clarket2

Hey, Does anyone know of a good place/person to do pedal mods in the uk? I'm looking to get some surgery done on my dl4 Cheers, Tom

I've always used a Sansamp Bass Driver DI... love it and the blend control let's you dial in any amount of eq/drive/bite you might need. A touch on the expensive side (new anyway) but has never let me down

Yeah I'd wondered about doing it like that. Is there an interface you could recommend with enough in/outs? Or would that mean using plug ins as the effects rather than pedals?

Hi, I"m putting together a looping setup forbade performance, however I feel its got a little overcomplicated and was wondering if anyone can think of a simpler solution. At the moment what I have is my bass direct into channel one of a 16 channel behringer mixer (importantly with two subgroup outputs). I then have a delay, reverb and a dl4 (looper/delay) connected to auxs 1,2 and 3 respectively, with there returns connected to channels 2-4. The two subgroup outputs of the desk are connected to another looper and a multifx unit respectively with their returns connected to channels 5 & 6. The reason for this mixer based system is that it allows me to route any of the effects into each other, meaning that I can produce some.really unique.sounds. It also means that I can blend sounds using the channel faders. However, the fact it is.based on a live mixer means that all the routing has to be done with the hands meaning you have to stop playing. Also it is very easy to route things in to themselves (however this.might just be a case of some do not touch stickers!). It is also a mess of cables at the moment! Can anyone think of a simpler solution that ideally.I can control with my feet? I had a look at the gigrig pro but am I right in thinking that you can"t put things in parrallel and it is limited to a linear signal path? Cheers, Tom

Just as a thought... I found that when I was getting into recording what I wanted to do quickly got.more and more complicated. I think reaper will give you more scope to expand as well as doing the basics

Ralph part's page has always been pretty useful for me and helping with jazz as it has it's own real book (ish) and backing tracks to play along with for free www.ralphpatt.com

Reaper is a fantastic and cheap sequencer that will support nearly everythin plug in wise. Might be worth a look as it will only cost you 35 quid ish

I've found chordal playing can be great in smaller groups (duos and trios with drums really) as it allows you to fill out the harmonic content a bit more when the comping instrument drops out. Even just a double stop with a third or seventh in the top can sound great once in a while

Bump

You still get the muting with that moveable thumb technique as your thumb rests on the string below. It's literally a rest stroke but with the anchor moving more often in order to relax the hand. I'd agree with the above comment though that rest strokes are the way to go. Free strokes are more for chordal and softer playing in my opinion

Yeah sounds like we mean the same. Yeah its that "tickling" that always gets to me just because you don't get the definition and power that you get from a rest stroke. Yeah try keeping your thumb on the string below (even going up to the d) as I found.it.keeps.my hand more relaxed

Perhaps we are talking about different things. I think of a free stroke as where you don't pull through the string but sort of across it without hitting the string below. It works ok if your playing softer stuff or chordally maybe but if you want to accent anything you wind up popping the string. What I found helped with getting rest stroles quicker was to keep my thumb on the string below so I was always pulling through to hit my thumb. This kept my hand relaxed and softened the tone of the stroke whilst still allowing you to dig in if needed. It took a bit of getting used to but has served me well.... Steve Lawson uses a similar technique when he plays.

Free strokes make accenting and dynamics harder to perform effectively as you get a much less solid stroke. I am a little confused (sorry probably me being thick) but where are you resting your thumb? Ie are you keeping it on a pickup or moving it around? Cheers, Tom (www.tomclarkebass.co.uk)

I've just got a copy of Randy Vincent's - "Three Note Voicings and Beyond" which is great and might help you out.... its designed for electric guitar though so it takes a bit of lateral thinking as not all of it is immediately doable on bass. Takes a very different approach in that it is very focused on smooth voice leading so as to get chords to sit together well

The real point is you need to have dynamics in your playing... there is little point saying that you just play hard or soft. Perhaps if you're permanently digging in then it would be worth lightening up a bit so as you can accent notes or passages when you need to. Importantly it is worth remembering that even though its an electric instrument the bass has acoustic properties... so when you dig in you actually change your tone slightly. Therefore a control of your right hand is really important as this change in tone sounds great when you're accenting but not great in a softer passage. Variety is the key.

In response to your second question (as there's loads of really good stuff here already on the first), ideally you want to persevere with getting the octave with your ring finger, as eventually the stretch will get easier. Being able to do the one finger per fret thing at the bottom end is really important especially once you get into playing more intricate lines. To give yourself a break though what I've seen a lot of guys do is use a double bass fingering whereby you play the octave with your little finger. However I'd stress again how important the one finger per fret hand will be for your playing.

Having a high c string does help

What has been said here is great stuff especially the stuff about omitting the fifth from the chord. The next stage up from this is to move from just playing chords in what we call root position (ie with the root note as the lowest pitch). Once you've got the positions already mentioned down, why not try experimenting with the third, fifth or seventh as the lowest pitches. These different "voicings" of chords can give you some interesting movement on bass, while still staying within the original harmony.

Check out the blog as well for some mildly opinionated views on the bass world