zbd1960

Almost all music of any genre is period specific - doesn't matter if we're talking "classical", or rock, pop, jazz, or whatever. The reason is that things like instrumentation, the technology of production, as well as harmony/melody are always evolving. What William Byrd wrote in the late 1500s is very different to Bach writing in the early 1700s, is different to Beethoven in the 1800s, to Mahler in the 1900s... and equally Glenn Miller in the early 40s compared to early rock n roll only a decade later, to the glam rock of the 70s etc. The added dimension of the last 50 years is the evolution of music technology

Recent update on the status of the build.

This is a common issue no matter what genre of music you're involved in. I've sung a lot in choirs. Some of the stuff that puts bums on seats in the audience choirs often don't particularly enjoy. My personal dislike is the Armed Man (Jenkins). It's utterly tedious to sing, but audiences love it...

I'm a fan of nice wood. Current basses are black, tobacco sunburst, and walnut. More interesting stuff is being built...

Hi welcome.

Sorry, but he is not entirely right. I have performed music with 4/1 time signatures (polychoral music by Heinrich Schutz for example). 2/2 is not the same as 4/4. The symbol for 2/2 which looks like a C with a line through it and is often mistakenly referred to as 'cut common' (because the symbol used for 4/4 looks like a C). It's not a C it is in fact a circle with a gap in it. It is a remnant of a previous way of denoting time signatures and was part of 'mensural notation' which uses a tempus and a prolation. To avoid me writing reams the wiki below provides a detailed explanation. In case you're wondering, mensural notation was the method used from about 1200 to 1600. It's advantage is it separates 'how many beats' from 'how is the beat divided' removing our messy notation of compound time signatures such as 12/8 etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensural_notation

Production of many things is dependent often on key components which are only produced in one or two factories, frequently but not exclusively, in China. The spreadsheet manglers need to learn to see beyond 'cheapest is best'...

What we're seeing is the result of a coalescence of various long-term structural issues which various events have brought to a crunch. These include but not limited to: outsourcing / offshoring production; just-in-time production methods; Covid; Brexit etc. For example, outsourcing/offshoring makes sense to creators of spreadsheets since it seems to reduce fixed costs and overheads. It makes no sense whatsoever in terms of resilience, control over production etc. Equally, just-in-time makes sense to those managers of spreadsheets since it reduces the need for storage costs etc., but it has very low resilience to pipeline disruption - it only works when everything works. Certainly in the UK Ts&Cs for HGV drivers have deteriorated significantly over the last 20 or 30 years and it is hardly a surprise that it struggles to recruit, combined with the double hit of Covid preventing people from taking tests and Brexit. There is going to have to be some serious thinking about the long term way in which various industries are structured/operated to avoid this kind of thing repeating. One of my other interests is astronomy - the kit for that has been seriously impacted as well and there are long lead times for stuff and prices have had a huge hit due to shipping costs going through the roof.

Yay - celli 😄

I'm a relative novice bass player. I don't have any issues reading music as I play cello... I'm interested in getting to grips with some jazz and and possibly big band repertoire

I can confirm as a recently retired computer person that youngsters tend to want to indulge themselves in whatever is the latest piece of gimmickry flim-flam without stopping to think if it's even necessary, relevant, or a benefit.

There's a lot of disruption to supply chains for many things, especially more specialist stuff. Most of the hiatus is Covid related one way or another

This is something which people really need to be wary of. My dad had it quite badly, his due to his National Service back in the early 50s. It's one of the reasons I avoid discos / night clubs - the odd time I've been I end up with ringing ears, which is not good. I had some ACS plugs made when I was playing in a big wind band and I was sat in front of 4 percussionists (timps, drum kit plus two others) and 9 trombones...

"Terra Incognita"

Hi, welcome

In my defence, I was very tired when I wrote that... 😴

Coltrane is a 'marmite' thing: you either him love or hate him. I've tried, but just don't get on with his music at all.

