Yet Another Drum Track

I’ve loaded up the recording programs for another crack at This Old Dawg. I’m having some trouble with the drum track. My drumming on the keyboard is a little off during the verses, and for some reason what I’m playing seems to befuddle Cubase’s quantize function. For every note that Cubase quantizes into the right place, it screws up another three. I thought about editing the off-notes by hand, pushing them back into the right spot, but that’d take forever, and I’m itching to get on to recording the guitars and basses. So I’m better off just getting the track right in the first place. Which sort of brings me back to the original problem.
I’ll get it. Thanks to Victoria, yesterday I had an idea about how to get around the timing problems in the verses. I figure I’ll play it largely straight with a hi-hat, and tweak it later. Getting the timing down is the important thing. Everything else will flow from there.
I recorded a bass part yesterday using my Alembic, playing it through my Alembic F-2B preamp, the BBE and the M-One effects processor. Man, it sounded good. I’m amazed at just how good it sounded. I won’t be able to use the track, because I imagine it won’t match up perfectly with the new drum track, but there were some issues with it, anyway. Basically, playing the bass track in This Old Dawg repeatedly a couple of days ago has left my thumb feeling bruised, so it was tripping me up yesterday. I played the main bass riff using a technique I’m not used to, so there were all sorts of minor timing problems with it. Still, it was great to get a feel for what the final bass track will sound like.
I’m kinda psyched about this. I think I picked a good song to kick things off with. It’s got a kick-ass bass riff, so I can put the song up on BandMix and JamWave to show off my bass playing to other musicians. It’s got a great groove and some memorably naughty (not nasty) lyrics, so it’ll do well as my page song on MySpace. I dunno. I just like it. It’s got attitude and swagger, and it’s something people could theoretically dance to.
Okay. So I need to stop writing this and start working on that drum track. Maybe if I’d do less talking about what I’m going to do and just do it, I might actually get somewhere with this.