XB26354

MTD ado a bass with a 35" scale and 21 frets. Balance is perfect, 1st fret not too far away and modern sound with Bartolommeo humbuckers but they are expensive and the 24-fret versions are more common.

I can't believe no-one has stated the obvious; it doesn't matter which technique you use - just take your pick...

[quote name='Sibob' timestamp='1471943800' post='3117087'] It's also equally ridiculous to say "a bass player who needs a bass player is in trouble" (as mentioned by someone above)......they're musicians first.....they're best friends....what instrument they play is irrelevant, they want to play together. As long as they understand that they need to occupy different sonic space, who cares that they both play bass?! Also, <select super popular guitarist> is rubbish because there's multiple guitarists in their band Si [/quote] No it's not. It's called an opinion and I'm just as entitled to mine as you are to yours. Ask your non-musician friends how wonderful victor backed by another bass player is and watch their eyes glaze over. It's rare for good reason and has nothing to do with <insert 2 soloing instruments of the same type here> in a band Also note that I didn't say two bass players together but one backing the other, i.e. one plays bass lines and the other makes a noise, sorry, solos soulfully...

I'm mystified why being a nice person (or otherwise) has any bearing on anyone's ability or effect musically on others? I'm reliably informed some of the greatest and composers and musicians in history were absolute b*stards

Ive seen him live twice and listened to plenty of tracks both solo and with Bela Fleck and I concur with the OP. There's something utterly unprepossessing about his playing, great though it may be on a technical level, and it's not that it's soloing or the like, it does absolutely nothing for me emotionally. Then again a bass player who needs a bass player to play bass behind them is always in trouble. I fail to see how he has pushed any boundaries frankly - other than his prodigious technique, and there is a skill in making technique serve the music, which I don't think he possesses to any great degree. Still, each to their own.

Setting aside for the moment what is or isn't jazz (which isn't black and white as music by its very nature blurs boundaries), let's forget that the tune is popular, and get to the heart of why some here dislike it. As has been said many times, there's nothing wrong with the song; it may be to some people's taste and not others but each to their own. It's more what people who know next to nothing about jazz as a form of music want to lump into the genre. Is it really "jazz"? It's hard to discount this based on the chords or the baseline; it's more like white paint with a hint of green, so a bluesy middle of the road song with some elements of jazz (a sloppy walking-type bass line, guitar doing jazz-like comping). Now if you care little about getting to understand more about jazz then that's as far as you need to go. That counts for pretty much all the listening public and most musicians. If you dig a little deeper you can find thousands of excellent "pure" jazz songs (acoustic instruments, walking bass, ride cymbal marking time, a head then improvisations), and thousands more with varying degrees of jazz-ness. What's really being talked about is where each of us is on that scale. If we are committed fans of jazz with a wide listening repertoire than we may discount Moondance and use our valuable learning time on more rewarding (listening or playing) challenges. If we care little for jazz then it's as good as any "jazz" song. So perhaps it may be easier to understand the slight disdain in which the song is held as a "jazz" tune by people who may not really know (or care) what constitutes the body of work widely recognised as jazz. ... Finally, if we were to discount every song with a bit of shabby playing then a large proportion of recorded and live music would be heading for the bin!

I can't remember which track but there's one, pretty up-tempo, with something like double-thumbing (maybe Seven Deadly Sins or something similar) which I believe is Vinne Colaiuta on drums and Marcus on bass. I remember it being very kick-ass. there was also a slower track with some quite subtle slapping that sounded very much like MM.

It's also probably worth mentioning that electric and upright bass is written an octave higher than it would sound if written for piano - so that open E on the line below the bass clef will be an octave higher when a piano plays it compared to a bass. It doesn't matter that much as bass is an accompaniment instrument but worth knowing the actual range.

Loving The Alien - if only to prove that he could still come up with a gem on what was regarded as a less than stellar album.

I can't believe it. Really sad news. A total icon and uncompromising musician and artist. And what a way for him to leave - with a great new album on his birthday. RIP.

I'm with Higgie on this. Technically the tied note in the 2nd bar is F and would need a sharp sign. Otherwise how would the reader know whether it was tied F sharp or a slur from F sharp to F natural? If we assume for a moment hat it is a tie and should be read as such the first note circled in red is F natural and should have a sharp sign. In my reading days it was good practice to put "courtesy" accidental a in to remove any ambiguity, as other have said. I normally saw these in parentheses as this was a reminder. The yellow-circled note appears to be cancelling a sharp that, in that bar, doesn't exist. I suspect the passage requires F sharp from the first bar on that line tied over and then through the second bar, ending with the yellow circled f natural in bar 3. That's not how it reads to me, though!

I like the look of the fanned fret SRs - ash body and interestingly not as much of a scale length change compared to Dingwall - 33.6" to 35.5". Sub-£800 for a 6 is a great price!

I haven't taught for ages - hell, I haven't even owned a bass for 2 years, but I taught for about 15 years prior to that. My experiences were pretty much the same as Doddy and Jake. Of course there were more pupils around then I think - especially in the first 10 years. I had students as young as 7 and into their 60's. IMHO the most committed were the ones with a genuine desire to get better and who actually practised. That was about 2 out of 10 students. At one point I did have 12 regular weekly students and it was a very stressful full time job preparing interesting and meaningful material for each person. Fitting that in with gigs, deps and studio work was hard and while I made good money it was still about half what I earn now in a far less strenuous day job I genuinely believe that teaching should be about improvement only - you can focus on a particular thing like learning to read, intervallic exercises or minor modes for example but it is generally more successful if taken as part of a whole. A good teacher should be able to diagnose weaknesses in technique or theory immediately and be able to come up with a number of ways to tackle said problem. I also found that students that played live regularly were much more likely to develop goos strong technique and a voice on the instrument. The slightly depressing think about today's bedroom YouTube heroes is the lack of interaction - there's no substitute for playing with other (good) musicians!

