paul_c2

I don't understand why someone would order a custom instrument then play it for 2 hours, then sell it? Putting to one side the daftness of the customisations, surely they're personal to the one who ordered it thus you'd order what you want - then use it - and the value/worth would be much less for anyone else.

I know that backing tracks were created for YYZ for Grade 8 Bass Guitar: [url="http://trinityrockstore.fabermusic.com/YYZ-Grade-8-Bass-b1018.aspx"]http://trinityrockst...Bass-b1018.aspx[/url] I'm not 100% sure but I think this is also a piece for guitar and drums, therefore the relevant backing tracks for these would also exist. Whether they originated from Rush themselves or others played them, I don't know. BUT I do suspect that the isolated bass tracks in the OP are Rush, and are created by some kind of process which cleverly mutes/isolates just the one part, obviously this process is imperfect and introduces some weird tones into the bassline.

You meant guitar amps.......not bass amps.....ignore me

Someone once told me buying a bass amp 30-100W is kinda pointless. The reason being, you don't need any more than approx 30W for home practice; and any rehearsal or performance situation would need >100W. So they kinda fall into a middle ground. Having said that, when I bought mine, I tried out a bunch of 30W amps and it was clear that some couldn't deliver the low end tone you'd expect a bass guitar to produce, so maybe that's a justification for going bigger (than 30W)? I settled on a Fender Rumble 30.

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1469893297' post='3101848'] Again. It depends what you're using it for. Normally it's part of your pre-amp so it goes before the FX loop. Unless you're using pedal effects when it would then be after them. Unless you're using a compressor pedal in which case it goes before your pedal FXs. [/quote] So there's a case for using 2 or more compressors?

I can't wait for the "buying an amp" thread.

I'm guessing it was faded red/pink. It has 200k miles on it, 1997 model, so its worth about £500 anyway? They put an MoT on it and did all the bodywork, to get £570. Basically a waste of time. EDIT 124k miles, misread the advert. Was probably worth £650 with MoT, £150 without?

That's fair enough - the exercise has a usefulness to you, which may be different to others. What I'm saying is, to expand it into something with use to ME, I'd rearrange things slightly to identify the simplest form of the chords, and probably leave blank (I know the reason for your work was to evaluate it all, leaving no blanks...) most of the chords which are too far away from the more "normal" stuff to fit in musically to anything. I am sure there are a few beautiful sounding chords based on harmonics out there which I've never played, at the moment I only use a couple of "safe" ones I've worked out already...

The above comments partially display my original concern - that its presented in quite an abstract, non-musical way. I know its an abstract idea but there's a proper way to notate harmonics (I've not come across dozens of variations in how its done though?) and also some of the chords are obviously too far removed from a "normal" chord (root 3rd 5th) to be a particularly accurate description. For example, the notation could be done on the musical stave, if you're not going up too high then use the 8va on the bass clef (playing bass guitar reading treble clef is odd! And tenor clef........bluuuggggghhhhh) or simply describe them as the 2nd, 3rd, whatever harmonic on the (for example) D string. For chords, a 9th chord implies that the chord is already a 7th; similarly an 11th chord has 1-3-5-7-9 and a 13th chord has 1-3-5-7-9-11 in it - more a thing that pianists can play (since the 13th has 7 notes in it) and for the others, guitar. A bass guitar having 4 strings can't really properly play anything above a 7th unless its accepted there's missing notes - which then changes it into an inversion of a simpler chord. A sus2 and sus4 chord SUBSTITUTES a 2nd or 4th instead of the 3rd (ie its implied there is no 3rd in that chord) and a 6th ADDS a 6th onto a 1-3-5 chord, for example C-E-G-A is always going to be C6, and never a 13th (where are the 7th, 9th and 11th?)

I guess fitting a neck pickup was not possible due to it blocking the guitar's breasts. If they'd made her lean back a bit for them to flop under her armpits, or squish them together with a wonderbra, there would have been space, thus increasing the guitar's versatility and tone?

