dodge_bass

There's loads of high quality Motown / soul / funk transcriptions on my website too:

www.dodgebass.co.uk

Enjoy. 

17 minutes ago, Dosi Y'Anarchy said:

I probably should go for the money BUT I'm a sucker for gear, let me know what you might be thinking and I'll consider it. 

I’ll drop you a PM later on

Any trades on the Dresden Synth fuzz?

Bass sounds great on studio speakers - fat and very present in the mix. Perhaps if you wanted to cut through a little more you might consider tweaking your sound a little. However it sits great, fills out the mix and as noted the playing is good. You should be happy with this I'd say. Also remember you need a good few years before you can be emotionally removed from any recording to listen to it properly!

...just arrived at 'ticket' - bass is fat and present and some of the higher register work in the chorus is very prominent in the mix indeed, perhaps more present than the vocals (!!). 

Nowt to worry about there

Here’s a more immediate clip:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl8p3tXl-Ck/?utm_medium=copy_link

I think they’re absolutely brilliant - toured one with on and off for the last ten years around UK and bits of Europe. Sounds great, super portable and people are always blown away by the sound / size combo. Yes the strings take some adjusting to as does the scale length but that’s a small price to pay over carting an upright around (flying with one is impossible - but the Uke bass fits in a large rucksack!). 

@Happy Jack I just discovered the talc trick after a very sweaty tour of Germany - stops string squeak as well when you get really sweaty.  

40 minutes ago, TKenrick said:

 

You can hit the key softly enough and bury it in the mix to such a degree that I can't really be certain what the note is 😉 the ghost notes are a best guess.

Ah yeah….fair enough….nice way of notating that uncertainty!

1 hour ago, Supernaut said:

Good choice! Solid unit. 

Agreed. They are excellent little units. 

On 23/12/2021 at 14:19, TKenrick said:

I was taking a student though this chart last week and realised that it was woefully inaccurate; here's another stab at Donny's excellent Fender Rhodes part:

 

Donny Hathaway - 'This Christmas'

Looks great - without being an derrière though how can you get muted notes (x heads on your part) on a synth? 

Bizarre. I can’t see them selling many of them. 

42 minutes ago, Dankology said:

 

Yours is also presented the most prettily... Really appreciate the time you put into this.

 

 

 

These are my thoughts exactly. I really like the way the run sounds and as much as any flurry of quiet, low end notes might have done the trick, it was really bothering me that I couldn't identify what was being played. I've always had a thing about wantng to get my fingers (and ears) around tricky passages, even if it's a song I don't particularly like - just to have another tool in the toolbox, as it were.

 

I was pretty far off as it happens. In my defence, while I was fighting with it I did think that it reminded me of Neil Young's Old Man - and it turns out that it is the same guy on bass. So I may be tone deaf but not entirely cloth-eared 😀

 

Have you got Transcribe? It’s a brilliant little programme that really helps with fiddly runs like this? I’d be really happy to give you a quick zoom tutorial if you would like as it’s such a useful (and cheap!) tool to aid transcribing. And if you’re serious about getting lines right (which you seem to be!) then it’s a worthwhile investment. Drop me a PM and we can find 30mins to do a quick zoom if you’d like! 

1 hour ago, wateroftyne said:

I’d argue it’s a bit of a hook on the the JJC version.

Agreed. I’d also argue (actually I’m not arguing, it’s a fact!) that transcribing tricky lines like this really develops your ear / feel / stylistic knowledge and massively rewards the time spent doing it - I.e you get a bit better every time you do it. So by not doing it you’re basically taking the easy route and saying ‘I can’t be bothered to spend time improving my bass playing’. 

9 minutes ago, Dankology said:

Thank you all for your sterling efforts. I'm looking forward to working my way through these latest versions tomorrow. 

 

Fascinating how much variation there is here, latter-day rearrangement aside... 😉

For clarity though....the only version you need to work through is mine....because it's the correct line! How do I know...because it took me about 15mins to pull out of the mix and Transcribe was used in the process to pitch it up +10cents. Plus I've been transcribing this kind of material for decades (see my website) so my ears are great are figuring this stuff out  

However to be honest any bluesy line will work there, it just depends if you want to follow the original part of an approximation of....likelihood is nobody will know or notice! So attention to detail is both a blessing AND probably a waste of time!! 

8 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Go to a professional studio to record your bass parts.

 

Seriously.

 

I see this all the time in all sorts of situations - not just recording - where the suggestion is that with the right hardware and/or software anyone can can do anything and get fantastic results.

 

It simply isn't true.

 

Perhaps if you spend many hundreds of hours working at it you may find that you have the right aptitude and ability to produce great recordings, but it's more likely that you will spend a load of time and money and not be any better off at the end.

