A good weekend for music productivity. Got some bass practice in on Saturday morning and read some of the March issue of Recording and got back to Fool Play on Sunday morning.

March’s segment of Recording’s First Steps series focused on selection of studio monitors. I’m beginning to lean towards just sticking with my stereo speakers at least while I’m making the demos of the songs. I really want to limit my spending at this point. I recently discovered that the “lite” version of the Ableton Live DAW software only allows 8 tracks, which I bumped up against when I was trying out some background vocals. Again, this will probably suffice for demos as I can mix down tracks if necessary.

One minor acquisition I must make is another instrument cable. As I have only been plugging my bass into my amp for quite a long time, but when I thought of putting a mic on my bass amp and playing along to the metronome on my keyboard, I realized I was a chord short (some people realized that about me long ago).

Here is a snippet of what I did manage to get down to “tape.” (I ended strumming acoustic guitar to the metronome and then playing bass to that.)

I think the vocals are starting to take shape (especially the second verse). I am struggling a bit with trying to fit in “Stop Your Quiet” before “Fool Play” in the chorus and am thinking of just leaving it out. Listening to it again, I realize I’ll need to practice a lot and I’m hearing a little Cat Stevens in it.

-Multi Tracker