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Over the past 10 years or so I've created around 200 charts (revised figure) for my covers band in a simple format which is easy to use for the whole band. The charts just show the chords and song structure and are particularly useful when learning new songs. Minimises disagreements about who's getting it wrong lol! Sample attached below, all songs are in this simple one page format. Too many songs in the archive to list here but suffice to say largely wedding/function band material. If free access to these charts would be of interest to anyone please drop me a pm and, if there's enough interest, I'll explore ways to make them available to download somehow. Also, if there are any particular songs you'd like charts for just let me know. I'm recently retired and have some time on my hands Chords-This Will Be.doc

£80? Robbin' b******!!!

I've had a look and can't see mention of this elsewhere. Alan Cringeon is a valued friend. I've followed his career as a luthier for at least 11 years, from the early days. Many of you will know him and his work, either directly or from various bass resources. I won't go on but I would like to offer my congratulations as a Salace 5 String E-Type has just been awarded the accolade 'Fretless Bass of 2017' by Bass Guitar Magazine. I know how much time, effort and pure craft Alan has devoted to building both basses and guitars over the years and I for one am dead chuffed for him. Peter

Hi, I stumbled upon an amazing Jamerson bass break on the 1968 Marvin Gaye track ‘At Last (I Found A Love)’ and decided to look at it in closer detail on my Jamerson Analysed blog. Full transcription, breakdown of the line and video available at http://www.jamersonanalysed.co.uk/2017/12/at-last-i-found-love-marvin-gaye-1968.html Enjoy! Chris

Soon to be ex-pedal company (Prophecysound Systems) guy here... much of what I was going to write was covered by previous posters, however there is still several points to make: 1) there are many, many other companies making pedals these days (compared to the early 2000s when I started out). Given a number of pedal purchases are somewhat random (using people's spare money or just to 'try something out', there are many other competitors lining up already for the same dollar / pound / euro. What will you do to stand out? 2) if you have no technical skills yourself then you are on the hook at expensive rates when a support issue comes up (and believe me, it will). How will you deal with a pedal that is shipped across the world, and then fails to work as soon as it is out of the box? etc 3) you will be bombarded by requests for free pedals by unknown person X or unknown band Y who wants to 'demonstrate' them or 'endorse' them in a way that won't have any obvious benefits to you, yet if you don't indulge some of these people / bands then you'll be missing out on some good marketing ... or will you? 4) eventually you will come across customers who are almost impossible to satisfy - if you are considering direct sales to keep more of the $$$ yourself - just how far will you go to keep happy a complete nutter who is threatening to post to all the FX forums, Facebook, twitter, what a complete silly billy you are for not doing (insert unreasonable request here)? If you are really keen on doing this I would suggest a partnership between yourself and a tech person; you might find someone who you can work with who doesn't want to deal with emails / dealers / etc. And then prepare to put in many hours + $$s before you see any return. There's a reason why I'm getting out of the biz...! edit: Stop right there - that's already getting into a difficult area. Basses put out way more signal, in general, compared to guitar, and have much different frequency requirements for a good sound. How many overdrives or fuzzes work equally well on guitar or bass? There is a very good reason why there are 'bass' and 'guitar' overdrives. Happy to discuss privately if you don't want to post your ideas here.

Hi am also a grandad at 56 and have been playing since I was 15. It's never to late to start and stopping is out of the question!! Keep going it's life long learning and enjoyment

Thanks. I'll have to get a few pics of my actual bass, and maybe even one with my Cocker Spaniel listening to me play.

I'm now the proud owner of both Wishbasses Sean put up for sale last week. I'd echo what the others have said, Top Fella etc etc but he's actually better than that The Wishbass ad said no courier and with good reason,the man's moving house !! We all know the stress involved with a house flit. Anyway a window of oppertunity popped up and Sean told me "Book the courier " . That's the kinda man he is, a million things he could be doing and waits in on a courier for me. Can't thank you enough Sean.

I love the idea of a chord chart resource on BC, and this looks like being an excellent start - clear and concise.

Aw shucks, too kind Dood!

Thanks Ped. Any interest in adding a chord chart resource on BC?

Reaper. Without doubt. It's my favourite DAW regardless of price.