 

Trust me, I've been there.

 

I started out recoding at home because back in the 70s if you had very little money there was no alternative. Most of what I produced from a technical PoV was rubbish, but because the equipment I was using was low quality, I was able to easily convince myself that with a better multitrack/mixer/more outboard gear I would be able to produce recordings as good as those of the bands that I liked. By the time I got to the 90s, the gap between the "home studio" and the professional one as regards equipment had all but vanished, and finding myself in a position of having lots of disposable income, I threw a lot of it at building up a very serious recording set up. However, no matter how much money I spent, my recording still didn't come anywhere close to the quality of the records and CDs I was buying.

 

It turned out that I simply didn't have the ability to produce recordings of the quality I wanted. This was brought home to me with a bang when I joined a band with a drummer with an acoustic kit, which I didn't have the facility record at home. So we went into a proper studio. There the engineer was able to produce a great sounding recording almost instantly and using equipment that, technically, was actually slightly lower quality than what I had in my "studio". It wasn't a one-off occurrence either. Every studio I went to over the next 5 years the story was the same. Eventually I had to concede that the weak link in my studio was me, and that I had wasted the best part of £30k over the past 15 years, buying hardware and software that I simply did not have the skill to get decent results out of. Since then I've sold almost everything (at a considerable loss) and my studio exists for me to do drum programming for one of my bands (something that I can do well) and very basic demos for songs, where the sound doesn't really matter so long as all the instrumental parts can be clearly heard.

 

If all of that hasn't put you off then I suggest the following:

 

1. Don't spend any more money. What you have already from a technical PoV is probably far superior to the equipment that was used to produce some of the most memorable recordings of all time. Learn to use what you have, and get to know all of it inside out, before even contemplating opening your wallet.

 

2. As others have said, the weak link in your recording set up is most likely the listening environment. Learn its strengths and weakness. Spend hours listening to your favourite recordings on your set up so that you know exactly how they sound. Only when you are completely familiar with how great recordings sound on your system can you start to make objective judgements about your own recordings.

 

By the time you have put in the hours doing the above you should be able to tell whether you have the aptitude to make recordings yourself that are up to the standard that you require.

 

I know if I had my time again I'd take all the money I spent on my "studio" and hired a proper one along with a decent producer. At least that way I'd have come out of it with a finished album that sounded great, instead of a handful of recordings that I have never been completely happy with and a load of half-finished tracks that are lost forever. I'd probably even have enough left over to spend on effective promotion.

I can get on board with some of this but not all of it (respectfully!). Certainly before you open your wallet any more spend some serious time with what you've got and get to know it. But recording bass DI'd to a high quality at home is really not a big ask these days and with the gear you've got you should be able to do it really well. Certainly listening environment / speakers is going to really help but a well set up bass, decent DI and some ability to play (!) should be more than enough of a starting point to record some quality bass. Listening to isolated bass tracks from recordings you know really well will really help (to get a sense of what the bass sound is actually like by itself rather than how it sounds in the mix) as will just doing some recording and seeing how it goes. If you're working with an engineer or have friends who have better ears than you then do some recording of your bass and send it to them for feedback - they'll hopefully be able to give you some direction. Feel free to PM me, I'd be happy to have a quick chat or a Zoom with you about it at some point. And one last thing - enjoy the process, it's a learning curve for all of us

1 hour ago, fleabag said:

This might be of some use, though he's cut off the  video near the nut, but it can be worked out

 

 

This appears to be an entirely different version @fleabag!! 

On 22/10/2021 at 14:16, OzJzF said:

I make it E F F# A  F# G A D

Hi all (@Dankology)

Stumbled across this thread whilst hiding from the kids in the kitchen for 5mins after a looooong day. Anyway, liked the track so thought I'd take a listen. It's a fiddly little line because it's very fast (semi-quavers @wateroftyne  ), the bass sound isn't that clear AND it's about 10cents flat making transcribing low rumbly notes very tricky. So here's what the line actually does - it's a lovely example of a bluesy chromatic line over a dominant 7th chord - using the minor and major third and ending on the Ab (flat 5) before returning to the root at the start of the next bar. 

My fingering suggestion is 1st finger on the low F - shift to the F# (with first finger) which allows 2nd finger on the G, hammer onto to 3rd finger on the Ab and then 4th finger on the D on the A string. I don't think there's any other way you'll get that line smooth at that speed. Good luck and enjoy! 

49 minutes ago, greghagger said:

I’ve made an arrangement for bass of some well known Christmas carols. Bass plays the melody throughout and you’ll find some interesting time changes! 
 

There's a free PDF and a backing track to play along with.

