28 BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 4 ; bassmagazine.com
going for that oneness and capturing that live
energy, where everything is just working. We
were in a beautiful barn, and we had a little
demo workstation to record everyone quick-
ly. As ideas were flowing, we were recording
with this little workstation, where everyone
had one or two channels going up to it. We
were capturing the vibes and the room mics
were capturing the energy in the room. That’s
how it went down. It was a very cool thing,
for us to be in this live, spirited environment.
Plus, the barn had big windows — there was
light. It didn’t feel like we were inside. It was
farmhouse and a farm, and we just lived on
site. It was great.
“Paralyzed” is a cool track. What’s the story
with that tune?
That was the second song we wrote.
There are actually two versions; the second
version made the record. It was a riff that
Mike brought in, very powerful and aggres-
sive, with a Rage Against The Machine kind
of energy. We wrote it in a day or two. Then,
after sitting with it for a while, over the week-
end when we came back, John thought differ-
ently about it and suggested that we revisit it,
but with a different approach. It had more to
do with the intro and how it starts.
It is a really heavy, almost “pick-oriented”-
sounding riff, if that makes sense.The riff sits kind of foreign for me, in the
way the notes open up and it being a half-
step down. It was definitely something that
taught me a different way of finding riffs and
musicality on the bass. However, the basic
theme of this record sits very well on a guitar
and electric bass. It feels really natural, and I
think when that happens, it carries a power
that’s really important to have.
“S2N” starts out with an amazing bass intro.
Is that something that you brought to the band?
That was the last song we wrote, but it
was the first riff that we worked on. It took a
while for it to settle in. We started developing
it, and then we took a week break before we
reconvened. When we came back, we hadn’t
demoed it — it wasn’t recorded — so we lost
what we had, and we just kind of moved on.
We came back to it a few other times, but it
would always just spark another song. So, in
a way, it was a riff that we’d work on, but it
would spark something else, that took on a
life of its own — that wasn’t really related to
that riff. I think it sparked four other songs!
So, how did you eventually circle back
around to it?
We still had a bonus track to cut. So, we
revisited the riff again, and John suggested,
“Why doesn’t the song just start with the bass
riff?” I didn’t really hear it going that way,
but he was like, “It could be really cool, like
Iron Maiden’s ‘Wrathchild’” [Killers, 1981,
EMI], where the bass riff starts the song. So,
I played it, and we started developing it. Then
it turned into the song that it is now.
How are you playing that intro? Is it a
tapping thing?
No, I’m just playing it like a bass. The in-
teresting thing is that it was the last song I
recorded. I noticed, as we were working with
on it, how the tone was changing. By the end
of the song, at the end of the session, I wasn’t
happy with the sound anymore. It turned out
the batteries in the bass were going, and so I
put new 9-volts into the bass, and it all came
back to life again.
On “Pale Blue Dot,” there’s an effect at
about four minutes or so that sounds like it’s
coming from the bass.John Myung