Doctor J

I usually either hear something in my head and try to work it out or I just faff around on guitar or bass until I play something I like the sound of. If it's something just for myself, I'd make a rough map of the song to a click track, flesh out the other parts. Often, at this stage, I'd have a line or two of vocals in my head too, a hook. I would do the full arrangement of the song to click, just with a rough guitar track and everything else in my head. Then I'd record drums - up until a couple of years ago i did this literally, playing and recording a full kit in the house but I wasn't playing drums frequently enough to stay at a standard I liked so I sold the kit and turned to midi - and build up from there. I always bounce down rough mixes as I go along and listen to them away from instruments, just see what I can come up with while listening and then try to figure out how to get close to what I envisage the song to be when I record it in the real world. It is all down to the work ethic though, much as I con myself otherwise. I really like the deadline of the composition competition, it forces you to do a bit of work which I'm hoping to take into the 50 or so songs I have in various stages of completion I started recording over the last eight or nine years - when I moved to a rural house with no neighbours so I could make as much noise as I liked. I find the ideas come easily, actually finishing something is the hard part but it's really is down to getting of your arse and grafting. I'm finding writing lyrics very hard at the moment. I want to have something of substance, tell a story, make a point, whatever - I used to write lyrics for a couple of my bands in my youth but it really doesn't come easy any more. Maybe it's an age thing. With the band, generally, it starts with a riff. If I come up with something I'll record it into the phone and then come back and build from the drums up. I tend to leave the arrangements open, just record a verse, chorus and a couple of related bits and then let it be finished with the input of the entire band. Our singer writes the lyrics so I leave him to it.

Sepultura released a couple of belters - Dante XXI and A-Lex. The first based on Dante's The Divine Comedy and the second based on A Clockwork Orange.

Such a wide variety of entries already, well done all I've most of the music done. I'm going to try singing again. I don't like it, but in for a penny... etc. I may need to re-record some guitars after that. The deadline is a real bugger, isn't it? It seems far away but then it sneaks right up on you all of a sudden.

PiL - Metal Box

Very sorry to hear that, Douglas.

That's one hell of a run, to be fair. I saw them just once, in the early 2000s, and was surprised by just how much I actually enjoyed it. Good time rock 'n' roll, nothing wrong with that at all.

I do love them but I may leave the old t-shirt at home for a while, had a few people come up to the stage to take photos of it during the last gig I played wearing it

We're through to the semi-final of the Irish part. 30 minutes isn't a whole lot of time when you're playing low tempo doomy stuff. We were told the sets would be 20 minutes but, a couple of days beforehand, they bumped it up to 30 so we added one extra song

Josh Klinghoffer out, Nile Rodgers in. Now let's see if tjey can get the funk back.

If you enjoy it, at least give it some timw with the new guy. It might be worth talking to the current guy, see if a break would suffice. Find out what's eating at him and see if something can be done to take away some of it. As Kate Bush advised Peter Gabriel, "Don't give up"

That pic really had me stumped for a while, wasn't quite what I was expecting, considerably more summery I've got something brewing now, need to digest it for a while, see if I can do anything like what I'm hearing in my head

Hearty congratulations, Douglas!

Get a cup of tea and spend the next half hour chuckling away http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussbf8hJKSA Great man.

A very funny fella. RIP.

It's getting tense now, just one more vote needed to swing it

This one?

[quote name='jezzaboy' timestamp='1454013828' post='2965529'] Leo got it right with the P bass. [/quote] Yeah, but [i]which[/i] P bass? There were already three versions by 1957.

Fair enough FWIW I'm not offended by that either

You didn't and, even if you did, don't worry about it. It's a discussion forum, it's ok for people to experience thoughts which conflict with their own. Could you put up the gist of the original post, as someone in their 40's now playing in a band which contains a couple of young 'uns I'd be interested to see what started this

It's Ishibashi's second hand store, big Japanese retailer and very trustworthy in my experience. The price in brackets is what you'd pay, being outside Japan. Last time I bought from them it was just over €100 for postage and then the usual import duty fun when it arrived.

24 of them up there at the moment

Don't know of a dealer but there are usually a few second hand ones knocking around on the u-box. Ishibashi are great to deal with. Import it yourself, easy peasy. http://www.ishibashi.co.jp/u_box/e/ And, yes, Jerry Barnes is responsible for Z gas here too

Is the idea there for a reason? Do you have other basses you enjoy more? If so, move it on, I say.

I much prefer composing and recording to gigging. I still gig regularly but it has never been the be-all and end-all and never will. That being said, I've no real interest in cover music where gigs are pretty much the sole purpose of existence. I've done stints in mate's cover bands when they've been down a member but it wasn't my thing at all and my stints were relatively brief. The creative side is where I get my kicks. I can see the market for covers shrinking but not disappearing. There are so many entertainment alternatives these days which don't involve punters going out in the rain, etc, and even pubs don't have the allure they used to. Youth culture isn't built around pubs and bands anymore.

Yeah, I read a lot of the negative comments, mostly on talkbass, before buying it and I just don't get the hostility. As a few chunks of wood shaped into an instrument, it's near flawless - light, resonant, balances well and takes a setup very well. As a passive bass, it's a great J bass. Ok, the active system is different to the norm but, once you get how it works and that everything up full is bad, it's easy to get a variety of great meaty tones out of it. They're priced very reasonably at the moment, too. A lost classic, IMO.