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My friend Brett and I have begun doing some collaborations– well it’s a little unfair to call them collaborations, actually, since he does most of the work and I just put some bass tracks on top of his compositions, but it’s turning out to be fun so far.

Brett is an amazing metal guitarist and guitar teacher in Poughkiepsie, NY, who has always had a tendency towards ambient, new classical, and new age music. Some of the music he has been writing has more of his classical influence in (though not this one so much). He was a composition major in college so it is extremely difficult to pigeonhole him as simply a metal guitarist or even a “Berklee-shredder.” He does whatever he wants whenever he feels like, and I really respect that.

This is the first track we’ve done together, called Time Theorist, but I suspect that Brett put my bass track in two bars too early. We’re still working out the kinks on how we send stuff back and forth to each other. I actually like how it sounds in some places, but not others (mostly the way it sounds like I flub a note in the beginning).

So the bass is me, any live guitar you hear is Brett, the drums are programmed, with the keyboard and orchestrated parts composed and sequenced by Brett (maybe he plays some of the keyboard live? I’m not sure).

I am pleased with my performance on this track, simply because I had to play very simply or otherwise ruin the vibe of the track, but I had to do something more than just whole notes to make it worthwhile for Brett to send the song to me. He could have sequenced a part, he could have even played a part himself, but I feel like I improved on the song just by doing things only a live bass player can do. I think I succeeded.