Rate This Mp3
Rate from 1 (poor) to 5 (best)

Shuttle

by Chuck Howard (5440)

Listen
Size 5 MB
Style Rock/Pop
Gear Warwick Corvette 4 fretless
David Eden WT600 Road Runner thru a David Eden 410 XLT
Full Tone Bass Drive 2
Korg MS-2000R virtual analogue synth
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!!