Skol303

^ Thanks, Mike! That's praise indeed coming from someone with your skills.

The bassline is a bi-product of me listening to a lot of jazz recently, inspired by the thread on Basschat no less! I'm going to re-record the track once I get my desktop 'puter set up again. I'll post an updated copy here when I get round to it.

Slap bass is:

The sound of a tiny penis seeking attention.

I mean, have you seen the size of Victor Wooten's tiny ickle hands? I rest my case.

[ Disclaimer: sorry to all you slappers! I'm just jealous really as I'm hopeless at it myself ]

[quote name='Basszilla' post='1251451' date='May 31 2011, 01:32 PM']I will likely be using adobe audition purely on recommendation by my brother.[/quote]

... I'd also recommend checking out a piece of software called 'Record', made by a Swedish company Propellerhead. You can download a demo from their website (the demo allows you to save but not re-open projects):

[url="http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/"]http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/[/url]

IMHO, it's one of the best-value DAWs out there for recording purposes. Very easy to use; has a superb mixing desk built in and includes a bunch of FX courtesy of the people at Line 6. I'm constantly recommending it but I don't work for Propellerhead... honest!

Interface-wise, I use a trusty Tascam (old yet reliable):

[url="http://www.dawsons.co.uk/acatalog/tascam-us144-mk2-usb--audio-interface.html"]http://www.dawsons.co.uk/acatalog/tascam-u...-interface.html[/url]

...but I'd also recommend anything made by Focusrite, based on personal experience:

[url="http://www.focusrite.com/products/audio_interfaces"]http://www.focusrite.com/products/audio_interfaces[/url]

Hope that helps and happy shopping!

Cheers fella!

Nope, I cheated with the vocals and used acapellas from my collection. You can probably find them on YouTube if you're interested in doing something similar. Another very useful resource I've found for acapellas is this website: [url="http://www.acapellas4u.co.uk/"]http://www.acapellas4u.co.uk/[/url] (obviously for non-commercial purposes only!)

I have made some DIY acapellas in the past but it's not easy, as I'm sure you're aware... I found that it helps to have some fairly hefty EQ software, or alternatively, an instrumental copy of the track which you can then use to 'chop out' the instruments using a process called phase cancellation (which is very fiddly but by far the best method).

Anyway, glad you like the track. I'm still tinkering with a few other iPhone efforts which I might post here once they're finished.

Missed the documentary myself; sounded good.

Queen get a lot of flak for being a little "uncool" these days, but I think it's undeserving to be honest (and probably has a lot to do with Ben Elton...).

I used to listen to them all the time as a kid. Tracks like Radio Ga Ga; Another One Bites; Fat Bottom Girls; and of course Bohemian Rhapsody were particular favourites of mine at the time.

All quite cheesy, but I'm sure they still have some influence on me today... I still find myself humming 'I Want to Break Free' on the rare occasions that Mrs Skol entrusts me with the hoover ;-)

Nice melody, works for me!

Some impressive playing when you let rip at the tempo change / double-time, roughly half way thru. I like the tone and FX you're using there as well.

Great stuff Keep us posted if you work on it more...

Absolutely epic, mate!

I mean really... fantastic song; great video and production. You should be rightly chuffed about it

Let me know next time you're playing locally around Manchester - I'd certainly like to see you guys live.

"Lucy in the Sky, with Diamonds..."

Seriously though, very interesting... Holographic Interferometry... that's a new one on me.

"At low frequencies, the guitar plate moves back and forth not unlike the piston of a loudspeaker" - I wonder if this goes some way to explaining the percussive nature of bass tones?

Whatever. Sure looks fun!

Undoubtedly 'old news' to many of you here, but as a newbie to jazz I'm really liking this guy - Milt Hinton:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTqVHEJZ0A"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTqVHEJZ0A[/url]

...he has a nice way of describing the role played by bass at the start of this clip. I'd certainly aspire to be so full of beans at that age! (though he's sadly no longer with us, as I'm sure you all know).

Thanks Derren! Yep, I'm definitely going to be there for the 'Main Event', so to speak...

Enjoy your gig mate.

Superb; great work Bilbo. And a very nice recording too.

Sun just breaking through the clouds over Manchester; coffee on the stove; this on the stereo... and all's good

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='1247562' date='May 27 2011, 08:40 PM']The amount of hours needed to become an amazing musician or sportsman is 10,000.[/quote]

^ I've heard that figure applies to just about anything. I'm currently close to that for making cups of tea as it happens (not that anyone at work appreciates my mastery of the art).

Seriously though, I'm sure some people do have a natural aptitude for things - and this may well give them an edge to begin with. But 10,000 hours practice at anything - roughly 3 hours per day for 10 years - is surely going to pay off.

I guess the moral of this story is to be blessed with aptitude and practice your a$$ off!

Brilliant... I get it now. Many thanks!

This was particularly useful:

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1247521' date='May 27 2011, 08:05 PM']As a guide (not an absolute), think in terms of the series of letters ABCDEFG. If you have an A, you need a B be that a Bb or B natural and so on through the alphabet. So in the key of F, you get FGABbCDE not FGAA#CDE. In the key of D you get DEF#GABC# not DEGbGABDbD- is this making sense?[/quote]

...in fact, the replies get progressively easier for me to understand the further down the page!

I'm not even going to attempt this one - it makes my head hurt:



[quote name='markstuk' post='1247334' date='May 27 2011, 05:00 PM']OF course this opens the debate as to whether A Sharp and B flat are the same note :-)[/quote]

Thanks again all.

