anaxcrosswords

I'm not proud of myself for murdering this, but anyway... [url="https://youtu.be/BY9HFTa7zJk"]https://youtu.be/BY9HFTa7zJk[/url]

Talking of 80s sequenced basslines, Tainted Love. In theory the verse riff is simple – G/G/Bb/Bb/Eb/Eb/Bb/C – but it’s very easy to make the pushed C at the end sound clumsy or inconsistent. I’ve actually taken to keeping the playing digit ‘ghosting’ the swing rhythm instead of just going for the individual notes.

Just occasionally I’ll see a 5-string on sale and think “Hmm, looks nice” but I hold back. I learned on 4-string about 30 years ago and remained 100% faithful to it, and I think there’s some fear that adding another string is going to make me re-learn everything. If you moved from 4 to 5 how difficult was it, and how long did it take, to rework your technique and feel absolutely comfortable?

I’m going to sound like a total nob by asking a question that must have been asked a gazillion times before. As a debutant, what would I be expecting to happen at a bash, apart from me potentially looking very silly?

Aaargh - Dancing Queen! If you play it in the right key it's OK, but G (where we have to play it) is clumsy with 4-string. And a nightmare with BVs.

[quote name='KevB' timestamp='1433849940' post='2794499'] Just another reason to stick to the superior (to me) original version [/quote] +1. If only we had a sax player. If only we had a sax player who looked like Abi.

You also have to bear in mind what other instruments are doing. The Amy Winehouse version of [b]Valerie [/b]has the simplest of basslines, but getting the rhythm right (and constant) becomes almost impossible if the drummer doesn’t nail it too.

When we made the decision to do [b]Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now[/b] my initial reaction was to fill my pants. Turned out to be not as hard as I thought, although it hasn’t stopped me hating the song.

[b]Can’t Take My Eyes Off You[/b]. It’s not difficult as such, but in the disco version there’s some sustained octave work based on Gb and I find the stretch to the octave gets uncomfortable very quickly. [b]Billie Jean[/b]. Again, not difficult, but I used to start the phrase with the Gb octave note before deciding it sounded better with the lower note on the E string (which I think is what the original does anyway). That was the best part of a year ago but even now I occasionally get the ghost of what I used to play and it can throw me off the riff. [b]Hysteria[/b]. Well, yes. The truth is I’ve made this hard for myself because I didn’t start by studying the actual notes – just plugged in and tried it. I knew it wasn’t quite right but found myself constantly playing it the same way. Now I’ve got a good MIDI version in Cakewalk Sonar I can see where I was going wrong and it’s made two parts especially difficult; in the riff with A as the root, part of the climbdown involves two hits on Eb then E/D/E, and that has completely thrown my rhythm. In the riff based on D the climbdown is D/C/B/D/B/Bb/D/Bb/A with each D the open string and the A octave being the first note on the return to the A riff. Timing-wise it’s pretty tough anyway, but made far worse by the wrong way I’ve become used to playing it.

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1432750293' post='2784633'] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq2A7M8XbU0[/media] [/quote] Nice!!!!!

Blimey! Who was the sound engineer?

Just noticed - Muse are on with Jules tonight, BBC2 10pm.

Ha! I can imagine [i][b]21 Guns[/b][/i] wouldn't be much easier.

Thankfully endings are endings – if they go a bit wrong there’s nothing left to get right! Incidentally, we quite often have to go out as a 3-piece for reasons of venue space or client budget, so we rely on (smite my cheeks) backing tracks; drums and keys. You’d think that would solve most problems in terms of tempo etc, but it’s not without its hazards. Obviously the backing track is king and it won’t adjust if you get something wrong, but the worst thing – and it does happen – is when the MP3 file decides to have a little skip while it’s playing. Some time last year, while we played [i][b]You Can’t Hurry Love[/b][/i], it jumped almost precisely 1 bar. So the drums still sounded OK, but the rest of the track was essentially brass parts which ended up out of sequence with what we were playing/singing. Thankfully they weren’t loud enough to sound ridiculous, and nobody in the audience seemed to notice – they just carried on dancing and singing. Doubtless there’s a message in that!

