risingson

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1370556068' post='2102828'] The mediocrity of modern music is simply down to the general public's lack of moral fibre. [/quote] Can't tell whether you joke over this one Skank but I don't believe it to be true at all. To be honest modern music couldn't possibly be mediocre, there is far too much variety and depth to popular music for anyone to argue that. What there is nowadays is an endless choice of music. It is easy to confuse modern music with what is presented to us through radio, TV and advertising. There are still a great deal of musicians out there that continue to work hard to get good music to us for little in return and that's definitely something that a lot of people on this forum will be able to relate to.

People seem to seriously struggle separating their feelings concerning The Beatles and the impression that they left on popular music, terribly so on this forum for whatever reason. It's usually just a result of a load of people who feel passionate about one particular subject, in our case it's popular music as it exists and its history over the past 60, 70, 80 years. Very easy to get argumentative and opinionated over, very difficult to separate what you love from the factors that defined the changes that the Beatles and George Martin made in the time that they recorded and worked together. No one knows where the next Beatles will come from because the Beatles appeared on the airwaves just as normally as any other derivate popular band would appear on Radio 1 nowadays. What they did was established themselves as a popular boy band, gigged around the world for a number of years, built an impossibly huge audience through superb management and PR, then decided to wield such incredible demand for their music to push the boat out with what they could do as a purely studio-based band. As it turned out, the very much established Lennon-McCartney songwriting team became a platform for the likes of George Martin to really test the extent to which a studio could be used as an extension of the voices, instruments and songwriting prowess that they had in spades. The rest is history, they pushed boundaries, wrote songs that could be anything from harmonically rich and hugely complex to incredibly basic but utterly catchy nonetheless. They will have laughed throughout some of the studio sessions where they performed, knowing that they absolutely had free reign when it came to what they could release, as it turned out it was almost anything. Their talents were inexplicably big, George Martin's prowess for arranging and production was very much the icing on the cake. The 'mediocrity' of popular music if you refer to the top 40 is a result of a saturated and lazy approach to the release of popular music to the record labels, it's easier to back a sure fire winner like what the The Beatles were in the early days of their career. But Nigel you know as well as I do that mediocrity is a hugely subjective thing, if you're willing to look a little closer than what is there on the surface of pop music as it exists then a plethora of superbly original music is there for the taking. The difference with what The Beatles achieved in their comparatively short existence next to the likes of some other big name acts throughout the years is a combination of incredibly hard work, strong collaborations with the right people and an unbelievable amount of songwriting and lyrical talent from 3 of the 4 of their members. It's just an utter rarity and something to be marvelled at.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1369407117' post='2088917'] I think the song sounds crap played on anything other than a five string bass [/quote] Boss OC-2, then it sounds better than on a 5 IMO.

That sounds like the worst idea in the entire world. Enjoy the fireworks!

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1369243853' post='2086861'] I disagree. I was never anti-Daft Punk, but this album appeals to me quite a bit, because of the grooves and rhythms. It is something new in a way that it's clashed a couple of different, very obvious, decades of music together, and while doing so, made them all sound better. If you're more into the old Daft Punk, that's cool, but I wouldn't say anybody who likes this one is "bandwagoning", personally, I think it's better than the likes of Discovery, which is an OK album, but next to this, no contest in my mind. [/quote] The press are bandwagoning is what I meant. Not everyone, but most seem to afraid to knock the album for fear of being out of the loop concerning current musical trends, no one wanting to contradict each other and Daft Punk's PR team have got them trending big style right now. If nothing else it's a lesson in the power of good label PR. The record is at best an interesting disco collaboration album with a lot of hype surrounding it, and it would be fair to say that if Daft Punk hadn't had a serious fan base and a good back catalogue then in the current climate of music the album wouldn't get the faintest look in. My point about it being live instruments is just me being a Homework/Discovery fan. Daft Punk were always a band that stopped short of picking up real instruments, that was the appeal. As far as pop tunes go, RAM has got 'Get Lucky' as a decent album release but Discovery had it all, within reason 70% of the songs on the album could have charted.

I don't see how it's directly a Chic ripoff when it actually features half of the songwriting team of Chic on the album. It is nothing groundbreaking that's for sure, more annoying still is that everyone seems terrifyed of giving it a bad critic, complete bandwagoning going on. I am a huge Daft Punk fan, the album features some good moments but I think Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de-Homem Christo have missed the mark this time. Daft Punk were always electronic artists that emulated live sounding house music, now they're just getting other musicians to do it for them and they've lost their appeal.

[quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1369169425' post='2085861'] See no reason to honour that. I've seen his behavior on his forum, and I've seen many stories from others that have encountered his insane behavior. Rickenbacker's whole business model stinks. This doesn't mean we have to honour his temper tantrums and general histrionics in any way at all. [/quote] I don't think you're honouring what Gusto asks for the sake of Mr. Hall, rather the desire of the admins and owners of this forum not to have to continually be putting up with the aforementioned throwing his legal weight about. That's fair enough.

