thisnameistaken

Level 42 aren't one of the '80s bands you're still allowed to like. Their fans looked like Swiss Toni, probably still do.

Er... No wait, I'll have one... Nope, sorry, nothing. A mate of mine had two flightcases with "Chick Corea" stencilled on them. That's about as close to t'stars as we get oop north.

Bradford Rios shut down? Ah that was a great place to play. Shame. Anyway yeah I am totally making assumptions about what you sound like based on the fact you have a 9-string bass, and yeah it's prejudicial and ignorant and all that, but it's based on the only context I have: What I've seen other people with bonus-stringed basses do with them. And other people are probably going to jump to the same conclusions, that's all I'm saying. Anyway I had intended to be asleep about an hour ago. Damn internets...

[quote name='ARGH' post='235274' date='Jul 8 2008, 09:10 PM']To be an 'Anorak',by having a 9 string...I dont get that though? What do you mean?[/quote] Well it is a bit nerdy isn't it? Partly it suggests that you had it built to order, which in itself is a bit nerdy, but it also suggests that you probably bought it with the intention of playing it alone. I mean why else would anyone want all the bonus strings? So to me I suppose it subconsciously says you like indulging in difficult technical exercises. Like a mathematician or an engineer. So that's probably where I get "nerdy" from. Basically whenever I see something like that I get scared that someone's going to pick it up and tap out plonky-buzzy horrible versions of piano music on it. I don't know whether anyone else gets the same feeling, but I imagine most people have never seen one before. I haven't in the flesh, actually. Anyway, now that you've mentioned that you're into stuff like Mastodon, I can imagine it's hard to find other people who dig that stuff. I think it's clever myself, but I can't really listen to it - I think I have simpler tastes. Don't think I know any players who are into that stuff here in York but that's not to say they don't exist. It doesn't sound like you're really ready to quit though. I think if nothing is coming along you should just retreat to your home studio and do your own thing for a while. At least you'll have stuff to show people when opportunities do come up.

That GAS is a bitch. To be honest I stole one of the "cool riffs" from [url="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SonUW_yEMWw"]Moloko[/url] because I accidentally reminded myself of it with the low gliss in the previous bit. After I recorded that clip I actually went chasing the tone from that tune just to see if the pulse synth could do it, and found it pretty quickly. Must get out of the habit of picking mute notes with the pulse synth on - would be more convincing without little hints like that giving it away as a guitar.

[quote name='ARGH' post='235147' date='Jul 8 2008, 06:01 PM']RE: "I wouldnt hire a guy that brought a 6 string to an audition".....I can respond in two ways,one being,If they downtune to say Low B..or they ask for AT LEAST a 5 string..Im gonna bring the 6,I dont just bring out an instrument to impress anyone.[/quote] K. I think you missed my point - being that [i]I[/i] wouldn't hire you. Me. [quote name='ARGH' post='235147' date='Jul 8 2008, 06:01 PM']Most times its as Ive said ,the Fender. If you have a problem with people with more than 4,its your problem...simple as..I cant help you,you have to change.[/quote] Au contraire. I'm not the one who can't get a gig. But anyway... [quote name='ARGH' post='235147' date='Jul 8 2008, 06:01 PM']I dont want to form a band,Ive been doing that,Ive been doing that forever...its part of the problem,I want the problem to go away,Im stopping playing,the problem is going away.....[/quote] Well, that's one solution, but seeing how angry you are about it I don't think it's the best solution. Is it that you don't want to form a band, or that you can't even find individual musicians who are into what you want to do? Or can't find musicians to play with at all? I'm not being funny - it took me a while to find people around here. [quote name='ARGH' post='235147' date='Jul 8 2008, 06:01 PM']Fitting in.....Maybe being an alchy,drug using twat,might get me somewhere,maybe being sh*t might help,maybe being always late to gigs/rehearsal,with a pissweak excuse will get me success,[/quote] Or maybe you just haven't found like-minded people yet. Or open-minded people. And maybe - and this is just an idea, please try not to be angry - maybe you come across as a bit of an anorak because you've got a 9-string guitar? Yeah in a forum full of other bass anoraks it's normal, but y'know, perspective. [quote name='ARGH' post='235147' date='Jul 8 2008, 06:01 PM']Leeds is sh*te,Bradford's sh*te,Wakey's sh*te,Dewsbury's sh*te...even the small out of the way places have NOTHING (Wetherby,Ponte,Fax).[/quote] I have a friend in Wakey who's currently busy with two originals gigs, another mate in Wakey who's probably doing all the others at the moment - both playing bass. None of these acts are part of any "scene", but they might not be your cup of tea exactly. One of them was looking for a bass player just a week or so ago actually, then they moved my mate on to bass from guitar because they couldn't find one. Just saying, there might be stuff going on quite close to you that you're not aware of. Do you go see a lot of local bands?