[quote name='Oscar South' timestamp='1469229161' post='3096902'] [url="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/134504/The%20Harmonic%20Algorithm.pdf"]https://dl.dropboxus...20Algorithm.pdf[/url] [url="https://www.facebook.com/oscarsouthbass"]Oscar[/url] [/quote] I have to admit, I don't get any of the coding/notation/whatever they've used to describe harmonics. I get what harmonics are, and for me there's 3 ways to describe them: 1) conventional notation but with diamonds in the note heads 2) describing them as "string x, harmonic at xth fret" or maybe "string x, xth harmonic". But they've used something else. Can you shed light on all the codes and stuff on the PDF???

[quote name='zbd1960' timestamp='1469140547' post='3096140'] Arguably, just intonation is more in-tune that the equal temperament that we use, since ET squashes 5th slightly and makes major 3rds way too wide...but that's another story... You could go for something with a softer sound such as the Uillean or Northumbrian pipes, or a musette. As most of these things are hand-made, I don't think there will be really cheap ones around. I do know someone who makes them (and recorders). [/quote] Yep - which is great when instruments with just tuning play together - eg string quartet, horn section, choir. But when they have to play with other instruments - piano, woodwind etc everyone needs to be in tune, so stuff like piano dictates that its equal temprament. In theory a guitar could be constructed and tuned to just tuning - but its fretboard would be correct in only a handful of keys and an open tuning would need to be used. As soon as the limitation of those few keys is removed, the requirement means the frets need to be equally spaced to avoid bad clashes on certain notes.

I remember going past the 15th fret once. I think it was in 1987.

[quote name='Les' timestamp='1469127350' post='3096028'] This. It's the 60 quid ones I'm looking at on Ebay. It's the novelty value, won't matter if what I play is all over the place as long as the drone fits with the song in D if you get what I mean Paul. Do you by any chance have a set in A or thereabouts that you could actually play along to the intro in the youtube link I posted and let me know if I'm going to get something usable ? I'd be much obliged cheers Les [/quote] Jesus no, I don't play them!!!!! I only remembered about them when I was studying musical theory, and I did the bit on tuning instruments and how various instruments are tuned. It mentioned that bagpipes are an exception and a bit of an anomoly, hence...I looked some stuff up on the internet. TBH at £60 its probably worth a go? If I'm not mistaken, then there's a pipe you blow into (just blow, no embrochure needed) and a pipe like a recorder where you cover up holes, which plays a scale. So its not massively complicated to get the "cat stood on" sound out of them. I understand that the skill is to make it sound nice........sadly a dying art.

You can pick up cheap bagpipes for about £60 on eBay, I think........ If you're going to be stood somewhere else other than on the stage, you'll obviously not be able to "fool" the audience by operating the bagpipes silently and the sound coming from another source eg synthesiser or pre-recorded sample.

I am assuming you mean the most common/familiar type of bagpipes - the Great Highland Bagpipe. I don't know where your research was done but they do in fact play in A mixolydian, which is obviously closely related to the scale of D major. The confusion has probably arisen because bagpipe music doesn't bother to mention that its C is actually C# and its F is actually F# - since the chanter plays only the one scale, the sharps were deemed superfluous to mention. Also, you're likely caught out by the fact that over the years, they have crept up from the quasi-standard A=440Hz tuning, to as high as A=485Hz (B flat is 465Hz I think). So you need to be careful to research this and obtain bagpipes which are designed to play at A=440. http://www.hotpipes.com/tuning.html should help you with tuning them - out of tune bagpipes is the main reason why people dislike them, its quite a complicated process to get them in tune!! A further complication is that the chanter is tuned to just temprament, not even-tempered, and in fact the D and G are slightly sharp, so playing in these keys will sound wrong. You may be better off with smallpipes which are designed to play in D (mixolydian). Maybe you'd be better off with a synthesiser....?

One wonders 1) why Anderton's let the bass out like that and 2) why the guy in the video didn't notice it and correct it (yeah, I know he's a drummer........)

I realise its probably come up before, but apart from slight specification differences (which can be compared by putting the spec sheet side-by-side) what's the main difference between for example, a Squier Jazz Bass, Mexican Fender, USA Fender? (Apart from the price and country of manufacture)? In other words, what pragmatically would you notice in day-to-day use? I know that the Squier Affinity is the bottom end model but there's loads of others, and there's a little bit of overlap at the "top end" of the Squier range with the bottom end of the Fender range. To be honest I don't really understand why there needs to be so many slight variations, there's just so many!!!! I found this video but frustratingly the USA Jazz Bass is so poorly set up that it renders the sound/tone comparison useless - the action and/or truss rod desparately need adjusting, listen to the low F and G notes they are full of fret buzz! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAj8789ksLs#t=270.87916

the very first was probably The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. Next.....Talking Heads, Psycho Killer. Worth seeking out and listening to if you're unfamiliar!