I found Reaper not too hard to learn, comes in at about £60.

Youtube is your friend.

Just to be argumentative, I don't think neck construction, neck joint, bridge construction and/or attachment or tuners make any difference to how a bass sounds either, but that's just my opinion of course. When I swap out stock tuners for Hipshot Ultralites there is no difference in 'tone' and they are very different, engineering-wise. In my view its strings, pickups and the position of the pickups that make the difference. Most basses sound a lot like... basses.

There's nothing wrong with Duncan Designed pickups. If you have 'better' pickups it's definitely worth trying them, but record before and after to make sure it's not 'confirmation bias'. I'd change the strings first. It's easy and likely to make a huge difference. Edit: I also had a Squier VM Jazz V for a while and the 'B'-string wasn't all that great. Having said that bear in mind I don't get on with 5-stringers anyway, the 'B' string always seems like it's from a different planet, but that's probably a mental abberation on my part... I did some recording with it though and it sounded fine.

It's standard practice in the world of marketing. Think supermarket "own brands". The problem, as you point out, is that the supplier then has to convince the consumer that they should pay more for the "brand name" product, which in many cases is exactly the same. However, the "Duncan Designed" spinoff brand allows the manufacturer to grab himself a piece of the much bigger OEM market, albeit at a lower margin, without diluting the image of his premium brand.

I have, though that's not what the thread is about. The issue in this case is using 1/4" phone plugs for speakers. That choice was made by Leo Fender in the 1950s, when 50 watts was a large amp, SS didn't exist, and there was no such thing as a connector specifically designed for the job. The deficiencies of 1/4" connections for speakers are well documented. If you're attitude is 'they've always worked for me' consider the man who jumped off a fifty story building who was heard to say as he passed by open windows on the way down "So far so good".

It was the same for me regarding the 12" and their 'retro' 10" series. I actually owned a 2nd gen Compact first (15") and then two BB2. I liked them but I was never really crazy about them. They were great in that they were light, compact, and loud, and they sounded ok... but sound was where I didn't love them. I tried a Two10 and that changed everything. I now have two Two10, and a Mesa D800+ (I tried a D800 for a bit but the 'bright' switch on the D800+ and the HPF especially were worth the upgrade for me). The 'baked in' tone of the Two10 cabs (and I assume the OneTen and the others) is very nice to my ears. There's tons of treble if you want it, but it is hard to get it to sound brittle and ugly, and the bottom end is big and strong but tight and it doesn't get boomy easily. They're great for lazy people like me who wants to find a good sound quickly without much fuss. I've used the Mesa + Two10 combination (one or two cabs, depending) quite a bit by now, and they've never made me doubt my choice.

You could gig with something like a PJB a Suitcase. I had the Flightcase, which didn't quite manage with other than acoustic or quiet amplified instruments in anything apart from lounge type venues in my experience. I sold it and got another PJB cab and use 1, 2 or 3 of them with my head depending on the venue/band.

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Here's mine

Agreed, Paul is an absolute gentleman and I should say the set up wasn’t what I wanted as a weak wristed Jazz player, but may have been perfect for someone else. The set up is always personal to taste, but the bass construction is very high quality for an incredible price. And the sound of a fully carved bass blows me away...

Jealous 😉 Great score dude

Nice! Remember to share the sofa shot when you get.

Yeah, but you're quite handy with a camera. It was probably much more horrible in the flesh.

Result

Here's Silverfish at the Falcon, 1989 or 1990 maybe. I'm in this photo too, aged 17. Loved this era.

This is great! Get to the guts of it. Some people want flattened thirds and sevenths, others dislike consecutive fifths in their harmonies. And like you mentioned, there’s cadences to deal with. That’s before dynamics and lyrics are dealt with. Music has many dimensions, perhaps some are more relevant/judged than others, to different people? like parts of the tongue?

Isn't that the point of a classic rock covers band - to play the usual suspects? I've seen soooo many "Classic Rock" bands say "we're not going to do the same old covers every other CR cover band does" who ultimately end up doing all the usual suspects because they eventually realise that that's all that punters who go to see CR bands really want.