To the OP: Fourths across the fingerboard will give you four notes. What happens to your method when you run out of strings? What we are all talking about is the same thing: the theory of notes and their relationships, and in turn where each of those notes appear on our instrument. You can't really have one without the other, unless you don't learn to read music for what the notes are and do everything by shapes. At some point however, someone is going to ask you to play a particular note, and you will need to know where it is. Find all the G's on your bass and write them down. Lots of places, not many different notes. This is essence of the difficulty in learning a stringed instrument. You should see both the shape on the fingerboard AND it's corresponding notated shape and (most importantly) know exactly what it sounds like (eg a C min7 arpeggio from C to Bb should look like THIS, HERE on the fingerboard, and look like THIS notated and you know it sounds like THIS).Understand these relationships and there is no need for a system or an "easy way" to learn anything.

Hmmm. I've got no issue with what he was saying, and hearing the sounds and being able to play them all over the instrument is a fundamental goal. However... This had no relevance to the very little that he played, which were a handful of arpeggios. So a case of a valuable idea not very well mated to what was played. Given the little vignette at the end I suspect this was a teaser for people to join the Players School (and nothing wrong with that!) rather than an actual lesson.

Try El Realejo from the same album. A real 6-string workout!

Music is a language and if you treat it like that it puts a lot of things in perspective. The answer to your question isn't really about scales and arpeggios. It's about getting a basic vocabulary, an understanding of grammar, and eventually sentences and conversation. Children learn by listening and imitating for a few years, then go to school and learn the way their "first" language is put together. This all seems very obvious, but what often gets missed out in music learning situations is familiarisation by imitation and repetition. Musicians often worry that if they copy other people's licks they end up sounding like a clone, but this is an essential part of learning. No-one suddenly produces beautiful music having never listened to any! When you play, the sum of your experiences and learning are what come out. If you haven't had much experience of a style, then you may come across as a "tourist trying to find the Tower of London" There is lots of good advice above but rather than learning the scales and arpeggios for a "given style" (there aren't any, by the way, a good player can make almost anything fit over almost any style), it is my experience that listening to and taking in plenty of examples of the style is a better first step. The language of music then becomes something you can hang on that experience. This is purely about the music, and doesn't take into account learning the technical aspects of playing an instrument, which is probably another topic!

How about Diane Warren? Hasn't she written dozens of US No. 1s but is virtually unknown by the great unwashed? I'd never heard if her until I saw an article in Sound on Sound. It isn't anything new - it's a part of the music industry and always has been (Did Sinatra write all his own material?)

Ear training is definitely an area where the playing field isn't level. Some people have more natural ability (I'm not talking about perfect pitch), but just about everyone can get better. Hearing chords, like learning to play, is about practice and familiarity. In very simple terms, the more complex the chord, the more complex the sound. A major triad only has three very clearly discernible notes, so is in general easier to hear. As the chords get more complex, I am generally looking out for those "extra" notes - first the type of 7th, then any extensions (9th, 11th, 13th). However my number one piece of advice would be to play chords on a keyboard or piano and really get used to the sound, and/or record them. Start really slow - allow your ear to hear the sound of each note in the chord. It is usually easier to hear the bottom and top notes than the ones in between so I start there: What's the bass or lowest note? What's the top note? What third does it have - Major, Minor or no 3rd? Can I hear a 7th? Can I hear anything else, and if so does it sound simple or unusual? What is the melody or solo playing? It starts very slowly but as you get more and more familiar you can "hear" chords quite quickly. The other very important point to mention is that chords are not in isolation, they're part if a sequence. Get familiar with the cycle of fourths, and common sequences (II-V-I major and minor, 12-bar blues for example) and extend to whole tunes.

That was the "fake" real book if iirc, and I frequently became confused when tunes didn't seem to be right, only to find that it was littered with mistakes. It depends if you're just going to play a bass line. If so it probably doesn't matter!

A simple answer to the 2nd part of your question is to take a four fret area, with one fret below and one above as "extension" areas, and play both of your exercises without moving out of this area (which will require some transposition as you won't be able to go as high). Then try an entire tune in one position. You end up with some rather awkward fingering but it really helps to know more about changing chords. To get away from the root bias inherent in bass playing try to invert arpeggios or start scales on non-root notes. If you can do all if that easily then you're well on the way Fingerboard knowledge breaks down into 3 areas: notes in one position, notes moving from one position to another and lines that run vertically across multiple positions. When I say notes, that could mean a scalar line, an arpeggio or a wider intervallic motif. A stringed instrument is very hard to learn comprehensively because the same bunch of notes can be found in different areas of the neck, so many lines can be played with different fingering and will sound differently as a result. The payoff is the breadth of timbre and attack!

Sounds like that lick is actually Db melodic minor. I hear the lick starting on Eb, down to C, then straight up the melodic minor scale - Db, Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db, Eb etc. ending in a Db minmaj9 chord.