Things I've Learned This Week

1. The Law of St. Nick: the strand of christmas tree lights that are the hardest to reach are the ones most likely to go out prematurely

2. if you ever try to re-create KFC's 11 herbs and spices original recipe fried chicken, it's gonna take a LOT of experimentation before you get anything that doesn't taste horrible. i learned this the hard way.

3. lately i've been realizing how in the grand scheme of recording, vocals account for about 85% of whether or not it's considered a good recording. for any singer, some days are just not good days to sing. when that happens, instead of getting frustrated and having them do a million takes (which makes their voice even worse), it's better to just work another day.

4. if your tires work out great and last 30,000 miles longer than they were supposed to, you can be sure the company that makes those tires will discontinue them so as not to make that mistake again.

5. frying a turkey is definitely the way to go. ok, technically that's not recently. i learned that a few weeks ago at thanksgiving, but seriously, do yourself a favor and skip the oven. no more dried out white meat.

6. Edy's grape and lime fruit juice popsicles dominate all other frozen treats. if you disagree, Edy herself will punch you in the face.

7. Preparation pays off. Here's a story for you: about 5 years ago it snowed in nashville around christmas. but nobody here sells sleds. so you know what i did? i asked for a sled for christmas from my family in illinois. they were confused, but nevertheless they obliged me and bought me a plastic sled. that sled has stayed in my basement since then. BUT THEN it snowed 4 or 5 inches on sunday. my day of reckoning had arrived. my new place has a big hill in the back. @davidmolnar came over with his snowboard and we were 12 years old again. THE END.

8. the biggest enemy of my productivity is angry birds

9. I am the Lord of Catan

10. watched the new narnia movie. SPOILER ALERT - the lion is jesus

11. Last Christmas is the best Christmas song ever written. there. i said it. thank you george michael.

12. the new my chemical romance record is awesome.

13. @davidmolnar is the best backup swayer i've ever known.

that's all for now!

nick

Bass

the english language is very weird. take the word "bass". because you are reading this, you have no idea if i'm talking about the fish, or the instrument. while i do enjoy bass fishing, let's talk about the instrument - and more specifically, this guy:

this is my buddy Nathan Thomas. he loves his cat, he loves Prince and he absolutely loves jimmy eat world. the last part is a big reason me and nathan are friends. in addition to being an original member of Cartel, he's played for Avril Lavigne, Shedaisy, Jeremy Camp, Krystal Meyers, Britt Nicole, and Day of Fire to name a few.

we share the same dark sense of humor. he told me a great story the other day where he was hired to play a one-off show for a fairly well known christian rock singer. the music director came to meet up with him to go over the songs the day before the show. when they started to play the first song, nathan proceeded to play the song in its entirety in all slap bass - with a straight face the whole time. he watched the guy's face sink and could practically read his mind as he probably thought "crap, how the heck am i going to find another bass player so quickly." the music director artfully downplayed the atrocity he had just witnessed and proceeded with a very nice "well, maybe we should try something different..." before nathan's face exploded in laughter and let him in on the joke.

anyway, nathan is awesome, and that's why i hired him to play bass on Tricia's solo worship record. he's a great player - he's the type of guy who usually gets what i'm trying to do without even having to tell him. with most songs i usually record a couple of takes without one word of direction and we end up keeping a lot elements of those takes. i'm a fan of melodic, moving bass lines in the style of paul mccartney. some think the bass should be simple and foundational - which there is truth to, but some tasteful movement in the right spots really excites the song.

anyway, he's the lowdown on the gear we used.

here are the main 3 basses we used. from left to right you'll see an Epiphone Jack Casady 2006 strung with flat wounds, a Fender P Bass 2002 with S-1 switching and a Fender Jazz bass 2005. jazz basses are my favorite so i think we ended up using that one the most. but the other two really found their places.

we also used an upright bass for one song.

here's what we had for pedals.

as you can see, he has a lot of aguilar pedals. i'm a fan of the agro pedal. it's got a certain low mid punch that sounds nasty when you hear just the bass but it makes it sit perfectly in the mix. that red pedal up on the top right is a custom fuzz/gate pedal that nathan and his buddy made. the best way i can explain is that it's similar to a fuzz factory pedal except for bass. here's the list of pedals:

Boss TU-2

Aguilar TLC compressor

Aguilar Agro

Aguilar Tone Hammer

Aguilar Octamizer

Home-made "top secret" fuzz/synth

Electro Harmonix Holy Stain

Tech 21 Sans Amp

we ran a clean direct line straight out of the tone hammer and then a "dirty" line at the end of the effect chain. no amp. that scares me a little. i usually like to have a mic'd up amp but this turned out really well.

one of the lines was run into a Vintech x81 and then a tiny bit of compression from a Distressor and the other line went through an Avalon 737 with a touch of compression and no EQ.

if you'd like to follow nathan thomas on twitter, his twitter name is @nathantbass

if you'd like to follow Tricia on twitter, her twitter name is @superchicktrish