BigRedX

I quite liked it. It's not a great Beatles song, but it wouldn't have sounded out of place on one of the later albums, and the technology is great. However, rather than spend all that time making something out of a quickly recorded demo, I'd have preferred to hear something new from Paul.

At some point over the last 55 years I have reached the point where I am comfortably confident in being able to play most of what I want to play. In one of my bands, both the guitarists are technically better bass players than me (and I suspect the drummer might be too) However I'm the one who enjoys playing the bass. A lot of what I find easy or difficult has little to do with my overall ability but how closely it falls into my existing skill set. This was brought home to me during my short stint in a traditional covers band where the bass lines I found easy to learn and master were those that were very similar to what I would have come up with had this been an original songs that was being asked to write a bass part for. Conversely other songs that sounded easy turned out to be extremely difficult to play once I had actually worked out what was going on with the bass line. I've also discovered that a good drummer makes me sound much better.

I can't think of any synth I've owned with a dedicated pitch bend wheel that didn't allow both up and down bends. With a suitable modular it would be even easier as you could "program" all the required bends using envelope generators and manually trigger them as required.

I used to have both this and the kidney shaped version. The rack was in my rack with my amp and wireless system and got used when I took my whole rig and the kidney shaped one was for when I was sharing someone else's backline. Apart from a couple of additional input/output options on the rack they are identical. From memory the rack version was very heavy and apart from looking good din't really offer me anything extra that I needed. The only amp model I liked the sound of was the Sub-Dub. Everything else sounded weedy. The footswitch connection via cat5 cable was always flaky since I haven't come across a suitable gig-proof cable that would stand up to being packed and unpacked 2 twice a week and last more than 6 months. It's all been replaced with a Helix Floor which is far more user friendly and has loads more options.

Of course it could have been sequenced. That way it would be simple to get all the pitch bends perfect. The weapon of choice at the time would have been the Roland MC4.

I Feel Love by Donna Summer Der Mussolini ny DAF

as an impressive looking technique tapping is great, but then I think I could spend hours working on it or 5 minutes programming something into a sequencer that will sound exactly the same.

Never found that at all. However in my case it proved to completely impossible to access anything off Spotify without an account so I signed up for the basic free one. I also have an artist account for one of my bands which provides useful information about the streaming of our songs.

I don't think so. That's probably why there's a limit on the number of time you can stream a track without buying it. I've never seen Bandcamp listed as a source on any of my PRS royalty statements, and the only payments I get directly from Bandcamp are when someone buys a physical or digital copy of my music.

You do need an account to use Spotify, but unless the terms have changed for new sign ups you don't actually have to pay anything, although they probably will try and steer you towards a paid-for account. The free version has ads, but often you don't get any for hours (or at least I don't)

You could do Spotify - that's free and probably has a larger selection than Bandcamp. Also IIRC you can only stream each track a certain number of times (3?) on Bandcamp without buying it.

It really could be anything, although if it has to be available on Bandcamp that will limit the choices. I've just done 5 SHFLs and got a very eclectic mix of classical music, avant garde, electronica, pop, and a film sound track...

I'm sure that my technical ability is limited by my taste in music, but for me it doesn't matter in the slightest. I'm a composer first and foremost and technical ability is only an issue if I come up with a musical idea that I can't play, in which case I practice until I can play it. If it really turns out to be stumbling block I can always let the sequencer play it and do something else over the top. Because I am a composer I only write music that I like, so techniques and musical styles that I am not familiar with will never be an issue because I simply won't write like that.

Count me in.

There are plenty of mixers that don't have phantom power. My band played at a venue the other weekend with such a mixer. Everything we use goes straight into the PA. If we had DI boxes that relied on phantom power to work we'd have been stuffed. I've never noticed any signal loss with the EMO DI boxes we use, and IME they are way more reliable than the typical budget active DI boxes that the in house PA engineers supply in that they work first time every time with every sound source. Every time one of my bands has had a DI problem it has been down to the DI boxes supplied by the PA and swapping them for one of ours has fixed it. I don't have a problem with active DI boxes, but if they don't also offer the possibility of being powered from either an external PSU or internal batteries, there will be a time when they won't work.

VAT and any other import taxes are included in the price. However you should read through the couple of threads about returns problems before committing to an expensive purchase from Thomann. Currently this is the (very) weak link in the process with the UK carrier DHL being very unreliable especially when it comes to picking up large and/or heavy items. Until that gets sorted I wouldn't buy anything large or expensive from them.

Pitch-bend wheel on a keyboard synth.

Bluetooth has too much latency for real-time audio transmission. There will be a noticeable delay between you plucking a string and hearing the note in your headphones.

Requires phantom power for operation, and AFAICS there's no PSU or battery option, so won't be suitable for every situation.

Well having listen to a couple of tracks all the way through and at least a minute of everything else, I can't see what all the fuss is about. I certainly didn't find it "difficult" or "challenging". However I did listen to a lot of prog rock and fusion in the mid 70s while I was waiting for something more interesting IMO like punk rock to happen, and therefore it's not the sort of thing I chose to listen to these days. TBH based on what I have heard before I found it rather formulaic and dull. As others have implied it would probably work quite well as background music for a 70s pastiche TV show. On the whole it sounds to me music where technical ability on the instruments is more important than compositional skill, and that's not what I want to hear, a bit like the Knower track on another thread. At least that has vocals.

The "True Value" of anything at any given time, especially used items, is whatever anyone is prepared to pay for it. That's not what the seller thinks it is worth, or even the classic half what it cost new. The Basschat market place while technically selling to a focused target audience, doesn't by any means reach as many people as eBay, and IME the more esoteric stuff isn't really popular on here. And if you're out gigging you'll know that bassists who know about Basschat and more importantly use the site regularly are still in the minority.

Because we have no guitarist in the band I compose a lot of music so it sounds reasonably good with just the bass which means using a lot of 2-note chords and alternating drone string melody string plucking. In this case using the A string as my drone always sounds best - D is generally too light on bottom end and E can be too muddy once I've added synths. Because we're a post-punk/goth influenced band that tends to mean A minor rather than A major. I've just gone through our current set and most are in A minor with a few in D minor, one in E major and one where the main riff and verse are in B minor and the rest in A minor.

While there is nothing wrong in itself about the mainstream, surely as creative people (musicians) we should be prepared to look beyond. Why are so many of us seemingly afraid of standing out? Besides I though you had me on ignore...

I have a Helix. Most of the time I don't both with cab sims (or amp sims for that matter) as IMO adding one always seem to make my bass sound worse. I do however find that the model of the Roland Jazz Chorus Combo works well with my Bass VIs. Therefore if you are determined to use amp and cab models don't be afraid to try ones that you wouldn't consider using for bass if it was actual hardware. You might be surprised.

At least it's not boring. That's a far worse crime.