PS forgot to mention, the best suggestion so far was to use Audacity to slow a song down to half speed/same pitch - will definitely use that technique in the future!

Thanks for the replies so far. Trust me, I can use my ears - I've done several transcriptions in the past, where no tab existed, or where other music was available but not the bass line. I guess it boils down to 'why' you want to play a particular piece of music. For example, if you were in a covers band, then you only need the broad song structure and typical chord progressions, and any distinctive bass lines that everyone expects to hear (imagine if you covered "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac and had altered the bass line too much!) You don't need an exact replica of the bass line because you'd aim to put your personal 'stamp' on the song, unless you really did want to copy someone else's song like an audio replica. I have a lousy memory but good music reading skills, and I just wanted to play the song. If there were a proper musical notation version out there, I'd happily read it and enjoy it, without necessarily learning how to play a song from memory in my head. Bass tabs are annoying enough (vastly prefer proper notation) but when they're not even right......then their value really is moot.

After tootling around reading music and playing some of the songs I used to in the past, I decided to learn a completely new song to me (Smooth Operator by Sade). So, with the wealth of info out there on the internet I thought the place to start will be Googling bass tabs for it. Some don't have any rhythm notation at all, some have a bizarre pseudo-simplified rhythm, and all are ever so slightly wrong, or missing main bits of the song. This: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxtRgu3pg2k[/media] is the best help I've found so far, even without music at least I can clearly see the fingerboard and make out what she's playing. On close inspection (and closely listening to the original song) there's a few wrong notes but I'll forgive her!!!! Currently 1 minute into the 4 minute song, re-writing it out properly (in actual musical notation, like what the rest of the western world use) and learning it. Once learnt on the fretted bass, I'll practice it on the fretless.

When I bought my first bass I bought a Fender Jazz copy and its still my main bass guitar, 24 years on. I bought another - a fretless - but never needed to get anything else, or indeed been tempted. So maybe having had only 2, I'm not qualified to give advice but having 2 pickups naturally increases the versatility over 1. I guess you want something a bit more modern looking than a Jazz bass, but they are incredibly versatile - there's a reason why there are so many of them.

If only I had £245!!! Well, a pretty successful day today. I went to the first shop and was able to try the Roland 20W and the Fender 30W side-by-side. I was impressed with the Fender but wanted to also hear the Laney again. Next shop only had a Hartke (35W) and Line 6 (15W) and I thought the Hartke, being the highest power in my shortlist, would also be the best. But I was a little underwhelmed with its sound, it failed to achieve the 'thump' which a bass should have. They didn't have a Fender or Laney (but I knew from my research that they did do them, just out of stock) so I went to another branch of theirs in a nearby town. They'd phoned and forewarned them......so when I arrived, they had both ready for me to plug into. I'd previously tried the Laney and was impressed. But side-by-side, I could easily tell the difference and the Fender produced the sound I like with plenty of control on the tone controls to adjust it for other variations. For its size, it produces an impressive performance! I'm so glad I persevered with wanting to try out amps properly, with my own bass guitars (even though it meant lugging both around town). I don't know if it was bringing my basses in which affected their attitude, or simply that I'd had an uninterested shopkeeper/salesperson on the initial contact but all 3 shops were very friendly and helpful. Since I'd already looked around on the internet and knew their prices were quite keen, I was able to buy it there and then! I just had another quick check on the internet but I'm happy I bought it from a shop because if there's any niggles I can go back quite easily etc etc The only thing is the other amps tended to have built in effects, most of which I'd not use but a compressor would have been a benefit; and the Fender is pretty basic in its controls (just tried the overdrive and don't think I'll ever need that), just with volume, bass, mid and treble. But I already have loads of pedals etc if I need effects.

Hartke A35 too??? Line 6 do a 15W (LD15) then the next step up is a 75W amp.