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The first bass demo video is done:

Not the best of photos as in photography but it’s hard work getting them all in the same room with out falling out. 😜

My band Hurtsfall have a track "Revelator" on the cover CD of this month's Sonic Seducer magazine:

And there's only one female smurf, unless they're ahem, 'milking' the males somehow?

So, the last piece of the puzzle turned up today, and I now have an Ashdown ABM600 EVO-IV and two Ashdown ABM210H EVO-IV Pro Neo Cabs. Nice and portable, plenty light enough, and that lovely Ashdown ABM sound.

Gold fret wire..................... Jescar FW55090 EVO Mark was looking for something different this time, so he asked me to fit some EVO gold frets.

Theyve got enough money to pay that silly pecker Linekar though. The sooner the licence fee is abolished, the better.

I've said it before but I'll say it again. The BBC is an utter scumbag organisation from the top to the bottom, and the sooner it's shut down, or at least defunded with public money, the better.

You’ll have to explain that association, I’m a bit slow, sorry.....

Lonely This Xmas by Mud. In fact, last year it was so lonely and cold that we had to burn the Xmas tree.

The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping

Stingray V - 20th Anniversary.

I gave Lightning Bolt a listen yesterday. Some interesting stuff. But I'm still in a Killing Joke phase. Watching the documentary has really added to their songs:

Having owned a Fender 51 and a couple of Squiers, I had been missing owning one. Just in the last couple of weeks I finished getting some parts together (mostly Squier) and assembled this one. Cheap as chips and plays great. I have been playing it for at least an hour every day and found it quite inspiring.

I haven't posted for a little while. Is this type of 'shaming' the type of thing Basschat has been reduced to now? Really uncool guys. Really uncool.

I have to agree with the "at least they're having a go" sentiment. Good on them etc. Having said that, it did remind me of this old favourite:

Just started watching this now, Peter Hook being interviewed by Dagan from PMT, fun so far Peter Hook Interview At PMT John 😎

A few thoughts on transcribing. As many are aware, I have recenlty (July) posted a website making transcriptions I have done available to other players. I was always frustrated at the lack of decent reading material to practice with when I was learning to read and thought that posting some interesting parts would be helpful to people who wanted something credible to practice with. After posting the old transcriptions I had lying around (God knows where many of them have gone), I started to prepare some new ones and, so far this year, I have completed over 140 new transcriptions – some quite short but some, like Close To The Edge (Yes), La Villa Strangiato (Rush) and Tenemos Roads (National Health) quite long performances and long transcriptions. The process has taught me a few things about transcribing that I thought it may be interesting to share. Firstly, I have learned that transcribing is not as exact a science as I would have previously thought. If you take a line like, say, ‘Peaches’ by The Stranglers or that part from 'The Chain'by Fleetwood Mac, it is fairly clear what the notes are and what is right and wrong in terms of note placement. When you are looking at complex tunes like ‘If You Can’t Stand The Heat’ by Bruford, however, it is not nearly as clear what the specific notes are and where to find them on the neck. Even when you slow the piece down to 25% of it’s original speed, it is often still difficult to be absolutely clear on some of the detail. When players play long and complex lines at furious tempos, it is not uncommon for the occasional note to be missed or the execution to be a little clumsy, rendering the exact note momentarily inaudible. The transcriber has three choices; take a guess using musical logic (is the sequence of notes a scale or chromatic run and, if so, what SHOULD the note be), leave it blank or add a ghost note. Of course, this begs the question, if I can’t find a note at 25% of the speed of the original performance, how important was that note in the first place? Secondly, everyone makes mistakes. It’s ok. Nobody ever died from a wrong note. Slowing down performances allows you to hear the clinkers and, similarly, to hear the ‘fixes’ where a note is re-recorded or the player dropped in for a passage they clearly missed the first time. You quickly learn that many of the most iconic bass performances were not executed flawlessly the first time around (e.g. Geddy Lee’s monster bass fills in ‘YYZ’ were recorded separately to the main bass part. How many takes was it, Gary? 2 or 2,000? We all have the potential to put down impeccable performances when we have the studio time and technology available. Recording perfect parts is easier that performing them live. In addition to this, another defining factor in the accessibility of note recognition is the tone of the bass and the mix of the recording. Neil Murray’s bass part on ‘Tenemos Roads’ was a good example where the tone in context occasionally made it difficult to determine whether a note was an F# or a G. A well timed cymbal, a bass note on the paino or keyboard or an overly intense vibrato and the core note can quickly get lost! Sometimes it is obvious but not always. Thirdly, transcribing notes does not necessarily reflect the definitive elements of a performance. Bass sounds like those of Chris Squire, Geddy Lee, Percy Jones and a host of others cannot be written down and the authenticity of any performance of the transcription by anyone other than these individuals will always be suspect and will depend heavily on the player’s familiarity with the original performance and the specific tones, attack and effects used. Some of these details can be approximated in a transcription but many cannot. Next, there is the issue of key signatures (this bit is reproduced from another thread). I was discussing this recently with greater minds than mine (remember; as a reader, I am self-taught so there are inevitably gaps). I asked the question 'what key signature would you use for a Blues in F: would it be F or would it be Bb major (given that F is an F7 and, therefore, the V chord of Bb major)? It was explained to me that there is a subtle difference between different genres and the ways in which music is engraved (written down). Without over-generalising, what I was told was that, historically, music was written in certain keys e.g. Nobby Fishcake's Symphony in A minor, Giblin Blapp's Concerto in E and so on. With popular songs like Jazz standards or show tunes, it is common for the key changes to be all over the place with the harmony slipping in and out of keys throughout. Also, the use of dominant 7th chords in blues type tunes creates chaos when you try and put a key signature on the chart as the key centre and the passing chords are conflicting with the key centres all of the time. As a consequence of this, there is a tendency in Jazz to write the whole thing out without a key signature and to include the accidentals in the way I have done in many of my trancription. A lot of the lines in bass playing linked to Jazz and other secular musics are chromatic and lead into chord tones which means key signatures can interfere as you can have the same note three times in bar, one sharp, one flat and one natural; sometimes more than one of each. Key signatures can confuse the issue even more. In short, there is no universal solution to these pitfalls and people deal with it differently. I try to use key signatures when it makes sense to do so but, sometimes, it makes more sense to keep things open. I am constantly reviewing this, though, as I am aware that this is 'a thing' and that my knowledge of notation is potentially flawed. Finally, there is SO much detail in a performance that it is difficult to write down. Jack Bruce’s bass solo on ‘El Cid’ from the Cozy Powell album ‘Over The Top’ has bends within bends that cannot be reproduced on the score. Same with a lot of Percy Jones’s techniques, sliding harmonics, weird right hand techniques etc. Slapping and popping is another difficult thing to write down (I have pretty much bottled out of doing so). I think it is possible to do it (I have seen transcriptions that have been done of slapped parts) but is takes infinitely more time as you have to develop a means of indicating slaps, pops, hammer-ons, double thumbing, l/h vs. r/h fingering for tapping – it’s a minefield and, frankly, I am not inclined to spend the time traversing it. There is also no means of recording whether a player use a pick or fingers, for instance (there are ways of describing different ways of hitting a violin string with a bow, for example, but, to my knowledge, these details have not transferred readily to modern bass playing). Finally, all transcribing is a personal expression; ‘this is how I hear it’. Unless you have a direct line to the bass player responsible for the original performance, there is every possibility that you will get the thing wrong. My Jasper Holby transcription of ‘Abraham’s New Gift’ prompted a response from Jasper himself that said ‘Many thanks for that but you for the time signature wrong’. Remember, a transcription is NOT the performance, it is a representation of the performance and that can be interpreted in many ways by a transcriber. Is it a bar of 7:4 or a bar of 4:4 followed by a bar of 3:4? Is it a 4:4 triplet feel or 12:8? It is not a question of being wrong as much as it is of interpretation. The ‘correct’ way of transcribing a piece of music is in rendering it readable as opposed to accurate. When an engraver (a person who writes out music parts for performance) is producing a chart, it’s success is measured not by the transcriber but by the player who uses the transcription to execute a performance. I like to think of transcriptions as part of a dialogue. 'This is what I think. Do you agree'? I have had correspondance with others on details on specific transcriptions and it is interesting to see how different people hear the different parts. It's less about who is right and who is wrong and more about consensus. I hope these thoughts help my bass playing chums to gain a little insight into the philosophy of transcribing. I am thrilled that so many people (over 4000) have been able to use my transcriptions to further their playing. I have enjoyed doing this work and seeing the website grow and develop. Bilbo's Bass Bites – Bass Transcriptions

