FDC484950

No problem sharing a list of “great” players (which is different for different people) but greatest really is pointless without some kind of context - best technically, or most famous to random strangers, or most admired by other bass players etc? Even then, it’s all subjective - and this isn’t the first thread on this kind of topic. I’m not showing disinterest in this thread - but to put the viewpoint that 100 greatest is lazy journalism (Channel 5 filler anyone), how about 100 great bass players you may never have heard of before (ie non mainstream in terms of popularity, record sales or published influence)? There are loads of fabulous players out there that never make it into publications. This would spark a healthy debate, people might discover new players or music without endless squabbling about who should be in the top ten

Clickbait. Like the endless “8 cool ways to thread a fishing rod” crap that seems to clog up every form of digital media. There are no 100 greatest or 1,000 greatest as it is subjective and art isn’t a competition. If you said 100 top bassists by number of records sold that they played on then it would be technically possible but equally meaningless.

If we’re talking 70s theme tunes then The New Avengers was a classic. Nice pick workout on the bass. Sadly the show didn’t quite live up to the music Laurie Johnson, the composer, also penned the theme to The Professionals - another show that IIRC had some pretty decent bass on the incidental music.

I picked up a Focusrite Scarlett Solo off Amazon at well under £100. It has USB-C (not sure how recent your MacBook is); together with some desktop monitors (or even PC monitors at a push, which aren’t great but do the job) it’s all you need. It outputs decent sound, there’s very little to set up and works flawlessly. It all depends what features you need. I take it you can use GarageBand or something similar for building tracks?

As you seem to fail to understand what anyone is saying about churning out another clone in a crowded market segment, the answer is both. No doubt you’ll be able to continue arguing the point but it will be with yourself.

Again that’s nonsense. We are not talking about the validity of a boutique custom builder producing a high end P or J (like Molloon or Overwater, Lull, Sadowsky etc), but a midrange, likely Far East factory build of a product that is little different to dozens of near identical manufacturers’ output. For £300-ish and made in China Squiers are very good indeed, as are MIM/MIJ Fenders, which are more at the Ashdown price point. It’s a crowded market place - with no differentiation (bog standard looks, std Fender colours, passive) how will they get market share? Because they make amps?

Sorry but that’s nonsense. It a passive Fender clone with nothing to lift it above a Squier other than potentially better finishing. Molloon are at a completely different price point and a different market. Whether Dan Lakin “knows what sells” has got nothing to do with it. These are not Lakland basses (Which cost thousands even back in the day), or even Skyline in terms of differentiation. Even if they are an improvement who’s going to buy them given how conservative most Fender players are? You can pick up a late 70’s/early 80’s Fender with a ton of mojo in the same ballpark.

They couldn’t even be bothered to offer interesting colours. All 4 basses in black, white, silver, CAR or LPB. If you’re going to churn out yet another tired Fender clone at least do something with the colours! Honestly would anyone buy one of these at a grand when a perfectly good US P or J or a nice hot rod red Jag deluxe made in Japan can be had in the used market for the same money or less? And to those that say that the old designs sell - yes, they do, but each new brand on the block has to compete with all the existing brands doing the same thing. Sire, for example, offer a very nice P, J, PJ and even a Tobias-style bass (and active/passive with a decent preamp), all for less than half the price of these basses. At £1K they’re competing directly with Fender, but offering nothing new or novel.

I would start looking at chords (and arpeggios because on bass we don’t usually play chords much due to the low register) once you have a basic understanding of the most common scales. Learning the harmony is by far the most beneficial thing you can do early on. I favour learning the theory so you understand what’s going on but more so via your ears. Play stuff and ask yourself questions - so when this chord is played, these notes work. Why do they work? Why does that note not work so well over that chord? E.g. if I play a C major chord, and play a C major scale over it, most notes sounds fine, but if I hold on the F, it doesn’t sound quite so good. If I don’t hold on it, it’s fine. It’s because it clashes somewhat with the E in the C major chord when held. It’s not wrong, just not as nice to hold on to. If I hold the B it sounds OK played higher up but less good at a lower pitch. Why? Because it’s also just a semitone away from the C In the chord. Etc... Relating what you hear to what you see your hands doing on the fretboard to the chord is a great way to improve several areas of your skill set at once, and you’re learning music rather than just scales (which are after all just extended chords rearranged in alphabetical order).

Those 2019-on Stingrays look fabulous. I’m gassing for a Stingray V HH in Tectonic Sparkle Blue - probably because I never managed to get a Modulus Flea in big flake sparkle blue luckily there don’t seem to be any available in the UK and with a Sterling V HH and a Fender Dimension Deluxe V HH already it would probably overlap too much. Being north of £2,300 retail is also a good reason to stay with what I’ve got.

Definitely. About 10 years ago I looked at Finale Coda, which was at the time about £450 and on the notation side Musescore is actually easier to use and just as fully-featured.

Ah I see, makes sense. Unfortunately Musescore doesn’t have all of the possible ties, slurs and slides - for example a slide downward without an ending note. Another useful omission is the ability to tie a note from the end of a first/second ending back to the start of the repeat (which would normally be in brackets at the first note of the repeat). But good, nevertheless!

Yes. It does come with a hard case but He couldn’t/wouldn’t give a ballpark weight. I know they can be quite heavy. I’m interested but only below £1K. This and the other silver one (older model with the massive tuners) are tip-top prices In what is very much a buyers’ market.

