MartinB

I'd knock the idea of "democracy" on head - it's your band and your vision. You want a benevolent dictatorship, where others are encouraged to make suggestions, but you're making the final decisions. One of the problems with democracy is that people don't always know what they want. There's often a difference between "music I like to listen to" and "music I like to perform" - until they're asked to learn it, folks don't necessarily realise that a song actually has some really fun guitar parts etc. And some songs just come alive the first time you try them out as a band, even though the original's nothing special. I can't stand most 80s music, but I'd still rather see an 80s cover band with a coherent setlist and who've obviously put some effort in, instead of a generic "bit of everything" act!

Good analogy! And in both cases there are very few opportunities to use them at full throttle 😁

I've got the Fender "Pure Vintage" ashtray set and the bridge cover's not quite as tall as that - at the open end it's 22mm externally at the highest point, so about 21mm between the body and the inside surface.

When I've been the support and the headliners have supplied the backline, it's always been fine. Bassists generally know what they're doing. When I've been the support and the organisers have supplied the backline, it's often been a knackered old mismatched head and cab(s) where the tone controls don't seem to do anything, or a hopelessly underpowered practice combo. No problems when I'm the headliner and supplying the backline. I'm confident my cab can take what any head can reasonably put out. If people use my head I usually have to point out the Mute switch, otherwise they panic when they plug in and get no sound 😆

There's a particularly sneaky variation on this where letters from different alphabets that look similar are substituted. Take a look at the following links (but don't click on them!). https://www.basschat.co.uk https://www.bаsschat.co.uk They look the same, right? But the a's in the second one are not the Latin letter a, but the Cyrillic letter а. In many fonts they look very very similar, if not identical. If you're not using a touchscreen, moving your mouse over the second link might show you the Latin-ised URL where you'd actually end up if you clicked on it - some browsers are helpful like that, but not all. Again, please don't click on that second link! I don't know what's at the other end 😅 If an email tries to get you to urgently follow a link, don't - type in the URL yourself. (This is called an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack, if you're feeling geeky 🤓 )

There are companies coming up with new ways to produce existing effects, e.g. Gamechanger Audio do a pedal that uses plasma discharge to generate distortion, and one that uses light to enhance reverb. And there are new ways to control existing effects, like Rainger FX's liquid-controlled overdrive, various gesture-based alternatives to expression pedals, etc. But genuinely new effects? I reckon we may have exhausted them all. What can you do to an audio wave? Change the frequency, amplitude, and phase - that's your pitchshifter, your tremolo/volume pedal/compressor and (almost) your phaser. You can add in some noise with harmonics and clipping to get your various flavours of dirt. You can introduce additional copies of the wave, to get delay/echo/flanger, and then phaser if you change the phase on the copy. Isn't everything else just some combination of these? EQ/filtering is just adjusting the amplitude of specific frequencies, instead of all frequencies. Add in the ability to apply that EQ differently based on the incoming signal amplitude, and you've got an envelope filter. An octave pedal is just a copy of the wave with the frequency halved. And so on. Once you move from analogue to digital and you're sampling the wave, you can do things like fiddle with the encoding to get a bit crusher effect. And some things probably just can't be implemented in an analogue circuit, like the harmonisers itu mentioned - you might be able to get a second signal at a different pitch, but I'm guessing not the smarts of having it change the interval based on the pitch of the input and the selected key. My hunch is there are still plenty of interesting things to be done with sound in the digital world, but it's all combinations of effects that already exist - just applied/combined/controlled in new ways. Things like shimmer and granular particle reverb feel "modern" to me, but even those have been around for donkey's years now. Well anyway that's my 2p. I am not an expert and could be talking out of my derrière!

Stiltskin didn't exist before the Levi's ad - the song was written for the ad, and the "band" put together to cash in on its success.

I'm speculating about the source - it's possible the OP has access to the original multi-tracks from the rights-holders, and permission to publish them. You're absolutely right that they don't give you the full picture. What you're hearing is not the raw performance straight from the bass, but potentially a mix of multiple mics on an amp, DI, compression, EQ at the desk, etc etc. Very interesting nonetheless! Makes you appreciate that what sounds like a nice clean tone in the mix is actually pretty weird on its own. Case in point, the bass tone on September sounds absolutely rubbish:

I've got no reason to doubt that's the original bass recording taken from the studio multi-track tape. All the little variations are in there. These tracks have been available for years thanks to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band video games, which contained individual stems for bass/drums/guitar/vocals/etc that could be extracted. It's cool that folks keep posting them on YouTube etc, as they inevitably get taken down for copyright before too long.

This is brilliant - I had no idea!

And not even a full song in their case - a sped-up sample of a remix that they tacked on to the beginning. An awful lot of people felt they'd been taken for a ride about 30 seconds into the single! 🤣 They did eventually release a remix-of-a-remix that was closer to what everyone expected:

Let's not get hung up on the word "wrong", eh? @Cliff Edge's goal was to play it like the original recording, but they accidentally played something else. That doesn't imply any judgement of folks who set out to play something different. Anyway. Can anyone think of any songs where the original bassline is so fundamental, simple, well-known etc. that you really couldn't stray from it without getting funny looks? Another One Bites The Dust maybe? Feels like it's so minimal that a drastic re-interpretation of the song would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Wow, he was really attacking those strings!

The rest of that top ten: 6. THINKING OUT LOUD - ED SHEERAN 7. CHANDELIER - SIA 8. SOMEONE YOU LOVED - LEWIS CAPALDI 9. I GOTTA FEELING - BLACK EYED PEAS 10. RADIOACTIVE - IMAGINE DRAGONS https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-killers-mr-brightside-claims-record-breaking-260th-week-exactly-five-years-on-the-official-singles-chart-top-100__32800/

So the OP doesn't believe Larry Graham invented slap bass, and wants to find the true originator. I can only assume this is because they've invented a time machine, and are planning to go back and prevent slap from ever existing. I fully support them in their mission to create a future devoid of Level 42 👍

Yeah, GHS Brite Flats were the stock strings apparently. Those repeated notes on the bridge could be played on the 5th and 7th frets, so even careful fret-hand muting would probably still let those harmonics through! It's nice to be reminded that even the greats are only human... and that the mix hides a multitude of sins 😆

Oh, I agree 100% - that remix an absolute classic! 😎

The Mint Royale remix you mean? The original's pretty normal for them at that time (i.e. not as good as anything on the previous two albums 😆), but they'd had plenty of top-25 singles before then. Interesting to compare with the similarly-remixed Brimful Of Asha by Cornershop. The original struggled to number 60: Then Norman Cook worked his magic and gave them a number 1: They barely troubled the charts again after that.

The baritone Jazzmasters have got a bit trendy, and are selling for £700-1000 🤷‍♂️

Same bass as mine! Lovely necks on them. More info about them here: Squier Standard Series P Bass Special I don't think any amount of cleaning would make me want to touch that one though 🤢

They're perhaps a bit polite, but Khruangbin have some simple, tasteful basslines with lovely feel - great for a playalong.

It'd be interesting to compare the results with this one:

2x4 beams, you say? La Baye 2x4 😆

Given the apparent credulity of guitar buyers, I'm surprised manufacturers aren't already charging extra for connecting the electronics with "tonewire", attaching the scratchplate with "tonescrews", and so forth.

Even if it wasn't microtonal, I've a sneaking suspicion that'd still sound like tedious muso noodling 😏