This song was recorded and performed by my band Eightfold Path quite a while
back at a place called The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, MI. Though it's older,
it remains a pretty good representation of what we sound like to this day.
It's in the key of C using a 4/4 swing meter and I use standard tuning on my
Warwick fretless. The reason I chose to use my fretless rather than my
fretted is because of the fluidity of the meter. The song always reminded
me of a song by Pink Floyd called "A Pillow of Winds" off of their release
Meddle. Roger Water's plays the song using a fretless, so I thought I'd
give it a try myself.
The bassline is rather simple in that I try to capatalize on the root notes
of each chord occasionally flirting with some of the minor notes played in
the chords. I decided to make the bassline simple in order to avoid
overcrowding Katrina's vocal melody and the movement of the string
arrangement. The drummer (Bob) and I try to create an interesting rhythm
where I follow his high hat and snare beat while he plays 4 on the floor
with his bass drum. When the chorus comes in the bass drum and snare beat
changes while the bass line emerges into more of a walk pattern resulting in
a dynamic break from the verse. For the bass at the end of the song, I
decided to add distortion to my sound to capture the kind of feel that Colin
Greenwood of Radiohead did during the outro to their song "Exit Music".
Granted, my bassline for that segment is nowhere near as nice as Colin's, I
thought the distortion sounded cool there.
The instrument that you hear in the beginning of the song while the thunder
is going is called a theremin and is played by our mad scientist guitarist,
Bob. Check out the website http://www.thereminworld.com/ to see what it's
all about. The thunder and rain is created by our other
guitarist/keyboardist (Gio) on his Yamaha Motif 7 and the telephone ringing
you hear in the beginning is played by me on my Korg MS2000R.
So far, all we have are live representations of our songs, but we're hoping
that changes soon. We're in talks with a record label right now who may
help us produce a studio album if all goes well. When and if this happens,
I will post more of our stuff for you to hear later!!
If you enjoy this song and would like to hear more, please go to our website
at www.eightfold-path.com.
Thanks for listening and reading!!