It's a turn of phrase more than anything, I don't think it's meant to be taken quite as literally as you've taken it. The idea of loss when a good musician dies is the person being left behind that created the music, I don't think it infers that the person in question had more to offer or even died too young in the case of Ray Manzarek.

I would have bought a DB750 long ago if it had not been so incredibly impractical for what I do. Currently using a TC RH750 but I'd quite like to make the swap to a TH500 soon so I could pair it up with a new Bergantino CN212, they work great together. The only time I could ever see myself benefitting from the power of the DB750 is at considerably bigger gigs, but then those kinds of gigs always see me with the back line provided by the sound company working the venue (typically in Sweden for me) so it's never an issue then either. Personally I would weigh up (literally) whether you consider hauling around the DB750 to be worth it all the time. If yes, keep it and don't bother with the TH500, if no, I'd recommend keeping the the DB750 anyway and buying a TH500 as well so you can pick and choose where you're gigging either amp. Personally I downsized my rig for a good reason.

What a song, I hear that intro and get shivers, every time. RIP

These are causing me the only case of GAS I've had in ages.

[quote name='chardbass' timestamp='1368745942' post='2081150'] The album will definitely be my summer CD, much like Discovery was in 2001. [/quote] Discovery. I mean, what an album that was.

[quote name='Jono Bolton' timestamp='1368741050' post='2081094'] Thank you for introducing me to the best website I have ever seen [/quote] He's a genius isn't he

By the way, obviously denying the things attributed to you in the letter would be the obvious thing to do here but not doing so makes you so much more rock and roll. You sound like heyday Led Zep.

Reminded me of this a bit http://www.27bslash6.com/f26a.html

I think for a quick drop D you don't have to resort to much more than a quick fiddle with your tuner between tunes but if I were still playing in the prog rock band I used to when I was a bit younger with multiple drop tunings, I think I benefitted from having more than one instrument on stage, that way even if you've only got say two basses then you can choose which one you'll be able to tune quickest before the next song happens, based on what the bass is tuned to already. The key is the speed you're able to swap instruments, the slicker you can make it, the less your audience have to wait for you to kick into the next song.

I've recently gone from being almost exclusively a Jazz bass player to a P-Bass player once again, my 70's P has a chunky neck profile and whilst I found it a little 'slower speaking' than most other Jazzes I've played/owned, it hasn't taken too long to adapt to the change and now I really love the way it's making my hand stretch out that tiny bit more. I tried a mate of mine's Jazz out a month or two back, it was like playing a toothpick. I can play much faster on a slimmer neck profile but I don't necessarily consider that to be a good thing for me anymore, I'm very happy with a P style neck right now and the adjustment didn't take long.

I've never fully understood much about neck profiles either. Lots of people saying J's are slimmer than P's and all of that which whilst I've found to be largely true when speaking about Fenders, there are a number of notable exceptions to this rule that I've come across. Probably attempts to standardise neck shapes have led to more confusion than it is worth and trying out an instrument first to see if it suits your own preference is probably the way forward.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1368619719' post='2079232'] Um, I took it down because I presumed no-one would think beyond the fact it was pretty faithful to the original, and wasn't sure if it illustrated the point of this thread properly, I can clearly hear my style in there, I doubt anyone else can But here it is again. The suit was because we were going out and I was waiting for my queen to get ready so I recorded it then, I didn't put all that clobber on just for the vid [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QbJ0Ga8hFc[/media] [/quote] Great pick work Nige. I'm getting tired of seeing bass players avoid using picks, I put it down to years of prejudice against pick playing. The guys you do see finally picking it up are usually great fingerstyle players but novices with picks which I always find really strange to watch. I digress, but you nailed it.

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1368619028' post='2079212'] Well looking at their Wikipedia entry, Rush have been going for a couple of years now and made a few albums. I'm guessing they aren't too worried about what people think. [/quote] It appears to be another classic Basschat case of opinion put forward as fact.

"We skipped the light fantastic" "we skipped the light FANDANGO!" Love that film!

I haven't tried enough cabs to give you a rundown of how it sounds compared to your Genz rig for example, but the CN212 I got to play paired with an Aggie TH500 is making me think I should sell my TC rig soonish.

I thought it was funny, it's got to be pretty difficult in fact to answer interview questions like that so confusingly.

I like it, I definitely don't love it. The reason Daft Punk are one of my favourite acts of all time was because they were my gateway into House music, Homework introduced the younger band guys not so keen on House to the genre, Discovery cemented the fact they could write excellent electronic music that was distinctly pop and will remain one of my favourite albums of all time, every track was brilliant and had single release potential. RAM is going to alienate a lot of people because they seem to just uprooted their whole ideal. I understand that bands have to evolve their sound and go with the times, I don't blame them for writing an album like this and wanting names like Nile Rogers on it to add weight to their disco backbone but it falls a bit flat of what I'd hope it was going to sound like, I miss the old Daft Punk sound. I'm not getting the whole live band thing because that's never what they've been about, they were more about fusing the 'idea' of live music into their distinct French House sound. It's cool, but it's nothing groundbreaking and I think they've evolved their music in the wrong way.