musophilr

[quote name='stonecoldbass' timestamp='1317862032' post='1395637'] Cool thread guys! Here is my bands EP, with one original tune (penned by yours truly) and I also mixed and mastered the thing. We're all pretty proud of how it turned out, but would appreciate any feedback you guys may have as we have still to get round to pressing hard copies. [url="http://soundcloud.com/pickpocket-1/sets/pickpocket-the-stolen"]http://soundcloud.co...cket-the-stolen[/url] Hope you like it! Cheers C [/quote] Excellent. Thought the snare was a bit "hot" but when the horns came in it was just right. Loverly reverb on the trumpet, expert guitar solo (wish I could play like that). Good bass groove. Nice tight ending. Here's some of my crap [url="http://soundcloud.com/phil-aka-pip/experiment-1"]http://soundcloud.com/phil-aka-pip/experiment-1[/url] Probably WIP, after I'd mixed it I thought of a few other things to do with it

Well, it was Friday, and it wasn't "our" gig 'cos we shared it with a lot of other people but here goes: Mike's Acoustic Night in the Henley Community Centre is mainly folk-orientated but they don't mind blues, original material, or reworked pop classics. You have to be invited or book your slot you can't just turn up & play. Recently I've been comping for a lady singer who's done a lot to up her game recently. She's been hanging out with another lady who's often not so well these days so performs a lot less than she did but she was in her younger days doing a lot of professional work. Anyway this latter was well enough to perform, and she also manages some acoustic guitar although injuries to her fretting hand limit what she can do. It's her good influences that has helped her friend to get her singing together. We did Joan Baez's [i]Diamonds and Rust[/i] with them two singing and me on guitar. Then we did some trad. thing with harmony vocals and 2 guitars, and finished with [i]With a little help from my friends[/i] in similar manner. They let me loose for a guitar solo in the middle one. It all worked OK and I was bought a pint for my trouble

Rickenbackers. For the sound mainly but also the appearance.

Be honest, hand in your notice with your reasons, and help them find a replacement for you. Play any gigs still in the diary but set a cutoff date for leaving. Leave on friendly terms, do a farwwell gig, involve your replacement in that gig too, and go out with a party.

I once did a gig where the bass player honked up over a girl 'cos he'd had too much Special Spew beforehand, so I had to take him home across town to his place to get cleaned up and sobered up before we could go on and play our set. Funnily enough she became the singer in the next band this bass player & I were in. She never let him forget the incident.

[quote name='rOB' timestamp='1331581606' post='1575346'] Some great noises on here. I look forward to working my way through them all. Here's my [url="http://soundcloud.com/robs_solo_recordings"]solo page[/url], all guitars, bass, vocals and (programmed) drums are me. Mixing isn't my strong suit so not perfect. [/quote] [i]John [/i]is interesting - the kind of riff you might hear in a folk club with the occasional added b5 to justify the alt-rock tag Heard the others as well. Take my comments with a pinch of salt because this isn't my genre and the chances are it's meant to be this way (remember the BBC engineer who apologised to "Mr Hendrix" for not being able to get rid of the distortion and feedback?). FWIW I'd start by bringing the drums up as far as you can, then fade up the other channels until you can hear both them AND the drums. As you've got a lot of bass stuff going on (distorted an' all) its going to be tricky to make that appear as the "lead" instrument without splatting everything else, but try to resist turning the wick up on the bass EQ on the bass tracks. Try the 800Hz - 2kHz band instead at +3dB on the bass track. You might get more definition in the bass dept without splatting the tracks the contain more treble content. Vocals can stick out more if you boost the 2.5kHz - 4kHz band, and scoop out the same band in other tracks like rhythm guitar. Anyway thanks for the entertainment ([i]John[/i] especially) and I hope you enjoy more playing & mixing ...

For me the biggest differences were (1) not having to go to the low frets for notes in the range E .. G# and (2) being able to reach 2 octaves from bottom to top string without much position shifting. Having a low D is sometimes an advantage, but not having to go often below the 5th fret is a much better advantage.

Well done Sir! Congrats.

Even if money is *important* if I've agreed to do a gig (especially if it's a proper contract, written down) then I would honour the agreement. To do otherwise is scrote behaviour.