[b]Billie Jean[/b] – aaaargh! In fairness it’s very rare that we actually cock it up (and we somehow manage to get back on track anyway) but it’s a song during which we often end up looking around at each other with a “Which bit do we go into now?” expression. For those unfamiliar with it, the song has a few moments of repetition which don’t happen anywhere else – overall not a standard song structure. This uncertainty has been there from the start and it’s a song we’ve been doing for about 5 years. Are there songs that cause you to get nervous for the same reason, even though you’ve had them in the set for a long time?

In my early teens I think I wanted to be a drummer. Whenever a song was playing I’d be tapping my fingers on the arm of the sofa, trying to get the imaginary hi-hats/snare/toms right (can’t remember if I tried to get my feet in time with the kick) – I still do the same while driving although, thankfully, not quite to Alan Partridge extremes. Actually taking up drums was never going to happen, but when it came to making a musical choice the bass was a given because the rhythmic interest was already there. I wonder which of these applies to bassists: 1) No interest in drums 2) Wanted/used to be a drummer but abandoned that for bass 3) Actively play – either as ‘bedroom’ drummer or within a band Just as an aside, there’s a rhythm technique on drums which always defeated me, and I’m afraid Muse’s [i][b]Hysteria [/b][/i]rears its head yet again! Dom Howard’s use of disco-style open hats on the verses is coupled with a more complicated kick pattern, and I’ve never been able to make my feet work independently like that. Other way round isn’t so bad; I can mime straight kick and get the hi-hat foot to do more offbeat stuff.

Thanks guys. I was just thinking about the [i][b]Hysteria [/b][/i]bassline and being prepared to buy an FX unit it if looked liked I'd ever get round to playing it with a band. It prompted me to remember there's a synth effect on the Line6 which I've never found a way to use properly - glad to know others have the same experience of the Line6.

Interesting charity gig for us last night. Played well, got good reaction. But we had an unusually long - 2 hour - break between sets while they did food, presentations etc, and they'd booked Stan Boardman to do a stand-up spot for them. It was great to be reminded how funny he isn't.

My Line6 300W combo has a synth effect, accessed via a knob on the far right. The result is that the occasional note comes out as something resembling flatulence but, mostly, it produces nothing at all. Is it just a feature of the amp that’s known to be rubbish, or is there some trick in terms of other amp settings or maybe choice of pickups to get the desired input?

Am I right in thinking that, before Muse, CW had never played bass? Sure I read it somewhere. [b][i]Hysteria [/i][/b]is one of those must-have-in-the-repertoire basslines, although it's not too difficult if you can get your hammer-on timing right. There's a sequence of 3 or 4 semitones - the first climbdown in the main riff - that I still haven't got right in terms of the actual notes, but I'm hoping to get there one day. Out of interest, I wonder if the FX unit he uses on that is of a sort that plays each note at a set volume as long as you hit the fret position accurately enough? That's not to detract from a brilliant bassline, but one problem I have (not using FX) is keeping the volume constant as I play, as it's very easy to not quite hit a note properly.

Whenever I listen back to old recordings I’ve done (original songs) one thing really grates. I seemed unable to stop myself from adding at least one grace note before leaving a 4-bar phrase – on so many occasions it would have been better to just let the root note stay where it was. It’s not that these grace notes are unmusical. They’re simply unnecessary, at least they feel that way now. We all do it, don’t we? Don’t we? Do you find it hard to just let that last note ring out?

I’ve never had too much trouble with slap, even if my technique is a compromise (can’t do thumb + finger pull, so it’s forced me to cobble together a hammer-on technique to simulate what the thumb would do). Even so, I try to avoid it now. If it’s not done very well it sounds a bit naff to me, but I also have a strap with a silky finish so it tends to loosen and lower the bass over time – the lower down the bass gets the harder it is to do slap and pull.

The online thing is interesting though. In all but one of my purchases a necessary part has been trying the instrument out first, for the usual reasons of feel, playability, evaluating whether or not it's 'the one'. Plus, I suppose, the opportunity to haggle a little - maybe not a price reduction, but would you be preapred to thrown in a bag, couple of leads... Are we all happy to have moved away from that?

Yep - well, not new, been around a few years (or 2 months if you deduct time offline).

…offline yet again after less than a week. Feel genuinely sorry for whoever the webmaster is, must be enormously frustrating, but wonder what can be causing so many problems.