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I picked this song for a few reasons. First many of my influential artists such as John Frusciante, have mentioned Joy Division as one of their influences. I picked this particular song as it has been a personal favourite of mine for years and I always thought the main riff of the song was very interesting. And lastly I felt that with this song coming out in 1980, it was a good representation of what was to come in the 80's with new wave and synth pads becoming more the norm in modern music, as more complicated synthesizers became more accessible and affordable as well as smaller, making them easier to tour with.
I came to find out as I started learning the song, that the bass part is core to main riff of the song. I had always assume it was a guitar but videos of Peter Hook, the bass player of the band, show that it is actually more of a bass part.

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I sent this version off to Filip so he could review it and let me know what he liked and to show him an idea I had for changing the chorus parts.

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This song was chosen mostly at the request of the singer who I was working with. The song naturally fits to her voice so it was a preferred song for her.
I also feel that the song serves a purpose in this set to show a different side of my skills playing in a more intimate acoustic style.

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I used the classic 1950's chord progression going with a faux upright bass, a slap back echo style solo playing a melody, and a tweedy main guitar. For expanding this idea, I plan to try to get some vocals on it and I will tighten up the slap back guitar solo to be more complementary. To get the 1950's sound - I turned to the Fender type amp on iridium. Then Middle all the way up for a more tweed sound. Volante with short slap back on drum echo mode high mechanics mid-low wear and 12 o'clock on low cut - For Bass, I put a sock right by the bridge to cause the strings to dampen. This caused a short staccato type sound that is more similar to the upright basses of the '50s - Used a Fairchild 1950's Style Buss Compressor - Used only Room and Overhead mics from Addictive Drums Plugin - Used a 20's Ludwig Snare in plugin - Used a vintage style Ludwig Kick drum - Used RC-20 Retro Color plugin to add a hint of Vinyl sound also with some light tube distortion - Everything is also running through a tape simulation Slate VTM

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Was having a really hard time currently, feeling really inadequate as a guitar player currently after spending many hours trying to learn these songs and feeling like I am gaining no progress.
This inspired me to move to trying to learn a song or two on bass after Filip asked if I could play bass on his July Track.
As My setlist started to fill up, I realized I wouldn't have room for a 70's song so I didn't continue or go back to any new songs from the 70's.

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I had trouble at first learning the bass part of this song as all of the YouTube covers and lessons were showing slightly different ways to play the part. I ended up stumbling upon multiple comments saying that they were playing it wrong and that Peter Hook from Joy Division had actually showed how to play it. A few searches later I found a video of someone playing it wrong in front of Peter Hook and him then showing how to actually play it, so I based how to play the part on his brief explanation.
The main thing people were missing was how much he drones the bottom two strings together. he almost always is playing at least two notes and also many played the chords wrong as well.

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So far the part seems pretty straightforward, not counting the confusion with many different ways to play presented online, Identifying the difficulties would be:
* Finger strength -  This part has a lot of repetition and I am not used to playing the bass for longer then a short tracking session. My hand feels quite tired dealing with the increased tension of the strings in a song as long as this. It also has quite a few notes to play for a bass part which means I need to build up my finger strength and endurance
* The Repetition - The amount of repetition could make it hard to remember when to switch to the next part.

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* I plan on upping my amount of hand stretches and warm ups. Overall I think I need to play the bass a lot more to build up the right kind of finger strength and endurance for this song and to expand my bass playing in general
* I also have this finger strengthener that is designed I think to help with climbers grip strength. I haven't used it as much recently, but it helped immensely in the past with my arthritis related hand pains by strengthening my hand muscles. So I plan to use that daily with my stretches and warmups
* I plan on writing out the barlines of the song so I can count out to keep on time with the song

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The first part after this song was chose was to learn how to play it. I started learning it by ear, but I couldn't quite make out the right chords. Some research online showed me that I needed to put a capo on the 2nd fret to get the right chords in the easiest way.

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After realizing where to put the capo, the song started to come to me rather quickly. The entire song was built off of 4 chords. Switching back and forth from finger picking the chords to strumming. One issue I ran into was that different tabs had conflicting chord orders for the chorus.