... or even a plain 6x or x6. I often do this as there may be chord symbols and other signs cluttering up the stave. Whichever way, have it at the ending repeat rather than the beginning . @stewblack what’s the intention with the slide at the beginning of bar 16? If a slide you’d normally have it from note head to note head (so from the last beat B of the previous bar to the first beat of bar 16 - C). If a slide from, say an open A (or even lower if playing the C on the E string) I guess it’s right, if a bit tricky to play, depending on tempo.

Personally I think he should be friesian to do what he licks...

It’s meaningless to you because you don’t like jazz. You trot this same line out on every thread that mentions jazz. Nothing wrong with an opinion but it gets a bit tiring, you know? Out of interest, what is jazz?

That’s a decent video but it’s worth pointing out (but certainly not worth getting too worried) that he is hanging his elbow down, which puts an acute angle between his forearm and hand. Teaching the basics should also have a physical dimension. Plenty of players do this with few problems but playing long-term like that compresses the nerves in the wrist, which can lead to nasties like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. One important point here is this is only really apparent seated - unless you set the strap ridiculously high, when you stand up your position changes and the elbow comes up. One of the biggest challenges I had was unlearning technique learned mostly sitting down - when I started performing standing up I could hardly play as the angle of my arm, the bass and even my fretting wrist were so different. So my tip for starting out is simple - try to find a consistent position seated and standing. Many of us practice sitting down, but performing standing up.

Yes I can. There’s a tonal characteristic I’ve clearly heard across several different instruments with different body woods and electronics from different manufacturers. The common factor in each case was a wenge neck and board, and it’s not been present in any other neck material. It’s a subtle difference I’ll grant you but I’m not getting into a debate about whether woods affect tone!

I have tried both and prefer the tone of a Wenge neck. There is a difference - it’s tighter with more fundamental. I find particularly with 5 and 6 strings it makes for a better low B too. Dingwall are not known for their necks moving around but I see Warwick changed back to Wenge on the Streamer Stage 1 a few years ago. Having had a few with a maple neck, all with movement at the headstock end, I’d imagine it was to improve stiffness and tone. I had an MTD 635-24 a few years ago with ash/spalted maple too and Wenge neck and board and it sounded fabulous. Wenge is also IMHO a very attractive neck wood with a nice, organic feel to it. It also doesn’t appear to be much heavier than the maple Dingwall uses on those necks looking at comparable overall weight.

I think my first bass was an Aria of some description. I recall it was the princely sum of £193 back in the early 80’s and can confirm it was indeed total crap - passive, p bass style pickup and a very nondescript tone - not that I had a clue as I couldn’t play I note when I bought it! My second bass was a Status at 5 times the price and a fantastic piece of kit It’s amazing to have basses of this quality at what is effectively the same price.

But that’s the whole point of this thread. Who is getting ripped off or scammed? If something can be had for less new you’ve found it out presumably by doing a search online. Any prospective buyer who cannot be bothered to do the same is hardly being ripped off. New prices are fluid, and sales come and go, so not every seller wants to/can be bothered to go checking everything on the market - and they’re very likely to have a commensurate level of success selling. I tend to do my homework and/or realise pretty quickly if I have something up for sale that isn’t going to sell, and will either drop the price or withdraw it if I’m not prepared to sell any lower. Other sellers list at very high prices and they generally don’t shift. Someone recently sent me an offer of something that was so much lower than my lowest estimate, even in these desperate times, that I just had to laugh and sent him a reply to quit dreaming - can you imagine if that were on the thread for everyone to read?

As others have said, the first example is staccato, the other is a precise instruction to play for half a beat, then silence for the other half. It depends how precise you want to be. Generally in pop music charts I’d choose the first option as it’s easier to read. I’d only use the second option if I really wanted an exact half a beat. Another point is that the second option, whilst correctly written, would benefit from a little extra space after each of the eighth note rests to aid clarity - something Musescore can do manually but isn’t that great at automatically.

It does make me laugh when people feel it necessary to call such stuff out. As I understand it, questioning the price directly on a thread is against the rules (unless it’s a pretty cut and dried fake old Fender). The fact is, unless you are exceptionally lazy, anyone can find the likely new/good used estimate price for anything; some unintentionally post something for sale when there’s a shop or seller somewhere doing it cheaper new. But even if they were doing it intentionally, what’s the problem? Virtually nothing on here that I would class as overpriced actually sells - look at all the exotica in low to mid four figures that’s hung around for months or even years. I’ve got no problem with wanting to find a bargain but we don’t need the Price Police. Basschat is so much better in this regard than other forums I’m a member of, that end up in long slanging matches between the aforementioned Price Police (who incidentally have no interest in buying the item), the original seller and other helpful comments about something which isn’t the same item they’ve spotted in a shop in Darlington that’s £1.62 cheaper. Some people just need to mind their own business and get a life

I've added the explicit "Swing" from the text pallete as an instruction to the playback.You could have both the swung image and the text (set to not visible) and then lines 1-2 play as swung 8ths. Adding another "Swing" text, changing the name then right-click properties and turning off swing sets it back to straight. The swung indication I've added is an image (it's not available within Musescore directly - it was a hack on one of their pages). I've also noticed ghost "chorus" text appears and disappears on page 2 - clearly there are still bugs (or maybe "features"). I still don't think I've scratched the surface of what it can do.