jakebeamish

Actually a thumpier double bass sound is exactly what I'm trying to go for - I'm glad that's how you reckon it might turn out. Strangely, that nasal Jaco tone you get from rounds on a jazz bass really doesn't do it for me at all, and by the sounds of things I'm going the right way about having a fretless bass that [i]doesn't[/i] sound like that! Cheers!

I plan to get a fretless neck (all parts, warmoth or something) to install onto my Squier VM P TB. I really like the thumpy tone the bass has (one big hum bucker right up by the neck), but I'm a little unsure as to how it will sound without frets. I can imagine that tonally, a lot of things change when you take of a fretted neck and put a new, fretless one in - but I don't know how. Do you guys think it would be a bad idea / have a way too warm tone? I notice that though fretless P basses are around, they are swamped by fretless Jazz basses - and I'm guessing that's due to the bridge pick-up allowing for plenty of high-mid 'mwah' - so an idea I had would be to cut in a new bridge pick up if things didn't sound too good. LSS, roughly, how do you think a fretless VM P TB will sound? PS. happy new year and best wishes from a serial lurker

AFAIK there will just be gaps, but I didn't know if that would be such a problem. Also, the screw holes should line up, hopefully, so I won't have to pilot more into the neck.

I'm really keen to make my Squier VM Precision TB fretless. My problem is though, that it has a square neck pocket - rather than a 'rounded' one like J's and P's do. I have tried looking online for companies like Warmoth selling custom tele necks, and I just can't find anything. Defretting the current neck isn't really my favourite solution, as the neck it has at the minute is probably the worst thing about the bass. Apart from giving up on the whole plan and just getting a P or J, does anybody have any ideas? tl;dr What happens when you try to put a rounded neck into a square heeled bass? Thanks basschat!

Hello guys, it's been a while since I lurked around here! I've recently been getting into jazz playing, specifically walking - and to improve my knowledge of note names and chord shapes up and down the fretboard, I came up with a couple of exercises. Thought they might be worth sharing. http://jakebeamish.co.uk/2013/12/ascending-chord-exercises-pt-2/ http://jakebeamish.co.uk/2013/11/ascending-cycle-of-fourths-exercise/ People talk about the fretboard 'lighting up' or being like a map - I do understand the idea, but I'd like help with finding out how to really work hard on this. I suppose the most basic step toward achieving this would be knowing that the 12th fret is an octave of open, 2 frets up and 2 strings down is an octave, etc. I'm completely comfortable with doing that, as well as lots of different scales and arpeggios, but sometimes I still falter when trying to find multiple and ever changing chord tones in one 'position' of the neck. Any clues?

I think you're more likely to find short passages of a song being in Locrian, not a song with a locrian I chord. Usually locrian's played over a m7(b5) chord, but not always - and there are other scales that sound nice over that chord, too.

Hi Basschat I fairly recently started up a twitter account called @bass_stuff. I've been tweeting links to good learning material for bassists of all abilities, and I thought y'all might be interested in that kind of thing if you're that way inclined. I'm no bass expert and I'm still learning myself - so any contributions or suggestions would be massively appreciated, from anyone. I wrote some more about it here: http://www.jakebeamish.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/launching-bass_stuff/ the account URL is: http://www.twitter.com/bass_stuff I hope to see some of you over there! thanks for reading

another metronome based exercise: 1) Set your metronome to 50 - 60bpm, and imagine each 'tock' to be the first beat in the bar. 2) Take a scale (or arpeggio) that you want to become a little more familiar with - in this case I'll use a chromatic scale starting on C. 3) Playing two notes per bar, play chromatically from C up to Ab and back down again. It should work out that you just played 8 bars of 2 beats per bar. 4) Double it. Play four notes per bar. To keep it an 8 bar run, play all the way up to E an octave above and down again. 5) Play three notes a bar. From C up to C an octave above. 6) Double that. Six notes per bar, going all the way up to the C two octaves above. 7) Now try fives. Play five notes per bar, going from C to G an octave above. By ensuring you only play 8 bars of each timing exercise, and you only go up the scale so high, you can guarantee you're going to finish on the first beat of the bar on bottom C - this means you can string runs together without stopping and get a real feel for different 'speeds'. Try going from 2 per bar through 3, 4, 5, all the way up to 6 notes per bar and back down again.

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1331938665' post='1581341'] I've never seen a tied note be bracketed-on all the charts I've ever been given,you'll just see the two notes and a tie marking. In most bass/guitar specific transcription books,tapped notes are usually written with a cross above the note head,while a harmonic i notated by a diamond shaped note rather than the usual oval shape. [/quote] I did some work for a school musical as an ex-student not too long ago and the music teacher handed me a wad of handwritten scores, with all of the nonsensical crap I described, stupid I know. I guess you have to take any transcription with a pinch of salt and play what sounds right.

finding it incredibly disconcerting trying to play fully alternate lines. Raking I can only get to a certain speed and alternate is something that will hopefully sound much better when I get there. Great lesson, thankyou. Does anyone do non-video lessons these days? txt and dots? My dongle internet allows for one youtube video a day at 240p. And even then it gets throttled... So, Scott, hows about do some writingy lessons??? perhaps on subject matter that would be more appropriate for txt rather than video - theory based stuff, more about walking bass lines, or ripping apart certain 'sounds' like your Willis pentatonic fills lesson - rather than technique based stuff where it really helps to see what's going on. thanks again

a ghost note like this: d___(d) [with the underscores as a tie) could just be notating the tie properly. (d) can imply a note that isn't plucked, but tapped with the fretting hand. It could also be a harmonic. Or maybe even just played very quietly. I'm surprised it doesn't say at the front of the book. I can't get on youtube to hear the record and I unfortunately no longer have the CD. Otherwise I'd have had a listen and tried to hear what JPJ's doing. I guess you'll have to do that Instead, I'll play Lemon Song.

another way to tackle a problem like that would be to write in the section to a midi editor (sibelius, guitar pro, tuxguitar(freeware)), and then slow down the tempo, and loop the section very easily. Most software like that comes with a metronome too. If you don't like reading tab then you could write in the pattern as a rhythm track instead of the bassline.