BassTractor

8 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Happy Christmas. 

Thanks!
Great mod matrix! 🙂

I had to buy it myself. A-Barb steward had set a 50 quid limit for Secret Santa (and don't forget to enlist, folks), and as this was £59.99, nobody on BC was gonna give it to me.

10 hours ago, fretmeister said:

Also where is the gig?

I might fancy watching that....

Sounds great!  You should film it and post it on here! 

Nothing much. I'm the modest type. I just hope someone who loves me enough buys me an Arturia Matrixbrute synthesizer wait what's the beautiful, knobby thing standing just behind me with its fantastic modulation matrix? 😉

On 06/12/2018 at 16:26, T-Bay said:

start together, stop together and smile together

Thanks! Couldn't report back earlier, but my black metal band Morhn Tormentum now start together, stop together, and...

...wait for it...

...smile together!

Success! 😉

12 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

To this day I have no idea what happened to bring about this bizarre disaster and I've never played Jazz again.

Sounds much like me when I was called to do a blues gig. I'd only played Penderecki, Stockhausen and Xenakis for decades, and suddenly have to play a 12-bar blues? Totally out of my depths.
We'd always just done whatever the eff we liked. Couldn't even count to 12 !

8 hours ago, casapete said:

No bassist, just the Hammond player using pedals. Sound wasn’t great for me , and really missed something.

Aye, it's more like short drones innit. Also, most of the time these people have never learnt to play the organ pedals at a professional level, and they tend to keep it simple - mostly using one foot only.

That said, on many organs, especially from the seventies and later, it was perfectly possible for the organ to produce bass-resembling sounds, but of course the organ players still were no bass players.

Yes. I have the syndrome. Officially. Something about being a perfectionist and when I know, I put a comma in the wrong spot, I keep having this expectation of being found out.  😉

The following however is not the syndrome:
Depping as a pianist for jazz bands, often with minutes or a few hours of notice, just because they were desperate enough and because I was available and had the gear, I always was the worst guy on stage. This after I'd agreed with them that a sax player or similar would have to play instead of the expected piano solo.
Of course they always forgot, and when it was time for the piano solo, they all gave me the look, and I gave them the look whilst playing just the chords.

Worked a treat: sometimes, someone would remember and get some solo notes in before the eight bars were finished! 😁

35 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

Quite honestly, if anyone behaved like that in any band I have known, I suspect they'd be visiting the out patients dept of the local hospital to have their guitar removed from a sensitive part of their anatomy.

Hehehe. The Finnish genes have smitten you! But now you're back in polite UK, and in polite UK, one simply doesn't do that. No, in polite UK, one shoves his guitar up his aahrse.

This vid demos the built in sound/sequence combinations that the poster found.

I think this vid amongst many others demonstrate that this is a beast indeed.

Again, probably not for me, but that's about what I need from a synth, not about whether this is a good one.

Personally, I have very good experience with responding kindly, politely and with humour, pointing out to them that there's a worrying pattern, and asking them to see it from my side if they can.

IME, genuine customers will see and admit this, and do something reassuring. YMMV.

6 hours ago, FinnDave said:

Luckily, all of those genres are covered by the one band whose CDs occupy a complete shelf above my desk.

Grating Dad? 😁

What BRX says, with the addition that if their login name has changed several times, that would set off some alarm bells in my head coz people can get eBay to delete bad feedback in some (many?) cases - - even though of course the received feedback still stays with them to some degree

Their profile --> See all Feedback --> View ID history

Non-bass gear? Nah. I've never lusted for anything outside the bass realm...

...if you disregard my lust for pianos, drum sets, African drums, electric and acoustic guitars, flutes, saxophones, violins, synthesizers, electric pianos, digital pianos and electronic organs. It shouldn't be mentioned, but I own or have owned all of them, and right now lust for a Minimoog and a Waldorf Quantum.

But no, not really! 😂

1 hour ago, PawelG said:

until you encounter some Czech people. I find them unbelievably rude. They do not care. 8 out of 10 experiences from pubs/restaurants/shops etc are really bad. I’ve been to various places in Czech and from what I’ve been told - even Czech people don’t like Czech people from Prague. Maybe it’s the capital city thing but my god they are rude. So, don’t be bothered if somebody is really unpleasant .

I did want to write something about that, but was searching for words. Thanks for posting something that has to be mentioned.

IME it was 50% of the people, and when I asked several of the friendly ones about it, they unanimously said that the rudeness is a city thing as well as a remnant from their communist past. I can't possibly evaluate this, but did seem to notice certain patterns so one could guess beforehand whether a person would be rude or friendly from the way they appeared visually.

