NickD

I bought the worlds largest double bass case from Dave. He couldn't have been more helpful, taking measurements to help avoid an unnecessary journey. A total gent throughout, great, friendly communication and a pleasure to deal with.

Living under a rock, musically speaking, I knew none of the entries... Except 'Hoots Mon', embarrassingly enough. A fine crop though... Many congratulations to Dad & Nail Soup!

Sting... The 'My Songs' thing he did at the Palladium this year. Postponed twice due to Covid, and not really worth the wait. Just absolutely flat. A situation not improved by having to sit through an awful, pretty girl 3 piece, and his son banging out non-songs with zero aplomb beforehand.

Finally went for a Double Bass. Drove up to Scotland and made a weekend of it, met some great folks in the process (as appears to be the Basschat way) and haven't stopped wrestling with the damn thing since. It also appears to have killed my GAS, to the extent that I think I'll be paring down the bass guitars a bit next year.

Literally any track of BSSM, every one is a cracker. The further I go backwards or forwards from that record, the more progressively disappointed I get.

I Bought a pedal from Karl. A dead easy, friendly transaction. Great communication, pedal exactly as described and packed to withstand the machinations of any courier on their very worst day. Many thanks Karl!

At the moment I'm rotating between 2 Chevrons Apart by Yuri Goloubev, Land of The Sun by Charlie Haden, and Last Dance, an album of beautiful duets between Charlie Haden and Keith Jarrett. In the car My CD player seems to be continually occupied by the 2 CDs that make up Trilogy 2, a ridiculously good live trio album by Chick Corea, Christian McBride and Brian Blade.

Not that video (he's got a few), but that was the guy who I looked at when I bought mine. I didn't even get as far as changing the strings, it sounds fine to me.

I really like mine... still. It was a early lockdown 'toe in the water' thing, so I couldn't justify one of the dearer/posher models, but now I play it a lot I have no intention of changing it at the moment. It sits on it's stand in the office/studio/living room, and I can't walk past it without at least playing something. With a heavy mute on (Ninomute), the standard strings, and the tone rolled most of the way off, it sounds fine to me. For home recording I usually favour it over my DB, as it's close enough to my ear and much easier to record. The signal is a little weak as piezo pickups generally are, but it's fine straight into the High Z input of my interface, and it surprised me by sounding good straight into my Markbass combo too. Playability wise, I like it a lot, except when I get on the DB I miss it's crazy dots on the board higher up the neck.

I first ever saw him doing this set with his Dad, it's a cracker from start to finish. I love the way he plays. https://youtu.be/CuN6EcoKvX4

188

Congratulations Folks. It was really hard to choose this time around. All great tunes!

Senior Test Analyst here... If you can build it, I can break it! 😂 Obviously tried all that before raising a ticket. Still screwy!

Nice tunes, and I like the comic spiel too! It does look a bit plain to me, and if that was your intention, crack on and ignore me. But is that how you'd want your website to look? You could go a bit further IMO. Nothing crazy, but a header with your name on it, and some kind of background image would perk it up a bit, even changing the background from white would help I think. Obviously it's all down to what you want, but the facility is there, and it's free to experiment. If it was me, I'd be having a couple of Bourbons tonight (the beverage, not the biscuits), sticking some tunes on, and going full on comedy/country on it's donkey! 😎 Ours could do with a refresh, as it's definitely not perfect, but (hopefully) it does reflect the band a little more. https://isleofeverything.bandcamp.com/album/ocho

Bandcamp is great. Really easy to set up a page, they take a reasonable cut (and have extended the lockdown 'Bandcamp Friday' thing, where they don't take anything, really handy if you promote it well). You can have pretty much anything on there, including bio/lyrics if you're so inclined, and it's a nice little community IMO. There's a handy player that you can embed elsewhere too. Given how you can make it look, I've often questioned the wisdom of us paying for a website, that looks pretty similar and does less for us.

Some crackers already! I'll be skipping this round, which is a pity given the brilliant pic. It's been a chaotic month, and we're off to sunnier climes for the rest of it, which scuppers the idea of a last minute dash to pull my ideas together. I shall of course be logging in, wine in hand, and having a chilled listening and voting session in the sun... I hope!🤣

Ah, that's more representative of what I was seeing.

Hmmm. Odd! The screenshot is clearer, with less interference than it appeared on my screen.

I've never seen it on desktop. It happens all the time now. I'm not 100% sure, but I half think it seems to be triggered by quotes. Sometimes its just totally stripey as above, and sometimes it's clearer as repeats. I just went into the Pump It Up thread, and as I scrolled down I got this.

I've been getting this too for the past couple of weeks, also only on Basschat. I'm running Android 11 on a Motorola G31.

Of course, I'd not considered that the Stagg is active. For me the mute was the game changer. Stupidly expensive for what it is, but it really enhances the thump, and kills the mwah. Definitely this! It doesn't really matter how it sounds in isolation. If he's writing in a particular style, he needs to finish some mixes, then look for what he thinks is missing.

I've been playing around with this all year. I think all my composition challenge entries have been done on the NSWav (except for one awful attempt at recording the proper DB... that still needs work). Both down in the rehearsal room and recording (Cubase Elements 10 in my case), I've played with the Helix, using 3 Sigma DB IRs and the Fishman Platinum Pro. These work well through an amp in the rehearsal room, but for recording I've not found anything that works as well (to my ear) as straight into the Hi Z input of the interface, with a heavy mute (Ninomute), and the tone rolled most of the way off. After that I'll usually compress it a touch with the Cubase plugins, then leave it alone. Obviously the whole track will get a touch of delay/reverb at the end, but that's applied across the board.

Congratulations! There's loads of stuff on Youtube. Discover Double Bass is good for LH/RH Technique, and there's a lot of quality stuff around walking bass on that channel too. I like PD Bass too, and there are a few really good videos from Cole Davis. He has a method of using open strings as jumping points in scales and arpeggios to spread the shape across the neck (as BG shapes don't work so well any more). I found them really useful. John Clayton has some cool stuff covering the basics, just filmed on his phone by the looks, but the content is quality, and I like Yuri Goloubev's shorts too. Mr Sunnybass does great playthroughs, and his lessons look really good... except they're in Italian, so I don't really know. I've been using Ireal pro for play along tracks and chord charts. I was always pretty happy with the standards strings, to the extent that they're still on there, but I bought a Ninomute, which adds thump and kills that fretless style 'mwah' in the middle of the neck. At 50 quid they're a bit of a fosters-take for what they are, but it does work well. I'd fashioned mutes myself before I got it using various things, but this does do the trick. Recording direct into the interface (in the Hi Z input) with the tone full off and the ninomute on, I get a sound that's close enough for me. *Edit* - I also found that when playing, the dots on the board weren't useful in the lower positions, It messed up my body position to crane round and look at them. I got a hole punch and some sticky backed, fluorescent, sign makers vinyl and put dots on the edge. Happy adventures!