This may well be a dumb question (so bear with me!)... but I can't for the life of me find the answer on Google, so I thought I'd rely on your folks here instead.

My question is: when writing music, when do you use the sharp or flat notation to describe the same note? For example: when is C-sharp written as C-sharp and not D-flat?

I appreciate there might not be a simple answer here for my simple mind... but if anyone can help briefly clarify then please do.

Cheers as always.

... if it wasn't for the small matter of Mrs Skol about to go into labour at any moment, I'd be there! (Darwen ain't far from my home patch in Manchester).

Looks like a great gig; best of luck with it

Just to quickly pitch in and say that I support the idea of a 'Newbie Beginner' sticky here on Basschat.

This site is always my first port of call for bass-related stuff - as I'm sure it is for many other people - so I reckon a newbie sticky in the DB forum would get a lot of support. That said, I've always found the folks here to be very helpful indeed! So this certainly isn't a criticism of existing advice given; just that it might be nice to have some of our local expertise in one handy thread for newbies like me.

(not that I even have a DB... I can't justify the expense for a while yet, but it's firmly on my wishlist!)

Can't help you with cab impulses per se... but this site has some great (and free!) sims that are compatible with Mac OSX, if that's any use?

[url="http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/"]http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/[/url]

Washburn for me, sometime in the late '80s. Can't remember which particular model. Bought it for cheap off a friend who'd decided to hand-paint the body with household black gloss! It looked a real mess but sounded nice; had active pickups and looked a bit like an Aria Pro II.

I also had a Hohner Rockwood (Fender copy), which was recently returned to me by my brother - I've since de-fretted it.

I don't hold any religious beliefs personally (I'm firmly in the Church of Richard Dawkins and evolutionary biology!)... but I fully respect those who do and must admit I enjoy a good sing-song in church when the occasion arises. Don't mind a bit of gospel either.

You folks have enlightened me on a new genre here - Hillsong - which I'd never heard of before. "You learn something every day", as the saying goes...

[quote name='crez5150' post='1245258' date='May 26 2011, 09:48 AM']How on earth do we bassists have fewer notes???[/quote]

... because we tend to get paid the least (ba-da-boom-tish!)

Seriously though, props to the OP for developing this little tool. Sure, people can say "what's the point?" - and that's a fair comment. But I'm generally supportive of anyone who makes the effort with things like this, and especially when they share them for free.

To cut a long story slightly shorter... we've had the builders in at home and as a consequence my desktop 'puter and other gadgets have been boxed away out of reach. In the meantime, I've been tinkering with some of the music apps on my iPhone and ended up producing this little ditty.

It basically started with a simple (and repetitive!) riff that I'd been playing with one evening. I recorded several minutes worth of this using the Amplitube app, playing to a click, and then set about adding some percussion, samples and vocals over the top - all brought together using an app called Nanostudio.

I did admittedly have to splice and adjust the pitch/tempo of the vocals and other samples manually using Audacity on my laptop, and then faff around loading them back onto my phone...but other than that it's a bona fide iPhone production! The vox themselves are - ahem - 'borrowed' from Biggie Smalls and Mos Def: not my favourite rappers if I'm honest, but they seemed to fit the swing of the track.

The project took roughly 3-4 hours from start to finish. Overall, the quality ain't great, there are plenty of bum notes in my playing and the tune itself is kinda one-dimensional... but I'm quite pleased with it nonetheless - for something made on a mobile phone!!

Anyway, enough waffle. Have a listen if you're interested.

[CAUTION: the vocals come with a 'parental advisory' sticker, in case you were thinking of sitting down and listening to this with your nearest and dearest over a nice cup of cocoa]

[url="http://soundcloud.com/skollob/hypnomatics"]http://soundcloud.com/skollob/hypnomatics[/url]

All feedback welcome: like it or loathe it - let me know.

PS: for anyone interested, the shonky bassline is played on a self-defretted Hohner Rockwood LX90B... that's pure quality right there! Trades for Alembics or similar may be considered

[quote name='ZMech' post='1244551' date='May 25 2011, 05:43 PM']The tone on this into is what first turned me on to double bass:

[/quote]

Love it; great bassline that! Cheers for the link.

[quote name='BottomEndian' post='1242683' date='May 24 2011, 10:16 AM']You've obviously not been hanging out in the "jazz" threads then! It was all the mentions on BC that put me onto Phronesis in the first place.[/quote]

Me too... they're probably my favourite outfit at the moment; certainly the most played on my iPod.

Amazing stuff. Jasper Hoiby is a superb player.

Bilbo/Hector... cheers for the clarification

[quote name='BottomEndian' post='1242732' date='May 24 2011, 11:06 AM']Hmmm. Seems I should take another look at Reaper. I had a play with it a year or two ago, but it just didn't seem very "finished" on OS X. Most plugins didn't have their proper GUIs, it seemed to need a few little workarounds to get the I/O going... all the sorts of little things that put me off. I'll cast aside my memories of last time and try again. [/quote]

^ I'm running Reaper on my old laptop (OSX 10.4.11) and it does suffer from occasional crashes and other glitches - but then so do most DAWs that rely on 3rd party VSTs. It also has a habit of spitting out random, ear-shattering noise from time to time whenever the processor gets busy - seriously, very loud and possibly dangerous when wearing cans! - but I could be mistaking this problem for my own music?!

Generally speaking I'd say it's very reliable and well worth a look - it's still free to trial for 30 days anyway (and free afterwards, depending on your ethics), so no reason not to revisit it.

I still prefer Reason/Record on my desktop but Reaper does have some great plus points, as 51m0n has mentioned (nice list of VSTs too, btw!).