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After close listening to the track I can now comfortably say I know that the chorus mixes up the two middle chord orders

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I have now had a chance to practice with the singer, I feel we are just about ready for the final performance, a few more practice sessions should smooth out the transitions

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Practicing with the singer again. I feel we are getting smoother throughout the whole song

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I plan to ask Filip Mazur to play a slapback guitar on this track and to ask a singer to add in 50's Do Wop style backings.
As part of the criteria of this assignment to make it clear, I wrote and played the bass part live. I also wrote and recorded the rhythm guitar, the drums, and did all production on this track. I also wrote a lead to give Filip an idea of what I was looking for, but also gave Filip a lot a leeway to play what he felt would fit the track.
I gave Filip a one sheet and we had a Zoom 1 to 1 to discuss his part playing the song.

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I also collaborated with Filip on his July song for his final. He gave me a one sheet, and the audio files, we then met for a one to one video call where we talked about what he was looking for and what kind of style he had in mind. I gave him my opinion and made a suggestion for simplifying the chorus bass part. He agreed and I ended up playing exactly what he wrote out except for in the chorus part.

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So far the hand stretches and finger strengthener has been helping in my overall hand pain. Writing out the bar lines has helped me identify the length of each part. This has in turn helped me identify bits of the song that que me in for when the next part is.

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I have added in playing to a click track along with the backing track. This has been really beneficial in helping me lock into the groove of this song. I feel this was very important as I am not used to playing the bass or more so being in that role of the bass player where the rest of the band locks into your time along with the drummer.

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I have continued to warm up and stretch to help avoid pain. One thing I have noticed is that I don't have to press as hard as I think I do. Meaning I was unnecessarily causing some hand pain by pressing to hard for each note. I have attempted to try to hold the bass differently to also reduce hand pain.

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This session shows a big improvement over time from the first session

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later love will joy division practice session

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The playing to a metronome every practice session has been extremely helpful. I can now confidently play the part at the right speed without the backing track.

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I originally worked on "For What it's worth" by Buffalo Springfield for awhile, but decided to cut it as it was hard to find a backing track that worked in standard tuning. The original appears to have been sped up or slowed down when being recorded to tape.

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As the rest of my setlist started to solidify, I realized I really needed to pick a 2 minute song to round out the time for the 20 minute set. I also really wanted to add in another decade, so I started looking and was deciding between a number of Beatles tracks. I then thought of one of my favourite bass lines of all time, from Break on Through by the Doors

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With the song finally picked I sat down the song and tried to start learning the song. The first problem I ran into is that this song actually doesnt have a bass player. The keyboard player plays the left hand bass part on one keybaord and the melody line on the right hand on a seperate keybaord to get those distinctly different sounds.

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This track was created to be like a standard 1950's ballad track, I asked Filip to do a slap back style guitar lead that was popular on tracks of the time period, such as Johnny Cash songs.

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The first thing I did when making sure I could get the right tone is to look for the right backing track. With that found, I listened to the orginal and then my playing, I A/B tested this until I found the right mix of pickups to use. Since I was playing bass, I felt that most of the tone finding would be in the tone and volume pots on my bass. The bass has a P-bass and J-Bass style pickups. I adjusted these until I felt I got the right tone.

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When I think of the 90's I immediately think of Grunge and Nirvana. For me Nirvana are one of the few bands to impact culture the way the Beatles were able to in the 60's. So I decided to pick one of my favourite songs by them that I didn't know yet already and was one of their more popular songs. With it being release in 1993 and Kurt's Death in 1994, this is among of the last influential songs released by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana.

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Playing This part was kind of the opposite of playing Bass on 'Love will Tear us Apart' by Joy Division or 'Break On Through' by The Doors. With those songs playing the bass part, I felt like I had to anchor down the timing of the track and be as precise as I could. I felt in a truly live setting I would be locking in with the drummer to really lay down the tempo for whole band.
For this song especially taking into account how Cobain played this song live, its much less precise, a bit messy and wild feeling. Each iteration I watched live had a slightly different tone, sometimes a rushed feel, sometimes with much more grit and distortion, sometimes much cleaner, sometimes the solo was played like the album and sometimes he would just play noise or add a heavy chorus effect. Even within the performance of the song the same notes would be played with varied levels of intensity.
This feeling went along with Cobain's mindset in general and the general feel of the Grunge Movement and Genre. They were very much the antithesis of perfect flashy guitar solos of the 80's and Hair Metal bands. Cobain is known to have said he disliked guitar solos  and to have grown to dislike their most famous song 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' Even purposely playing parts wrong or off.
So Overall, I felt that to accurately recreate this song and genre authentically in a live performance, I would have to pull back from playing too controlled or precise. I wanted it to feel live and wild, I tried to pick a guitar tone that resembled both the original as well as some of his more wild version, to capture that anything could happen next vibe.