Just moving this comment to the right thread 😁

I would buy one. But really...I wouldn’t use it, then I’d sell it and everyone would laugh.

Just spoke to a mate who helped arrange the PH video (he works for PMT). They're not particularly limited, as touted in the BB thread. The hand signed ones are all gone.

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I don't like any Christmas songs until a week before Christmas, when I enjoy them all. Apart from that warbling, hamster faced monstrosity, Carey, who can shove her song up her hole! I'm particularly fond of the Jona Lewie and Wham ones though. It's great though isn't it how music can evoke such feelings and emotions. My daughter always says she only has to hear the opening synth stab of 'Wonderful Christmastime' and it instantly feels like Christmas, yet it was released 20 years before she was born. So I'll nominate that one as well as it'll be our first Christmas without her at home. Oh god, here I go.

They might not be joins, they might be subtle 'go faster' racing stripes.

I think I've inadvertently undergone a very long term process of aversion therapy with regards to Christmas songs. After many years of hearing more or less the same song selection on constant repeat on the radio, in shops and pubs and round people's houses I'm now at the point where even the opening bars of the supposedly ever popular 'Fairytale of New York' inspire nothing but feelings of slight revulsion.

This. Primarily for the wonderful bass line from Dee Murray

I Hate Everything About You - Three Days Grace

This, This And this.

Think I had one of the first BZ-4000 in the UK. They went on sale 25/08/15 but mine arrived a day or so before that. 12lb if its a day, cracking looking bass. Reasonably chunky neck,active/passive. A lit of bass for little money.

Smurfs aren't cheap to milk. You need specialist equipment or farmers with very small hands. The cost soon mounts up

Yep saw that - absolutely shocking! In this country, musicians have been - and still very much are - treated as 2nd class citizens! It was like this 40 years ago when I first started playing in a band, and it's still the same now despite British music and musicians being amongst the best and most important and influential in the world.

Oi get in the queue 😁

Another work in progress. Just feel something is missing but I can't decide what... I call it Fat Larry.

I'm using a bluetooth dongle which is on the pedalboard permanently. Works great. Wireless access to all presets under the sun and one click to load them!

Look at these idiots enjoying themselves! Don't they know it's illegal to be mediocre on the internet? It's a bit mean spirited to point and laugh at these guys, it makes you seem rather insecure about your own abilities.