[quote name='3V17C' post='235025' date='Jul 8 2008, 03:26 PM']when you get to a certain age (30ish +) it can be much harder to find an originals band as most people by then are happy just doing covers and younger bands have to consider the image side of things to be taken seriously.[/quote] This is true and there's not much you can do about it really, unless you're lucky. Funnily enough both myself and a good friend of mine (both of us about to turn 34) are currently backing young talent - he's got this folk singer/songwriter girl, and I've got this soul/hip-hop singer girl. My gig's the nicer one, obviously, because a) It's not folk, and b ) I get to contribute to the writing, but his band actually sound pretty good too - for a folk band. And that's basically one way to get away with being an old fart in an originals band. Do the old "I'm the hired sideman" bit. Even if you're not.

Not going to make any friends here, but... I probably wouldn't hire a bassist who turned up with a 6-string. But what I mean is if you're turning up for a spot on someone else's gig, you need to be the person they want or you won't get the gig. If you don't ever seem to fit anyone's criteria then I suppose you can either change yourself to fit someone's idea of the ideal bass player, or stop responding to wanted ads and do your own thing. It sounds like you're a pretty creative guy, you understand music, you want to do originals - why not put some demos together of your own stuff and start advertising for bandmates yourself? When I moved to York I didn't really know any musicians around here, couldn't find any like-minded types anywhere so that's what I did. That little gig is slow-going to be honest - a nice bunch with talent but other commitments and very little free time - but I did at least meet more people through them who introduced me to more people and so on. Actually the (main) band I'm currently working with was set up on word of mouth recommendations for the most part, and it turned out the singer (who's our sort-of unofficial leader) lives literally around the corner from me. So you never know, you might have somebody right on your doorstep who you could be making music with.

Er... I plug my Thumb in, controls flat and strings not too old (but not too new!). That's about it. If I'm playing something a bit souly or older, I solo the front pup. I use 10"s at the moment to avoid lots of boomy low end, but starting to think I'd be better off with 12"s for when the effects get stomped on. Actually yeah I'm still tweaking the effects. It's harder to get some of those to sit well in a band mix.

Most common reason for not getting a gig in an originals band: Your face doesn't fit. Simple as that.

You wouldn't want to get stuck backing solos in F on that thing - it'd be a hospital job.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='233644' date='Jul 6 2008, 04:42 PM']Blaming great bassists for having a negative effect on the myriad talentless hacks is akin to blaming Stirling Moss for boy racers.[/quote] Well they all drive Scoobys, so I'm blaming Colin McRae (RIP) and Richard Burns (RIP). Quickly back on to the subject of 27-string basses: Do you guys who own them ever take them out of the house? I just can't imagine getting a gig anywhere if I brought more strings to the audition than the guitarist. I did have a Warwick 6 for a while but there was only one band I could ever play it with and I already had my feet snugly under their table when I bought it.

[quote name='molan' post='232957' date='Jul 4 2008, 11:43 PM']They also had the trip wired into every single window and a set of french doors. As soon as it got warm and people opened a window the power to he stage would cut![/quote] Ooh, that's a good idea. There's a hotel across the street from me and I call them practically every weekend to tell them to shut their ****ing windows. They do pay attention though, so I've never complained to the council. I did complain to the council when they blocked up the whole street's drains from years of pouring waste fat into them and that nearly got them shut down, but a backyard full of **** is a bigger deal than a noisy wedding.