 

It's a really fun play, will get you in the festive mood and is also excellent reading practice for those of you who use the standard notation.There’s also Tab for those of you that prefer it. 

 

I demonstrate the medley in a Youtube video so check that out to get some tips on how to play it.

Have fun with the medley and have a Merry Christmas. 
 

 

Sweet!

2 hours ago, greghagger said:

Your book sounds great. We should chat. I’ve got a few books out and I’m planning an arpeggio exercises book! 

Hey Greg. I’d love that - I’ll drop you a PM!

3 minutes ago, Bunion said:

Probably Japanese prices (they do ramp them up) or a scam if it’s disappeared 

I’ve purchased a few 3leaf pedals this year one quite recently for the going market price 

Yeah. I’m guessing scam too…I’ve never seen any at this price before….just interested to know where they’d been seen…certainly not on here. 

Lovely stuff. I’m currently writing a tuition book on this very thing  Nice video. 

1 hour ago, bassist_lewis said:

Anyone noticed an insane increase in the price of 3Leaf Audio pedals? I recently saw a Chromatron up for about £700, then last night saw an Octabvre mk2 on sale for £800. It was gone by this morning!

I understand why, they're amazing pedals and Spencer isn't building at the moment, or at least is only filling back orders, but it still seems a bit ridiculous, like the original Klons that go for £5k.

Where did you see these?  I’m gonna shift mine if I can sell them for this much!! 

36 minutes ago, GreeneKing said:

There's been some reasonably acrimonious to'ing and fro'ing going on. Finally, at the very last, the lead guitarist has said what it's all about (ffs), that he was exasperated with me because I'm not musically adept enough to cope with his style of playing. His anger and exasperation plainly visible for months, was down to me as I half guessed. 

 

I'm not good at improvising over a chord chart. That's an understatement I learn a song beforehand and when we come together as a band I play pretty much the 'textbook' baseline unless it's too difficult for me when I'll adapt it. If it's not right I'll  listen to advice and sort it. I can spend many hours on a song that gets binned at the first hurdle. That's me and I value advice and work to develop my playing.

 

I tried to talk about the inconsistent song structure, how I felt it needed sorting and that it spoiled my enjoyment of doing a good job. He got angry. At no time did he communicate exactly who with or why. As said above, we could have communicated when to move from chorus to bridge etc.

 

He's finally said exactly why. Because I can't cope l with his style and seamlessly adapt to an extra phrase or two being inserted or deleted from the song structure on a whim (by mistake). He plays by feel and I'm a music technician. I acknowledge that we all make mistakes.

 

I put a lot of work into my playing. I'm not gifted in some ways but I can hold time, play an appropriate bassline and get some feel into the song. i.e. I can fill the role.

 

This is where his 'musical differences' or 'musical incompatibility' comes in. It's a bit of a shock to my esteem but I'm not sure that his expectations are fair or realistic. He's not vastly experienced with bands and gigging.

 

So basically I've been sacked because I'm not good enough. (Or perhaps because he can't communicate at all and he has unrealistic expectations).

 

I don't think he was impressed when I said he played too loud and dominated the band by way of it. It's calling him a musical arseshole evidently.

 

Upwards and onwards then.

 

Peter

 

 

 

Nothing to do with your musical adeptness (or incorrect perceived lack thereof) and everything to do with his musical failings. He’s basically musically gaslighting you here and you need to be shot of him entirely. 
 

Learning arrangements, spending time working on parts to get them right (or adjusting slightly to ensure you can deliver them accurately) and wanting structures and arrangements to be fixed on and agreed are all the hallmarks of a pro player. I can vouch for this because I’ve been a pro player for nearly 20years and all of his behaviours are the opposite of what you need to be a pro player. So don’t be thinking you’re at fault here because you’re not. Even top flight players need fixed arrangements and agreements on structure unless they’re at a jam where it doesn’t matter! You can be the best bass player in the world but if you’re playing and suddenly there’s an extra few bars added / removed you’re gonna play a clanger. Working in an ensemble is a group endeavour and one of the agreements is on structure and arrangement….unless the agreement is very specifically the opposite - I.e changes will be clearly cued. 
 

So take heart, continue working hard as you do and find yourself another outfit who are able to function properly as an ensemble. You’ll be an absolute asset to them.  

Any trades?

2 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

 

I don't think he's using the custom moulds. An important distinction.

Ah yes. That would explain some of the issues he’s having then. 

5 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

And OP is currently catching a case of tinnitus while using same! The mind boggles!

You can swap the filters out to increase the sound reduction. I wonder what db reduction he’s got going on? Also this band sound crazy loud so even a decent amount of db reduction may not be enough!! :/