Been a while, hasn't it? Almost a year in fact! Truth is, my time has been occupied rather continuously for the past year, what with the band, my education, my day job, and my home life. Still, I have missed writing these entries, so I figured, why not? Why not pull out the old Bass Lines blog and give some details as to the goings-on in S.I.Q. land again? Well here goes!
I'm not going to try to elaborate on everything that has occurred within the last year; if you have been following our posts on facebook, you probably already know what we've been through (primarily the release of our first album, A Constant Struggle, and the departure of our lead singer, Ashton Johnston). I will just start by telling you that now, we are at a comfortable position with lots of potential for growth and development.
In the way of songwriting, we have begun to incorporate new elements into our style and sound, not the least of which is the new vocals of our own rhythm guitarist, Phil Rich. Aside from that, we have begun to embrace influences of more modern progressive metal stylings, notably that of the sub-genre known as Djent. So to all you Djent lovers (or haters) out there, yes, that means we have been listening to Periphery. Also, our writing process has undergone a metamorphosis; lately, we have been starting with a simple idea that one member may have, and we jam on it over and over until something evolves from it naturally. We continue on a string of ideas until we have a rough idea of the structure of the song, then we take each of the simplistic sections and flesh them out, writing parts for each member based upon what each section seems to demand. This has already been working quite well; we have already finished a song that will be appearing on our next album, and many more are being written.
As for performances, we have been playing out since the beginning of August, when we decided we were ready for people to see/hear the new lineup of S.I.Q. They have been going really well, with great crowd response. Also, our live sound has never been tighter, thanks to the great sound guys that we have encountered lately. Our next show will be a return to The Bonu5 Room (where we played at Jortsfest) with The Coming Dawn, Fall of Ashes, and several other great bands. If you're lucky (and you come to the show obviously), you might be some of the first people to hear a brand new song. ;)
I have had a few gear changes during the past year (you know me, I'm a tone monkey), so for those of you who know (or care) about what my rig is comprised of these days, here you go:
I am still using ESP Ltd basses, notably the B-206SM model, but now I have two of them! I keep one in Eb standard tuning for S.I.Q. and one in plain E standard for any of my other musical endeavors (school, Bad Tuesday, jazz).
I am actually about to have a change-up in my pedal-board. For a while now, I have been using a Boss GT-6B for effects (chorus, delay & reverb, flanger, octave, any special EQs), a Mesa/Boogie V1 Bottle Rocket for distortion, a Rocktron Tru-Loop for regulating the Bottle Rocket, and an ISP Decimator for noise reduction. Lately though, I've been wanting to split the signal path of my pedal-board, keeping distortion and effects separate. Therefore, I will be adding an MXR Bass DI+ for distortion, EQ enhancement, and signal splitting, a BBE Sonic Stomp sonic maximizer for frequency retention, getting rid of my Mesa Bottle Rocket (shocking, right?), and re-purposing the Rocktron Tru-Loop for rejoining the two split signals at the end of the pedal-board. A bit complicated, sure, but I believe it will do wonders for my tone. (Also, I'm asking for a Boss GT-10B, the next step up from my processor, for Christmas! Fingers crossed!)
I have also upgraded my stack! I made the switch from my old Mesa/Boogie M2000 to a Mesa Big Block 750, and I traded out my old-school looking 1x15 Mesa cab for a newer Mesa Powerhouse 1x15. But of course, as you can see, I am still a Mesa/Boogie man.
Lastly, here's some music that I've been listening to lately:
Enjoy!
Cole Millward
S.I.Q. bassist
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