I suspect you and I might be more on the same line than I initially thought. When I wrote the sentence you quoted, I was not trying to refer to composing by numbers, but to the ability to know in advance how the target audience would respond to (new or old) ways of doing things. Playing what you like yourself, and what you feel is expressing the message effectively, then is one good method amongst several. BTW. to me there is no qualitative difference between someone feeling that say the IV-I is a good idea and someone who was taught in college why IV-I could be a good idea. The first person supposedly has the same good ears as the second person, but the second person probably in addition has been told why this is. The first person presumably found the chords on his guitar and saw it was good, where the second person maybe would say beforehand: "I'm gonna opt for the IV-I in this song". The first person remembers it too, and says the same thing the next time. An important factor, to me, in discussing these things is what one understands the term "the rules" to mean, and I willingly use quotation marks consistently for that term when used in certain meanings. To me, "rules" are not commands about how to write music, and are very far from commands about composing by numbers, but are gathered wisdom about what musical elements have what effect on which listener". As an old and maybe still used example: nobody ever commands you to use a tritone interval in the fourth bar but not in the seventh . but the "rules" do state that our world's shared musical experience tells us that this interval has a certain tension in it that to certain listeners, and in certain musical styles, demands to be resolved - or might be experienced as daunting or ugly in certain circumstances. After that, the composer decides freely to use it or not, and in case how. Rules (without quotation marks) do exist though. Say if you want to write a baroque fugue, then you're probably gonna look up what baroque theorists demanded from a fugue. But that I think is outside of what we're discussing here. More could be said about different types of rules, but I'll only mention the analytical patterns one has found in hindsight when analysing music of days yonder. These rules do not tell you what you should do, but what others have done before you. Enough!

I wish I'd thought of that bass line.

The problem with that notion, I personally think, is that while it's true, it's not the whole truth. Yes, different people have different sensitivities to different things in music (that, I think is your "it's all subjective" bit), but also: some people's ears perform on a higher level than others'. Taste comes in to it, as does getting used to (for example I used to hate hard rock music 45-50 years ago before I heard Deep Purple, but now love death metal too). Most people also have a shared sense for most of the musical forces that are at play, and that's why we for example mostly see regular songs ending in V-I. One could of course go on and on about this, but I assume you get the gist. However, there is no such thing as THE expected in that given situation, as in that there's one option only. As an example I've often written a certain type of church music that for music psychology reasons ended in a IV-I instead as it puts the expected listener in a different state of mind. A pro knows what tools to use to generate certain responses, whilst many composers do not. Example at the bottom. When Prince or other composers create a song, they're essentially working with music psychology - out of what we know about (Western) man's response to certain musical information. Somebody like Prince (in my personal, not generally valid, view), when he wants to invoke certain responses from certain audiences (maybe his own fanatic fans or maybe the generic radio listener), is better than some other composers at choosing melodies, rhythms and harmonic developments so that his musical language is at its most effective in reaching those goals. "Expected in that given situation" does exist, I agree, but is more about that V-I ending and similar harmonic development powers, and about melodic and rhythmic expectancies too, and less about whether one wants to write certain songs and which tools to choose for those songs to be effective at reaching the goal. The people who wrote about "I'm a Barbie Girl" were IMO very effective in that particular endeavour, and I love the song, but I also strongly suspect that they would hardly be able to write a Prince song. People like Zappa OTOH would improvisingly create a new song live without too much insecurity and miscommunication. One would use that which is common music knowledge as a tool to fill out the idea that one of the players (say Zappa himself) started with, but the resulting song would most probably lack finesse or an overall coherence of every element within. I think a lot of jazz might be within the processes I try to describe here. Here's an example of music that I think might be "perfect" as to following all the "rules" (though I can't bear listening to it long enough to even check and I also seriously doubt that they're able at all), but it also shows that this band lacks everything in the departments of control, finesse or even a deeper awareness of what the "rules" are - beyond the most rudimentary. Listen at your own risk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKFDHbP7R50

Clearly you haven’t played an ACG. If you had you would know how good they are. I too own a Cort bass and I know how good it is but I also own an ACG and it is many times better than the Cort.