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There were a few difficulties in choosing the right backing track. Many of the available backing tracks were too clean cut sounding for what I wanted to go for. Many were also in the tuning of the original which is in E Flat Standard with the 6th E String tuned down to D Flat. This would be preferable, but since I wanted to play the live set as close to live as possible and this track was in the middle of the set, I decided to go with a Standard E Tuning with the 6th String dropped to D backing track. I was also happy to find one that attempted to follow along with the tempo changes found in the original song. It really helped me capture the live and wild feel I wanted for this song.

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One of the challenges with this song is that there is no actual bass part since the bass part is played by the keyboard player originally. So this means all of the YouTube tutorials online were very different in how they approached the song. I ended picking parts from multiple tutorials to come up with something that fit the original, while also not being too much like a keyboard part and not something an actual bass player would play.
The other challenge was locking down playing with the right timing in the middle of the song while the guitar and drums and vocals all kind of go off on their own thing I have to lock down the main riff even though it feels different in that middle section. I combated this challenge by adding in more practice time to a metronome. This gave me a stronger internal clock to follow throughout the song so I wouldn't become distracted by the other instruments in the ensemble.

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early practice session - heart shapedd box

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The metronome practice has helped a lot with that middle section where it feels like the other instruments kinda go off in their own direction. I am feeling really confident at this point and I am really starting to get down which YouTube Tutorials to follow with the different parts.

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This session shows lots of improvement from the first few sessions

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I feel really confident at this point, I think I am ready to perform this live in front of a crowd and for this final. The metronome practice has really sealed it for me.

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In post I put a 1950's style compressor on the Buss. I then added a 1960's style compressor to the Bass part. I added 1960's Style Tape emulation to the entire track.

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I really loved what Filip chose to do with the slap back lead over this song. I think it fit perfectly. I am also really happy with the bass tone using the sock and staccato playing to really get that old time stand up bass style sound. I think the song definitely needs a singer to really bring it to life. But overall I think this track is a perfect representation of that 1950 Ballad sound.

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There's a couple of point where I am not quite as smooth as I know I can be and have been in practice, but overall I am very happy with this performance. I think the tone is right and the bass really fits the song. Of course if this wasn't a performance for a class, I would normally turn the bass down in post production.

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I am really happy with the final performance. I think there are a couple of places that I am not quite 100 percent smooth, which is frustrating as I practiced this so many times that I really felt that I wouldn't mess up at all. But I think overall the mistakes wouldn't even be noticed in a true live performance. I also added a few flourishes that weren't planned, guess I just got caught up in the performance. It felt really good overall though it felt like all of the hard work and practice really shone through in this performance.

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I had never formally learned this song, but a beginning obstacle was unlearning a wrong 'by ear' way that I learned to play this song by memory years ago.

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After getting past the initial relearning phase I think the song is coming together pretty well. The first thing I noticed once I had chosen a backing track is that the song is significantly faster then I thought it was. I plan to overcome this with practicing more often to a metronome.

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Through use of metronome I have gotten used to the tempo of the song. I have noticed though that too much practice to the metronome has me playing maybe a bit too much precise, against the feeling i wanted to go for, from the original and the grunge tone. At this point I know the song pretty well, so now I will focus on getting the feeling right with the backing track.

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I am feeling confident in my ability to play the song at this point. So the next thing to focus on is to nail down the tone. For starters, my main guitar is a Kurt Cobain Signature edition Fender Jaguar, so it naturally gets tones in the Cobain range. The main thing I had to think about for this song is there is a significant gain change from the verses to choruses, and then a super high gain fuzz tone for the solo. I achieved the tone changed by having the main tone be a Marshall style Amp from the Strymon Iridium, then boosting that slightly with the Walrus EB-10 EQ pedal for the intro and verse tone, then as the chorus starts I kick on the low gain side of the Hudson Broadcast, this really helps the bended notes in the chorus shine out like how Cobain plays them. Then for the Solo I engage the high gain side of the Hudson Broadcast to get this completely fuzzed out, almost blow amp tone.

