Zach here. As promised, I’ll do a quick write-up as to what I use to record my bass and vocal parts at the moment. Given the lack of space in my apartment, I’ve had to focus on keeping things minimal.

Bass

I’m currently using a Rockbass Corvette$$ as my main instrument. Ever since I started playing the bass guitar, I’ve always wanted to own a Warwick bass, and about 16 years later, I was finally able to purchase one, albeit at the budget level.

Ideally, when it comes to recording bass, you want to actually capture an actual cabinet speaker, but give how small my apartment is, I’ve had to record directly into the computer I’m using. Right now, I am running my bass through a cheap Tascam iXZ interface into one of my iPads, with my DAW of choice being the BandLab app. The recording is duplicated, with each track getting a custom signal chain. The two tracks will then be combined and mixed down into a final singular bass track, which I will then send over to John.

Vocals

In this post on my personal website, I mentioned helping to fund an Indiegogo campaign for the Tula noise-cancelling microphone, and praised it as one of the best things I’ve actually helped to invest in. You’ll find out why as soon as you hear my vocal parts in our third song.

As with the bass, I use the BandLab DAW to record my vocal parts. The mic is hooked up to my 2019 iPad Mini via an inCharge Max cable (a perk from another Indiegogo project) into a USB-Lightning adapter to allow for direct recording, with the noise-cancelling function on the Tula switched on. Beyond a noise gate and a compressor, no effects are used.

What’s next?

I do happen to have a Darkglass pre-amp pedal lying around, as well as a HoTone mini bass amp head that I brought with me from Australia, so I’d like to experiment more by incorporating either one of the two into my bass recording set-up. The one thing I like about this is that it’s a portable recording rig, so it would be pretty awesome if I could check in to a hotel for a weekend, and just record away. I can already think of one hotel near where I live that I could go to without anyone batting an eye.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this quick write-up about my recording process.

Zach

Posted November 29th 2021 (JST)