I know i would struggle picking this up after the listing so ive messaged him and agreed on £80 . Just impatiently waiting on details for picking it up, hopefully itll happen today. A bit of a punt but seems like a decent deal though.

This is going to be another absolute cracker from Alan. His limba bodies are amazing!

Ok, so I'm going to bite in the interest of keeping the Noodle Bar in business... Here's a snippet of something I'm cooking up (not for the BC Composition Challenge as it happens). Precision bass played through an API pre-amp with outboard EQ and compression. Rest is all written in MIDI.

Strictly speaking this is Off Topic, but I put it here because it's a response to a thread within General Discussion. In the thread about the most musically talented musician of all time, I wrote a post that I now believe must have been way more hard hitting than I imagined when I wrote it, and Bassman7755 especially was (or seemed) its target. I have read and re-read the offending post, and now believe that it was an ugly thing to write. I therefore apologise to Bassman7755, and of course all others who may have felt they were its target, for that post's general tone and the aspects of it that put down other people. What I should've said was that the most talented person likely is not a person we tend to know. What I said instead was that people who mention McCartney have no clue about this stuff. I'm very sorry, and wish Bassman7755 and others all the best. Bert

Hire or borrow from a Swiss player. DB players are great guys. When I have flown, I have hired, and boy am I glad. I had a Chadwick folding bass too, which I bought because I had had flying gigs and almost instantly as soon as I got it, my flying gigs stopped...so I don’t know how it is to fly with. I took it oodles of uk gigs though and it was a great instrument and a talking point pre and post gigs, so if you think of flying often you may want to look at Charlie’s site foldingbass.com, Charlie is a real gent to deal with. I also had an eminence folding bass: it sounds great but I missed the rest of the body so I sold it after only a couple of months, but it is a quality instrument. As you’ll have guessed, none of this is cheap, apart from borrowing, or hiring a ply bass, so I would go for that if it’s a one-off. All the very very best.

Not sure if I ever posted my '63 P up on here! Enjoy. It certainly gets a lot of attention at gigs.

I have not read the original thread so can't comment on it. However I applaud your ability to acknowledge that you may have offended someone and are willing to apologise for it. This is especially relevant on the internet where it seems that so many people are happy to troll etc. Good on ya

and if his plectrum is of a sufficiently light gauge, then the give in it will act as a compressor too. Maybe if his fingers are really squishy then that might soften the movement of the plectrum too. or if his thumb is a bit on the weak side.. oh dear I'm going cross-eyed... lol In all seriousness though, something to point out regarding valve amplifiers which appears to be a fairly common misconception. Just because an amp has valves in it, it does not mean that the signal is being compressed. Valves have the capability to compress, but the two are not inextricable.

Look I am an advocate of using whatever tools you have to get the best results you can for yourselves and your audience. No one NEEDS a compressor on their bass. There, I said it ? You may find one can help you to either achieve a tonal goal or to sit in the mix more easily. You may find its all smoke and whistles and too much shag and hassle. It's all fine. Really. Go play, enjoy the heck out of it. If anyone on herequest ever wants to ask anyone more about compression, ask away. People will answer. If anyone considers someone a lesser player for using compression I'd respectfully suggest they don't really know why someone might want to. It ain't a magic wand it ain't never fixed crappy technique for me, quite the opposite actually, it makes quiet stinky poo louder so any string noise rings right out ? Play how you want. Peace...

Thanks Peter. Thanks to everyone else who posted much appreciated.

I love it, sadly it’s beyond my disposal income at this time but it is beautiful.

It’s got a medium deep neck, and a modern precision nut width. I’ve played other largish necks and this is the most comfortable; it’s very nice to play. Sound un amped is quite loud, certainly enough to practice at home with. Plugged in it’s the nearest I’ve heard to a double bass; it’s very full sounding, great! I think the strings are really good, tapewound and not too rubbery! Nice touches include aged binding and the whole bass has the feel of a decent quality instrument and it’s clear that some thought has gone into it. It’s not heavy, no neck dive. Obviously it’s quite a large body, so some may find it bulky and could be prone to feedback due to fully hollow body, but no problem so far at home volumes.

Watch the prices in Vintage And Rare in Bath......... they're relative to the rent of the place.........!!