adamg67

Also, it’s worth pointing out that formal music education does not equal classical (now referred to as western art music) and hasn’t for a long time. I followed along a bit when my ex mrs now friend did a music access course and degree in popular and world music. Plenty of music theory but across all music including plenty of improvised stuff. That’s where I first came across jazz that I actually liked (and the ABRSM Jazz Piano stuff which I’ve now picked up again years later).

The ABRSM Jazz syllabus includes improvisation. The pieces all have blank bits in, they have some suggested notes to get you started but you’re welcome to ignore them. The two teachers I’ve had have both encouraged originality.

Well, I did not know Jack Bruce studied cello and musical composition. Now I do! He was already playing Jazz bass before that though, so maybe that gave him some protection from the anti-inventive waves.

But if I've found it, it can't be the lost chord?

I don't think that's how you spell it?

He also played trumpet in the school orchestra, apparently, so although he wasn't a music school kid, he was a school music kid.

I found the fourth chord the other day, turned out it had been down the back of the sofa all the time!

I nearly didn't post this because I'm strictly amateur so it doesn't prove much, but... I started out in the "formal musical knowledge and rules will stunt my creativity" camp. Getting back into music in the last 5-10 years, I started there again and it half worked - I can come up with ideas all day - but I found I kept getting stuck trying to develop ideas. I started learning piano, and that got me started with some theory, and I've kept going with that and am getting into it now. It makes no difference to your creativity unless you are a complete sheep, nobody says "you must write music like this" these days. You get a whole load of tools and options you can use and the option to use none of them.

This reminds of a quote attributed to one of my favourite artists in any media: - Banksy

The other thing that people do is a single coil that's really a split coil but with the two halves lined up, like Nordstrand big splits

I've always wondered how they work. If the magnets are the same way and the coils are opposite, how come the signal you want doesn't cancel out as well as the hum? Just re-read properly, one coil with magnets one without.

Only because there's loads of great music that wouldn't necessarily be classed as any of those.

Why? (and especially why prog? )

This is the one that always sticks in my mind, cos the single got nowhere for Bowie and then the crappy Pet Shop Boys version was in the charts and on the radio every 5 minutes! It seems to have become a bit of a "cult classic" though, some good versions with other people include Mr Grohl and friends: There's a vid out there of NiN doing it as well.

They do "buck hum" in the same way by having two coils in opposite polarities, plus the magnets for each coil are also opposite. This gives the same polarity signal from the string moving, as that's from coil + magnet, and two opposites end up the same, but it gives opposite polarity signals for any background hum as that's picked up by the coil alone, so they cancel. They are different though, as the two halves of a split coil are under different pairs of strings, so for any given string signal is coming from one single coil. A humbucker has both coils & magnets under all the strings, so (in series or paralle, so it's actual bucking hum) it will be generating signal from both coils for any given string, and they're in slightly different positions as well. That's why you get a "fatter" sound. I think that's one reason humbuckers are popular near the bridge, where the fattened up version of a naturally more trebly sound can work really well.

Did I wander into TB by mistake?

If it was really only the bass I would have struggled, you could see thundercat's hair and I recognised Steve Harris's legs.

I'm sure this has been posted before, but I hadn't seen it until today. I watch a fair bit of stuff on YouTube and it can get a bit full on, it's pretty rare I can sit and listen to someone talking for that long. Just seemed very genuine.

I specced a bass a couple of years ago and found the same thing, just didn't love it. I've now swapped to flats, replaced one pickup and modded the other and made a few other tweaks and it gets lots of use. Could you turn yours into a bass you love?

I bought a Baritone and a Bass VI off eBay, both Ibanez and fairly new so I reckoned they had a good chance of playing well, which they did. Neither were very expensive either. Oh, I had an Ibanez SR506 iirc as well, that was local so went and tried it. Pay by PayPal (not always an option if you collect in person though), check feedback, accept that it's eBay and occasionally things go wrong and it's not always easy to sort them out.