googling away to try and find one, when I came across the bassworld forum. Someone had bought the exact same bass as I wanted and had posted some pictures up of it. It is truly an item of beauty and I just knew we were made for each other.

However, while reading through the forum I saw the name Sandberg a few times. The name sounded Swedish, but it seems these basses are hand crafted in Germany and quite afew people had written good things about them. I saw that in the UK they cost around the same as the Fender I had originally lusted after, but I read that they could be bought from Germany for quite a bit less. This lead me to this German Site which had a number of Sanberg basses available. The cheapest one in stock was much cheaper than the Fender and was in a fantastic Violet burst colour. I looked at it over and over again fro the next few days and yesterday I finaly added it to my basket and checked out. So 5 strings of glorious bass are currently getting ready to be shipped over and I can't wait to have my first go on a hand crafted Sandberg 5 string.

To celebrate I had a great eveing out with Adrian and Guy in Harrogate. We started off at the Hotel Du Vin with a few Absolut vodkas with assorted mixers and Adrian and Guy had a few games of pool while I relaxed in a very comfy leather sofa.

That's a bad miss.

We then moved on to the Drum and Monkey where we had a very nice meal of assorted seafood and then home to our respective beds.

I got home to find that the copy of Filigree and Shadow by This Mortal Coil, that I had ordered from amazon last week, had finaly arrived. I originally had this on double LP and haven't owned a record deck for around 10 years so this will be getting quite a few plays in the morning.