Well, I managed to find half an hour to do a quick sample (after I realised I said I would, then never did...), first clip is just the pulse synth at about as bassy as it will go - there are other sounds available of course, it can go much thinner. The wobbly modulation on a couple of notes is the LFO sweep which I've got wired to a momentary switch so I can stick it in and out, haven't had a lot of time to play with that yet so excuse me if I get a bit enthusiastic with it. I can also switch it the other way, so the LFO is always on and I can cut it with the momentary. There's also an envelope follower which varies the speed of the LFO, which I haven't really used yet but could be cool. Second part of the clip I recorded quickly for the dude who wanted to hear the Meatwad with the expression pedal. The Pulse Synth is in its FX loop. I just go from all the way up to the bottom and back again just to show the range, probably could've picked a lower starting point actually, it's pretty hissy up there, but I suppose at least that shows the range available. [url="http://teop.org/media/psynth_clip.mp3"]http://teop.org/media/psynth_clip.mp3[/url] Verdict: I'm much happier now I've had some time to spend with the pulse synth - it can take a while to find the tones you want because the controls are quite dependant on eachother. As for tracking: If you play cleanly, it behaves itself very well. I'd say tracking is on a par with my OC-2 if fed a signal it likes. The clip above was recorded with my fretless 3-band Stingray (stock electronics), with vol. full up and everything else flat. It seems to warble a bit with my Thumb bass - which has a much stronger output - but if I pull the vol. pot up to put it in passive mode it tracks just as well as the 'Ray does. Tried a few options to tart up the sound of the Pulse Synth. Blending it with an octave below really beefs things up but stays nice and gnarly. Adding some chorus (again, blended about half) is also neat, gives it some depth but without getting too thick, and of course there's lots of nasal and gutteral combinations to be had with the Meatwad. All in all I'd have to say this pedal performs better than I expected, there's a lot of buzzy, trumpy, synthy fun to be had. As for the Meatwad: I suppose some of you will be familiar with the Meatball so not much to tell you, although people who've used both seem to think there are greater extremes to be had from the Meatwad. I can imagine they're right - if I put the resonance anywhere above about 12 o'clock with the filter closed it can feed back easily if it finds a harmonic it likes, and with the filter open it twitters and squawks in pretty bizarre ways. I had wondered before it arrived whether - despite all these controls - I'd just find an envelope filter setting I liked and then never tweak it again, but nah there's a lot of useful sounds to be found. Both sweep directions are useful (I always found my Q-Tron to be a bit boomy when sweeping down, but this can be tweaked a lot more - lower resonance helps a lot), the attack/decay and sweep strength settings can really make a difference too, calming things down and making the filter sit in slower songs surprisingly well. And of course the expression pedal is handy either for long, House/D&B-type sweeps or wah effects. It's also pretty cool with the envelope follower on, so the filter quacks away while you choke it into lower ranges with the expression pedal. I did have an issue with the range available on the expression pedal when the unit first arrived - it either wouldn't go deep enough or high enough, depending on the sweep direction setting. Mario offered to take the unit back, paying shipping both ways and modifying it for free, which was very generous given that he markets it as a Meatball clone and that's the stock behaviour of the Meatball's expression pedal - there really was nothing wrong with the pedal that he'd sent to me, I just wanted it to be more extreme. He also offered to mail me a "mod kit" to do it myself, which would've been quicker, but when he told me it involved just two wires and a switch I decided to buy a switch and do it myself rather than have a long wait for stuff in the post. He supplied the instructions, it was an easy job, and as you can hear from the clip the sweep is now full range. Mario has said that this sweep range will be standard on future Meatwads with expression inputs. A quick word about Mario himself: I haven't been the easiest customer ever - both my pedals have custom mods on them, so of course the spec. had to be bashed out through a series of emails, and in the case of the pulse synth he had some experimenting to do to get the mods I asked for working well. Then of course we had this business with the exp. pedal range after I took delivery and again he was 100% willing to sort it all out for me if that's what I wanted. He's really just a great guy to buy pedals from.

Was it [url="http://www.basscentre.com/product.asp?pID=445&cID=59&c=65546"]this[/url]? There was a thread about it here the other day.

[quote name='budget bassist' post='232753' date='Jul 4 2008, 03:37 PM']Can anyone explain to me what FoH means? I've seen it being used a few times and i have no idea what it means![/quote] Front of house. Where the audience is.

[quote name='andy67' post='232408' date='Jul 4 2008, 01:32 AM']I want to return to being skint but content - how do I get there?[/quote] Stop reading bass forums.

Interesting. I've never read an interview with him before. I'd always assumed he'd be a bit of a twat, I suppose because Jay Kay is such a twat. Nice to see that he really isn't. That LP bass though - what is he thinking?