phatty taurus on the kappa highway

Another “Phatty Taurus” post!

kappa highway

Here’s a jam that pretty much shows what I would love to be able to accomplish live. Unfortunately, the original LP part that was played with Roland MIDI bass pedals was terrible because my feet are too big/shoes are too wide! I was playing wrong notes left and right. So I re-recorded the synth part, this time with my fingers.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good way to smoothly switch octaves with the Roland pedals - it cancels anything that was sustaining before. It would be so nice to have a two octave set of bass pedals, but I wouldn’t want to lug it around!

So I’ve gone back to try and re-record parts of this track several times. The bass performance is really sloppy in places, and although I like the vibe on the original version, I felt like I could do it better. I tried recording it with a different bass, and just could NOT get it happening. So I tried recording it in a different key, and finally came up with a couple of takes that I thought worked. But then when I tried to re-record the synth part, I couldn’t reproduce it like it is on the original!

So for now, I’m leaving it as-is. My friend Greg who plays drums on the track is coming out here to visit again, and hopefully will move out here eventually, so we’ll just have to record all new stuff! :sunglasses:

In the meantime, I’ll post a different track over in the Moogerfooger forum

Here’s a video of my continuing use of the LP as a Taurus substitute:

taurus 4001

Not the greatest recording quality - just the built-in mic on the camera, so the LP gets lost when the drums get loud. And I didn’t really set the LP the way I wanted when we started - you can see me looking over at it at the beginning, wishing I could change the settings.

I think I posted it more for the visual aspect of playing the bass pedals. My respect for Geddy Lee has grown a thousand-fold since trying to play them simultaneously with bass guitar.