What is bold and sly? My first bit of recording for the RPM2020 challenge. I’m still behind where I’d like to be, this far into the month, but at least I’ve got something up.

I was thinking about doing a version of the folk song Reynardine at tomorrow night’s Café Live event in Loughborough, which led to me listening to a couple of versions, including the brilliant one by Fairport Convention. That led me into some practise and I didn’t get far before I got sidetracked into recording. My initial loop isn’t entirely dissimilar to the progression underlying Fairport’s rendering but it isn’t close enough yet to count as a cover.

Recording was done through my Helix LT into Logic Pro X. Initially, I was getting enough monitoring latency to be offputting but I realised that, with the Helix set as input and output interface, that disappeared if I didn’t use the input monitoring option in Logic. I spent a while getting a couple of looping layers set up with some simple fading and switching, then improvised over the top before spending a while cutting out some of the most egregious mistakes and making a few more tweaks (like the sub-bass for the first part of the intro).

Most of what you hear is my Sei Flamboyant bass through a fairly simple patch that is my current bass default – a modelled SansAmp Bass Driver, a bit of reverb and some EQ and compression. Every now and then, you’ll also hear a touch of my ‘swell’ reverb from the Helix, which is a blend of a more extreme reverb and delay. I’ve added further FX on Logic – more EQ and compression, chorus and tremolo on the ‘lead’ part and pitch shifting and a lick of overdrive on the sub-bass.

I might come back and do further remixing or add additional parts but, for now, bold and sly, my first track is up.