Several times, Czech people would warn us about other Czech people, like the waiter in a famous beer cellar warning us about the guy behind the beer counter. Prague is the only place I ever experienced something like that. BTW, the beer counter guy was indeed one of the most fanatically unfriendly people I've encountered in 62 years.

Indeed, as Pawel says: don't be bothered if somebody is really unpleasant.

In Havelska, there's an Italian restaurant called Corto Maltese, and when we were there, the walls were covered with artwork from the Corto Maltese albums by Hugo Pratt.

Not for everyone, I'm sure, but as a Hugo Pratt fan, I loved it. We ate there several times.

BTW the Corto Maltese hotel is probably best avoided. Cheap though.

Edit: the hotel is now updated, I find, and gets good feedback on tripadvisor and the like. In that case, I think it's well situated for starting walks. Also the restaurant seems updated 🙂, and the Muriels (😁) removed. 😢

The tourist shops also sell remakes of the famous and ultra-cool (post-)WW1 Communist Army pointy woollen winter hats called Budenovka, Budyonovka, Bogatyrka or Frunzenka in a great filt version. IMS, this hat is featured in "Corto Maltese in Siberia".

Again, not for everyone, but I loved it.

1 hour ago, ednaplate said:

There is a great live music bar called the Ungelt near a Church called Our Lady Of Tyn (or something like that). It’s in an old medieval cellar. Loved the place when I went. All of Prague is stunning.

Yes indeed! Jazz & Blues Club Ungelt just behind the church that you see the two fabulous towers of when you stand near the famous clock or on the town square.

In the mean time I found the jazz club I mentioned above. It's Agharta (AghaRTA) situated at Železná 16 just a few minutes South of the town square.

8 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

I hope neither you or your wife are veggies as Czech cuisine doesn't cater well for  them. 

Aye, but just 50m down from the sex machine museum, there are two veggie restaurants. One is visible from the street, "Country Life" on the right, and for the other, I think one needs to enter one of these porches that lead to several shops and the like. Just besides the one marked "Country Life" probably. Not sure though.

If one likes jazz, Prague spawns several jazz clubs with a lot of activity. At least one of them spawns a jazz CD shop that is open while gigs last. I'll try and dig it up later this evening.

If you want to buy typical Czech/tourist stuff, it's the old adage of: the closer to the town centre, the higher the prices and the more likely you'll be offered bad quality if the price isn't very high. Walking away from the famous clock, we saw prices lowering gradually, whilst also the number of shops went down. The market at Havelská wasn't the worst, BTW, and I bought some stuff there as shops were harder to find further away. It was a compromise: we only had a few days, so didn't get to know the city well enough. 

33 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

It looks visually similar to the Memorymoog. 

Doesn't it now. Purposely, of course. The Memorymoog was "cet obscur objet du désir" for us young uns, but I've never even seen one IMS.

Just want to say I've heard the demos and read the specs more carefully, and am very, very impressed indeed. Any comparance with the Polymoog must be about historic awareness, coz it really has very little to do with it. It seems to be a beast of a synth.

Would I buy it before a Waldorf Quantum? Probably not even at Quantum price, but that's just about my preferences.

Exporting a bass from the US once, certainly before the CITES rules were the talk of the day, I had to get an export clearance for the neck inlays. I guess it's mother-of-pearl we're talking about, but am not sure.

Twas not very expensive, a few tenners, but everything adds up, and also IMS it had to be declared as part if the import value before VAT. 

9 hours ago, grandad said:

Ravel's Bolero springs to mind.

Long ago, I once did Einstein on the beach.

Terrible soundtrack that got!

"One two three four, one two three four five six, one two three four five six seven eight, one two three four, one two three four five six, one two three four five six seven eight." 

Never again!

11 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

The best thing about it was Happy Jack's little Spiderman avatar dancing along in time. 😂

...which finally proves it: one can dance to Yes music! 🙂

6 minutes ago, Mykesbass said:

And today's award for finest usage of archaic language on the internet goes to @BassTractor

Ha! 😃 What was archaic? Was it "therethrough" maybe? 

Hm. Probably everything was... I'm getting old; my back hurts and I can't ride my dinosaur anymore. 😥

11 hours ago, owen said:

G in a chord of C is not the same as G in a chord of Eb - in the classical world.

...and there's a daily pet peeve annoyance for me right there: the proverbial sopranos not fathoming that aspect, and using the wrong intonation, therethrough denying the very harmonic development they were supposed to express. Aaaarrgh!

... aaaand lower my shoulders...

OK, I'm fine again.

4 hours ago, K_J said:

Sorry this might seem a stupid question but what exactly is IHMO? 

Not a stupid question, mate. You didn't know, so you asked. Well done. IMHO = in my humble opinion. 🙂