[quote name='Jazzneck' timestamp='1331642939' post='1576354'] If it can't be played on an instrument by a human being it ain't music then, is it? [/quote] I once sequenced a 16 bar passage of "The Mad Piper" in a song where I'd played everything else in real time. His sound was a piccolo (an instrument I can't play anyway), and other bits of his part I'd played on a Korg M1 but there was no way I could have played this in real time. This section consisted of argeggios in hemi demi semiquavers and at the tempo I guess an expert at the top of his game could have done it, but (1) I didn't know any of those and (2) I couldn't have paid him anyway. IMO I was justified in making my music by conventional means plus using a little help from technology. Those 16 bars are as much "music" as the rest of the piece. I'm sure many other BassChatters could also provide similar tales to show that statements such as that quoted are just intended to provoke those of us with nothing better to do into telling our stories of how technology helped us achieve a musical goal.

Doug Ferguson was considered by some to be the weak link in Camel. He clearly didn't want to keep playing with them, and I believe he ended up as a double glazing salesman (not a choice I'd make but each to his own). However listening to their 1st 4 EllPees I was never aware that Camel had a weakest link and I enjoyed what Mr Ferguson did on the bass as much as I enjoyed the playing of Messrs Latimer, Ward, and Bardens.

Depends on who you ask. Sometimes I've come off thinking I played sh_t, and people have said it was an excellent gig, other times I've come off thinking no bum notes or missed chord changes, timing spot on, and people have said Not one of your best. Maybe there are some folks that like bum notes and bad timing ...

If musical instruments were like cars [list] [*]The new models would stay in tune for 10 months then require a week at the luthier's for re-tuning at a price that would make you wish you hadn't sold your old one [*]The politicians would invent all kinds of silly restrictions and requirements on the way in which you use it [*]Insurance would be compulsory (see above) but the T&C would mean you could never actually go to play a gig [*]The government would find a way to make you buy new strings every year whether you needed them or not, and at a price that would make you question why you didn't take up the bugle. [/list]

It's a bit naive expecting to take on a bet with an insurance company that something bad is going to happen without there being weasel words in the contract that will excuse them from paying out if they lose.

I'm sure we've all got tapes or other recordings of stuff that sounded good while we were pissed/stoned/tripping etc, but in the cold light of day 99% of it is utter rubbish. If that's true then the live performance also depends on the audience being in the same state of mind to appreciate it. And the comment about jazz & rock musicians performing when out of their tree reminded me about the first time I heard Bitches Brew when I was not in a legal state of mind. It made so much more sense

If you can do the job you're being paid for, it doesn't matter what you've been drinking. Once upon a time I could drink loads and still do my job afterwards. These days I can't. I prefer to decline drinking until after i've done what I'm being paid to do. And if I have to drive afterwards, then declining to drink last till I've got home. Other people may have their own scruples. Stick to yours, I'll stick to mine.

What bugs me is why pupils will leave the nut loose, then they complain to me about the signal cutting out ... when you take the socket out it has swivelled round and broken one (maybe both) of the wires that should be soldered to it. It only takes a second or two to nip up the nut if it starts getting loose so why do they leave it until there's yet more trouble to fix?? (BTW this applies as much to guitarists as bass players).

I play a Yamaha RBX375 and I've got tiny girly hands*. The BB & TRB models are probably better than the RBX; I've tried them, they sound great and play well, but the RBX did it on price because bass is not my 1st instrument and at the time I couldn't justify spending more than I did on the RBX. * They're not pretty though and the rest of me is quite ugly.

Not condoning the bad behaviour, but if you [i]will[/i] play soul to a rock'n'roll audience ...

[quote name='lxxwj' timestamp='1330778590' post='1562833'] It was fabulous. That is all. [/quote] David Gilmour is one of the world's most tasteful guitarists, Pink Floyd's music helped to shape a generation. Dig around in their back catalogue, enjoy what you learn,

[quote name='steve-bbb' timestamp='1330691282' post='1561635'] [url="http://www.spacesavingbeds.co.uk/studybed.htm"]http://www.spacesavi...uk/studybed.htm[/url] [/quote] Looks good (the furniture as well as the redhead) but ... most equipment that you could want to put on the shelf bit will have festoons of cabling, and I could imagine the weight of it being too much for the hinges

[url="http://www.zimbalam.co.uk/"]http://www.zimbalam.co.uk/[/url] Has anyone experience of these people?

[url="http://soundcloud.com/phil-aka-pip/decisions"]http://soundcloud.com/phil-aka-pip/decisions[/url]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1330586439' post='1559674'] I can't sing a note in tune, but that doesn't stop me writing songs. [/quote] Never stopped Bob Dylan ...

If the hall's acoustics are anything like the school halls I've been in, spend part of the budget on dampening reflections first otherwise whatever kit you put in there will sound crap.