Rush - Red Sector A synth cover (on Groovesynthesis 3rd Wave) with guitars by Ian Chapple

Been very much looking forward to doing this next cover - Red Sector A from Grace Under Pressure. Probably one of the only 'no bass' songs I will feature on my channel, but hopefully one that fans of the synth stuff (both Rush and just in general) will enjoy. Guitars on this cover were played by Ian Chapple who kindly recorded an excellent guitar playthrough for me. We have also got a plan sorted for doing some recording with our Rush tribute band coming in the next few weeks, so will have some videos to post very soon I hope.

Red Sector A is a song that I wasn't massively interested in for a long time. It was just an ok song from Grace Under Pressure and when I was younger I considered any song featuring Geddy not playing bass to be borderline immoral. I started to like it a bit more when my interests in synthesizers started to expand since the song features two of the all time greats - the PPG and the Jupiter 8, but it wasn't until the guys in my Rush band wanted to play it that I really fell in love with the song (as is often the case when you go into detail with a song when learning how to play it!) I would probably put it in my top 15 favourite Rush songs now, and think the live versions (GuP and SoH in particular) to be just magic.

All the synth parts are recorded on my Groovesynthesis 3rd Wave, and being able to make patches and sounds like the ones in this song was a big reason I decided to buy the synth. With regards to the parts/patches, I decided to split it as if I was playing on 2 synths. So one patch is the 'Jupiter' with the arpeggiated bass on the left hand and a synth brass sound on the right (I attempted to go somewhere between the fizzy GuP sound and the brighter Show of Hands versions for this sound) and the other patch is the PPG swirly patch. For the purposes of the video however, I mime the bass part on the PPG part recordings just to keep it a bit more interesting.

The bass sound on this song is a very interesting one. When I listen to it closely it sounds almost more percussive than bassy (very exaggerated on the Show of Hands version too), but my memories of seeing this song live several times was how damned BIG the arpeggiated bass part was. So just because I enjoy the memory of that feeling when the song started live, I went for a slightly beefier bass sound than the more percussive, almost wooden sound, on the album. The PPG sound I made was based very much on the 80s live performances because they are my favourite versions of the song.

Hope you enjoy, and I promise the bass will be back next video :D

Hemi

Gear Used:

Groovesynthesis 3rd Wave
Roland PK-5 Midi Pedals

My Ko-Fi page: https://ko-fi.com/hemibass#