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I am happy with the final performance overall. I think I really captured some of the wild and live feelings from Grunge and Cobain's live performances. I am disappointed by the tone I played on the final performance though, it was a little to high gain I feel, in the verse sections. It definitely was not the tone I had cultivated in my practice sections, I think I had pushed the gain on my Hudson Broadcast during warm up playing the solo for In My Head and I forgot to turn it down for this song. I do think the solo tone is spot on though. The chorus tone is not as affected, It is just when it comes to the intro, its clear that there's too much distortion. I think in a couple of places I could've played a bit smoother, but in the vein of a live Cobain performance it turned out really well.

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This song was written with Blood Red Shoes and The Kills as the strongest influences. This song was not chosen, in favour of Landfill by Daughter, because I had a singer willing to sing Landfill. I felt adding in that collaboration element was more important then adding this track to the lineup. I also felt like I had enough representation of the decades 2000's and 2010's that I didn't want to add it in.

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I made this song to fit the 80's style aesthetic. I wanted it to feel happy and upbeat. The keys drive the song, which is a different direction for me musically.
Overall this track wasn't chose for the final for time reasons. I felt like it was not quite strong enough to knock any of the other songs off, especially when focusing on decade diversity in the set list.

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For me Queens of the Stone Age are the pinnacle of modern rock of the 2000's. Josh Homme the singer and main guitarist and songwriter is the driving force behind the band as well having an ongoing collaborative project called The Desert Session, which In My Head first appeared on.
So when it came to picking a song from the 2000 area, it was an obvious choice for me to pick a QOTSA song.
This particular song was chosen, because I did not already know how to play it and it could be played in E standard, so it could fit into the rest of the set without guitar changes or big tuning changes.

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The first thing I worked on was finding a good quality backing track. After choosing a backing track I worked on getting comfortable playing to it. I noticed the trickiest parts of the song would be the mini lead after the second chorus, then the solo towards the end of the song and then the transition to the outro straight from the lead, especially since this backing track left it pretty much just me to finish the song.

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The Verse and Chorus was very easy to get down in the first practice session. I can tell the solo will take a bit of time. I don't yet have the mini lead after the second chorus down. I am currently confused on that part as many of the tabs online seem to show radically different ways to play it that sound quite different.

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I have started to get that after second chorus mini lead down, I have narrowed it down to two different ways to play it that both sound about right.

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In this practice session you can hear that a major improvement was made in my playing of this song, but I still struggles with the mini solo after the 2nd chorus.

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I now feel pretty confident about most of the track and have begun working on the solo, here again I run into the problem that a lot of tabs have the solo down differently and most so far have been very wrong sounding.

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I have started to combine the different tabs for solo and started to put my own spin on it. I definitely was having a lot of difficulty playing it just like Josh Homme and was having a hard time finding a good example to study as well. I think I will end up going with a hybrid approach where take what I understand and make it my own solo.

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I have the after second chorus mini solo down now and the solo is coming along, I feel like I really have the song down now. Playing to a click has helped me ingrain the tempo and stay on time throughout.

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Overall I am very happy with the final performance. I feel like I really locked into the timing and everything went pretty well. I am a little annoyed that I felt like my last few practice sessions were a little bit better then the last performance though. The solo was the only area where I messed up, I think not fully committing to my own solo or learning the original in its entirety hurt me here. I tried doing a bit of both and definitely had a few issues. But I was able to recover well enough and finish the song.

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This is probably the performance I am most disappointed in. I feel like the singer gave a great performance, but by the end of the set my arthritis was full blown and my hands were killing me. Even with the warm up and strectches I did before the performance, by the time we made it to this song my hands were in a lot of pain. This made it nearly impossible to hold the chord shapes 100 percent right to get a clean strum throughout the song, It also felt like it was affecting my timing throughout the performance as well. I think part of it was less the length of the final performance and more the over practice the last few days before the performance. In the future I can overcome this challenge with better adherence to stretches and warm ups from a longer time out weeks/months before the performance, by taking anti-inflammatory medication before the start of a gig to slow down the arthritis and possibly moving songs more affected by this pain to an earlier time in the set.

