Includes: .sng, lyrics in plain text and pdf, midi OPBk file, A source midi file that ended up not being the source.
Uses: NP Bosendorfer Jazz trio, but you can try any kit with the bass at )0through 31
The story:
JaseOwen was looking for a bass line to go along with the version of Pink Houses posted song time ago by Charles Spencer in the Beats section. I took a look at the file, and realized I needed more direction than Charles had provided. I probably could have gotten there if this was one of my favorite songs, but, well, I don’t dislike the song, I just don’t turn up the radio when it comes on.
I tired some other approaches. I found a midi file. Note to anyone who want to try it, just change the .kar tag to .mid, and its a midi. The bass line in there was OK, although it needed editing whenever the song goes to D. I posted that edited bass line but really thought I needed to do something more.
I decided to go with my old standby, Band-in-a-Box. I entered the chords, and had the timing right, but the rhythm styles weren’t really working at all. Still, the new bass line sounded promising, so I exported that file as a midi and opened it up in Logic Pro X.
The Logic Pro X drummer track works in very interesting ways. For those of you who use Logic and have not fully explored it, it is really quite remarkable. One not real well documented feature is the drummer tracks’ ability to follow the arrangement track. What one does it to first create an arrangement track for the song, then create a drummer track. The drummer track will then auto-create verse, chorus, etc. to match the arrangement. As I already had a midi bass track that I wanted to use from Band-in-a-Box, I split that up into its intro, verse, chorus and bridge sections, and then created a drummer track in Logic. I tried a couple different drummer choices and found the resulting track to be interesting, making for a playable arrangement of the song.
All that said, this clearly is not an attempt to make a “match the record” version of Pink Houses. But is does follow the attached cheat sheets and makes for a decent arrangement.