Stub Mandrel

I got a ridiculously cheap but well made TC Electronic 'forcefield'. It's effect seems to be that of the legendary 'better knob' for many songs. There are songs where no compression is better. Wish I'd never sold my Arion compressor back in the 90s.

I've got a Squier VM SS Jaguar bass and it is superb to play and look at (candy apple red!) but I had to mod the J pickup with extra neodymium magnets to get a decent sound from them. OTOH I have a 1980s Fender Performer and the range and quality of sounds from it is outstanding.

Having rediscovered short scale basses, they are far too good to waste on beginners. Google 'tune bass harmonics'

Expect to be sued by Toys 'R' Us... In a global economy what's the difference between guys in a factory in China/India making it for you and guys in a factory in Englandmaking it for you (except price)?

Get stuffed 😉

Rare set of unused flatwound strings. Genuine new old stock from before the time everyone realised flatties sound ... <no signal> 👿

Thank you for teaching me a new word. Now know what my dumpty-dumpty-dums are really called.

No. It's bloody fantastic that you can share these feelings. My advice is, don't get to hung up on what you have to achieve, just treat music as an end in itself. If there's someone you get a chance to play with, but they are a bit over-confident or like different music, don't worry about it. Don't treat it as a chore, playing what they like is an opportunity for you to make THEIR life better.

Don't force things, but don'y get too hung up on what you play. I signed up for a 'weekend warrior' sort of thing where I've been thrown together with a random bunch of guys of varying experience from 'I used to sing but I've taken up guitar eighteen months ago' to 'I'm in two bands'), two about my age (mid-late 50s) two a bit older. We have had seven practice sessions (OK we booked the rehearsal room for an extra last night). the gig, with four other similar bands, is on Sunday. I was nervous we would end up playing either old rock'n'roll numbers or lowest common denominator stuff. In the end we are playing songs we all really like and having a storming time. One thing is we are all putting in the effort and the amazing thing is when we listen back to recordings we are surprisingly good! The point is, I used to be in bands up until 23(!) years ago and have been really miserable about my music going nowhere, so my brothers (who both play) really told me to get some targets like learning some new stuff right through rather than just noodling riffs. This thing has given me a combination of the comradeship of being thrown together with four other random but surprisingly like-minded guys and the reason to get my act together. I was impressed by how fast and how many songs I learnt (we changed the list a fair bit in the first week or two) and how my playing has come on. I found some of the songs really hard to learn and technically challenging - now I can't see what the problem was! The only downside is wondering what life will be like when it ends - except the one guitar player and me both love the same sort of music and could end up starting a band. So my suggestion is consider something similar. The best thing is that once other people are relying on you, motivation isn't an issue but teh payback is just how rewarding it is.

We did some 'A B testing' last night and decided playing staccato eights sounds better defined. To finish the set I need a really f'd up sound already got HM2, Flange and Chorus so going to use the tremelo on that as well for maximum noise death.

I took my fretless to a rehearsal and managed to play everything on it. Once or twice I got cocky and tried to do a big position shift without looking... Decided not to use it for Sunday, although back when I was gigging regularly I used to use it on a few songs each night.

When I lived in a maisonette the son of the couple who lived above visited and played the Chilli Peppers rather loud. As soon as the track finished, I played it back to him considerably louder. That worked 🙂

I really doubt it...

I've installed guitar pro but it's a bit tricky and I don't have the time to get to know it at the moment.

Hoist by my own petard! My problem is that tab is often not laid out with sensible fingerings in the sense that unfeasible stretches or pointless changes of position are given: I have seen an example of a program that can automatically move fingerings to different locations. That could perhaps be used/adapted to automatically detect and eliminate silliness like in the example.

An interesting idea. The bugbear is that not everyone uses the same fingerings.

The topic, as set out in my original post has barely been addressed. I wanted to start a discussion on Tab. It's been hijacked into a discussion of why standard notation is better. It's like telling a blind man who wants a better radio the advantages of colour television; but such is the way of the internet. It's almost as if there is a conspiracy to keep tab from improving in case it becomes better... 😁

But as I never intend putting myself out there for that sort of gig, I have no use for sight reading.

Missed point alert. I know how to do that I can recognise triads and sevenths. I just am pathologically incapable of working out the key (other than C/Am) or the root note other than by carefully working it out.

I did say that I have some theory, I also know how notation represents theory. My situation with notation is like someone with an understanding of English grammar faced with a coded message where all the letters have been substituted - able to see the structure of the message but having to manually decode most of the letters before they can get the sense of the message. So I can spot triads and sevenths, for example, but without working out the key and then identifying the root I can't say 'Ah yes that's Am7'. Yes I know, it's just learning perhaps 21 locations and linking each one with a note. If it was that easy for me, don't you think I would have done it?

Is that Disaster Area? Which one is Hotblack Desiato?

The potential for errors in parsing that sentence is not negligible. Possibly add a comma after 'parents'?