thisnameistaken

I really rate the Brown Dog by the way, and it plays nice with actives. One thing to bear in mind though is it doesn't have a tone control, it's designed to be run into a filter.

The issue isn't the output level of an active bass, it's that the output impedance is much lower than a passive. There's a couple of old fuzz circuits that just don't work properly with low impedance signals.

My only active bass (a Thumb) only requires a quick tug on the volume knob to run as a passive bass so I don't worry about it, but still, carry spare batteries like you'd carry spare strings and you won't need to worry about it.

I think if you've only got one voice then reverb is more valuable. If everybody in the band is singing you really don't want reverb. We tend to reverb the main vocal because that's the only one that will solo, but leave rest dry or practically-dry.

It's a little 1-day electronic music festival here in York but somehow they've booked De La Soul to headline this year. They're the one band I've always loved who I've never seen, so I am beyond stoked that they'll be playing within walking distance of my house, v. pumped! Anyone else going?

Primus. It was important to their sound. I think in most other bands if you can tell the bassist was the best musician there's something wrong. To be fair with the Beatles it would take a trained ear to figure out that McCartney was the talent.

Whatever else happens, he was in The Smiths. The most vocal critics of Morrissey didn't like The Smiths, and those people can't be trusted.

I'm in two bands at the moment and all our music comes initially from jam sessions. One band is drums/bass/guitar/turntables and does hip-hop stuff. The guitarist is quite capable of shreddy rock solos but refrains 99% of the time. The other band is drums/bass/guitar and we all sing, and does dub/electronic stuff. The guitarist is not capable of shreddy rock solos but is an amazing singer so nobody cares. I imagine it's different if you have to spend hours on end walking turnarounds behind some blues-soloing twat.

I had a white Stingray for a while until I realised how much it looked like a toilet seat.

If the painkillers worked I would've done the same as you.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1398378324' post='2433618'] Ummm, clever. But would any of you have given them much thought if you hadn't realised that was only a bassist? Would you have simply thought it was a mediocre song from a four piece band, switched your ears off and finished your New Scientist Sudoku Challenge? [/quote] Have to agree they don't really do anything for me, whereas Death From Above had a really compelling urgency to their sound, I could listen to them all day.

What's an FZ-5? I guess a fuzz. I like filters after dirt. Also octaves track better before any other effects. But experiment - you don't have so many pedals that you can't find out which sounds you prefer. I should add that this experience will lead to you being frustrated that you can't put certain pedals in more than one place, and you'll buy more than one of that pedal, and it will work for you, and even though you will look silly, you will careth not.

Parkinson's Law applies to pedal collections - they expand to fill the space available. So no matter what board you buy it will never seem big enough. In the end you either find yourself with several boards, or one of modest size. Either way you won't be satisfied, but the latter option is at least cheaper.

An RPi would be really neat but I don't really have time to get that set up and I don't know enough about audio processing in Linux. I've got a Macbook Pro which I used to use for work a couple of years ago but is now fairly redundant, so I'm using that. Plus I've already got an audio/MIDI interface for it.

I'll only be using MIDI to adjust parameters in the software (so I can control settings with my feet, rather than a laptop), but all the signal processing will be done in software. The generated waveforms and envelopes I'm developing now will be used to modulate parameters on effects, but all the effects themselves will also be in software. I guess I could output these signals as MIDI data and, for example, control my M9 and my Wahoo with them, but the idea is to try to replace as much of my pedalboard as I can.

Well yeah, but a Max license and a Softstep 2 to control it would still be cheaper than the stomp box setup I'm currently using, and it's not like I have a whole lot of pedals really. More than my guitarist but that's mostly just to make sure he knows his place.

I am still weighing up whether to license Max when the demo expires or try Pd. On the one hand I'm from Yorkshire so cheap is great, but on the other hand Max looks to be quicker to work with, and I'll be 40 this year so time is fast becoming a more valuable commodity than money.

The thing that always frustrates me with pedals is how I struggle to get them to play nice together, doing stuff like sharing tempo or envelope info, and limited options in terms of modulation of effects over time which is something I'm always wanting to do more of. So I thought I'd look at Max/MSP and try to get a decent live bass FX setup happening in software - I'm a software developer by trade so it's easy to patch together the stuff I want. I'm aware that latency is going to be a problem, although this can be mitigated to some extent with specialist interfaces (and decent software design of course). I downloaded the demo last night and so far I've designed a good tap tempo patch and wired that into an LFO generator with various waveform outputs, and controls to vary frequency division and the duty cycle of the pulse output, and I've got the interface arranged in a way that it'll be easy to plug it all up to a MIDI foot controller. So in a day I've already got a lot of features that I can't get from off-the-shelf hardware, and I can use these controls to modulate or trigger pretty much anything, and also sync to other software. I'm now working on an ADSR envelope and an amplitude envelope follower. I can imagine there are things that will be best done in a stomp box; I doubt I can produce a good fuzz, and good-sounding pitch shifting may be too processor-intensive to be practical, but so far this software approach looks so easy and flexible (and cheap!) I'm surprised more people aren't doing it. So is anybody doing it?

For me it's like music for ADHD kids, the way they've (or some producer has) gone in and punched in little noodly bits anywhere they couldn't find a hook. And their recordings are always so glossy and 'finished', it's too neatly packaged for me. Much like the band with their teeth and their hair dos. And the way they always present the band as playing it live irks me a bit too. Not to say they are incapable of playing the music, but it's such a studio product it's all a little too cute to suggest they tracked it in the same take whilst smiling at each other.

In the hands of a tasteful player a fretless bass will suit most tunes. There just aren't enough tasteful players around.

Forgot about it until I saw some old friends on Facebook talking about it tonight, otherwise I would've gone along to the Brudenell too.

[quote name='Thurbs' timestamp='1397655908' post='2426126']I was in York Minster last week for some sight seeing and managed to stumble upon a simular rehearsal. A large throng of voices is quite magical to experiance really close up. It is a shame I couldnt stay for the performance for real.[/quote] Good timing, the Minster is an amazing room for vocals, it sounds lush! I live just down the street from the Minster.

I keep a 'rig' because I like having some familiarity from rehearsal to backline. The whole thing is as lightweight as I can get away with (a Shuttle head and a Schroeder L cab) so compared to the years spend lugging 410s and Trace Elliot heads it's pure luxury. It's no consolation whatsoever on double bass gigs however, and I think I will ditch the whole ****ing thing for a preamp and an IEM before long.

Console yourself in the knowledge that 99.9% of us would've destroyed the entire thing. The Terry Waite anecdote was an inspired inclusion and made for a brilliantly appropriate and yet ironic denouement.

I liked that. It wasn't especially revelatory but it was at least well presented and not as patronising and infuriatingly slowly dictated as, for example, a BBC science programme.