The way a violinist (or in my case, cellist) tunes strings is to bow the adjacent string at the same time and to adjust until the 'beats' are removed from the sounding fifth. This gives a lot of precision, since even a small difference is obvious.

I'd agree - there's no realistic way to make a fretted instrument that is "in tune" in all keys

Being fairly news to all things bass, and following trip to Midlands Bass Bash a few weeks ago, thought I would pop along to this. It's only a half hour drive to Crewe for me, so easy enough to get to. A few observations. I've not been to a guitar show before, so I was a bit surprised at how few basses there were on display (I realise there is a big national bass show each year). In a pretty large function room, the only basses on display were from Manton Guitars who are Shropshire based, about 40 minute drive for me. Robin exhibited at Midlands Bass Bash and is a nice guy... I visited his workshop the other week... The show was very busy but the demographic was interesting. I would suggest that the overwhelming majority of attendees were over 50 if not even over 60, some in 40s and very few younger than that. OK some of that is older people no longer paying off a mortgage or raising kids have more disposable income, but it can't be the whole story? I have to say that having been restricted for so long about mixing etc I did find the proximity of so many people somewhat intimidating.

I used to take hi-fi seriously, but gradually lost interest with the development of the powdered-unicorn-horn-will-improve-the-sound mob got control in the mid 90s. The issue in the vinyl days was that good well set-up hi-fi was very good. That wasn't what most people had - most people had poor quality kit and the turntables were often the weakest part of the sound chain. I had a lot of problems with early digital - it was awful. The sound quality was horrible, early CDs were excruciatingly bad (I'm talking classical here was that was all I listened to back then). It was if all the knowledge and experience gained from Decca and BBC sound engineers in the 50s and 60s was chucked in the bin. The standard set for CD with its 44khz sampling rate was poor. It was the limit of what technology could do in the early 80s and it just wasn't good enough for decent hi-fi reproduction. Back then, I bought a Linn Sondek LP12 in 1983. Over the next few years I tried many CD players and none were as good as my LP12. Some of the issues were the dire recordings with the mikes on top of the instruments to get 'up real and close' "Hear every detail" marketing blurbs were all the rage. Recordings were often extremely bright. It was ghastly. Slowly, recording engineers re-learnt how to record and guess what - readopted the techniques of the 50s and 60s and the recording sounded better. I did buy CD players, purely because classical labels stopped making new LPs very quickly - about 1985 or 86 or so. It wasn't until I bought my Naim CD player in 1999 that I felt I had a CD player that gave me a sound that was as good as my LP12. I still have the LP12 and it was recently serviced and it still sounds very good. Yes, vinyl has many inherent limitations, but digital isn't de facto better just because it's digital. Digital ought to be better. Recordings have improved a lot since those early days and the technology has improved a lot as well. The advantage to the average consumer is that even a fairly cheap digital system will be much better than a cheap badly set-up analogue system. That is why CDs took off so quickly.

I agree with @Stub Mandrel around 4 or 5 cents is the limit of what a person can discern as a tuning error referred to another pitch. Yes, you need to tune the instrument and depedning on the environment, that might be regularly needed. Something I see a lot of with adult learners when I'm playing in groups (and I classify myself as an adult learner in terms of playing, but I have done a lot of music theory etc over the years as well) is playing with a tuner switched on and constantly referring to it. This is not good, especially if you're playing with instruments that are not fretted or fixed pitch (e.g. violins and woodwind/brass). If you're playing a fretted or keyboard instrument, you have little choice than to play using ET for your tuning, but if you don't then you can adjust to get better tuning than ET... People need to 'develop' their ear so that they can understadn when they're in tune or not - meters don't help with that.

Because I come from a classical singing background, I wouldn't dream of even thinking any of that as I understand that you can't just play (or sing) something you don't know... I suppose the issue with some of these singers is they have no musical background and they're singing something they know, or they've heard, and all they have to do is sing the melody line...

I'll stick with my nearly 40 year old Linn Sondek...

Most people should be able to hear 1/20th semi-tone difference - which is 5 cents