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The main application of ideas shown in this track is the idea of playing both the bass part and a lead line at the same time. This is done very often by The Kills in songs like 'Baby Says', 'Tape Song', and 'Satellite'. This is also done by the Blood Red Shoes in songs like 'Light it up', and 'I Wish I was Somebody Better'.

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The 80's vibe was achieved by using a major key to give the song a more upbeat feeling. I then used a keyboard sound that felt very happy and almost synth like to really drive the song.

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I collaborated on two songs that were featured in my final performance and 1 that was not.
The first Song I collaborated on was my 1950's Ballad Pastiche. I asked Filip if he would be willing to play a slapback style lead over my track. We had a one to one and I shared the files with him and a One Sheet with all the info needed for this song. We talked back an forth through messaging a few times and then he sent me over his video and audio recording to add back into my track for the final performance. For this song I wrote and recorded the rhythm guitar, bass, and drums. I recorded a lead to give Filip an idea or starting point, that I then replaced with Filip's recording. I then mixed everything adding in lots of old vintage sounds like vinyl and tape (deeper explanation given under the 1950's song tab)

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For the second collaboration. I asked a singer if they would be willing to sing on a track. I asked them to give me a list of tracks they would be willing to sing on and I picked one that fit in a decade I needed and was different then the rest of the set. The song we decided on was Landfill by Daughter. We talked about good times for practice and worked around each other's schedules to practice about once to twice a week for the last few weeks leading up to the final. The singer was already familiar with the song so the practice was mostly for us to get used to playing in time with each other. We worked on a few different ques for me to play in between parts so that we could stay on time, for the final we removed some of the ques as we were more used to playing together but you can still hear some left overs from the ques in the parts before each chorus. For this song I played the acoustic guitar and set up the recording mics for both myself and the singer. I then mixed the song in post production. (deeper explanation given in Landfill Tab)

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Displaying an awareness of the whole ensemble

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Displaying an awareness of the whole ensemble

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1ST COLLAB: For the first collaboration with Filip on the 1950's track I had to keep in mind that I was performing the bass part, so I needed to keep the rhythm and I didn't need or want to be flashy at all in my playing. That would detract from the performance that Filip was giving that was much more the star of the song at this point .
2ND COLLAB: For the second Collab with the singer on Landfill by Daughter, I had to be very aware of her as we were recording in the same room at the same time. I also had to consider if I played too loud that would both distract her from her performance and be picked up on her vocal mic, possibly reducing the quality of her take and the ability to mix it at all in post production. Since we were both performing live at the same time, we both had to take each others performing in to consideration to play in time. Playing off each other's timing to stay together throughout the song.

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I also had to use effective communication and collaboration skills to fulfill my part in Filip's July song. On this song I played bass and as a session musician it was important that I learn exactly what Filip was looking for so I sent him an early practice so he could give extra feedback. It was also important to be aware of his performance as the bass part was their to enhance his song and not take over in anyway. Especially as this track was serving as part of his final.

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Overall I am very happy with how the final performance turned out. I wish that my hand pain and arthritis hadn't affected my performance of the last song of the set 'Landfill' as much as it did. There were one or two points throughout the set that were not as smooth as practice runs, but overall running from one song to the next, if this was a life performance to a crowd I would be really happy with my performance overall, especially considering where most of the tracks started off. For an online showcase where I could redo individual parts, I think small bits of the songs could be improved. Overall I am happy and proud of the performance produced and I am confident it shows skills across a wide variety of genres and decades.

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In this video I go over the warm up and stretch routine I used and built on, in preparation for this final performance.

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For this song I used a Slate ML2 Small Diaphragm Condenser Microphone to record the Acoustic Guitar. I used the included AKG C414 Emulation on the mic as it sounded the best for this song. For the Singer I used her favourite mic, a AudioTechnica AT4040 Large Diaphragm Condenser Mic that she feels really captures the detail of her voice and I agree.
In post production I took these two mics and added a light reverb and compression to meld the two tracks together.