Muzz

Oh my word, that's lovely...

I think the question is what is commercial, and does the Hit Parade (blimey) actually cover that? You can get a Number One single in the UK with very few sales (compared to previous decades), whereas what I've found is a lot of very good bands who are around today (and by 'around', I'm meaning 'making new music and touring it, rather than touring their decades-old back catalogue') who have nevertheless got an awful lot of YouTube plays and streams. One example is Robert John and The Wreck, a Southern band whom I've been lucky enough to see in smaller venues, but whom nevertheless have YT videos with more than a million plays. It's a very different world in terms of how music is consumed, and to look at the Top 40 (which used to be the be-all and end-all of success) is nowadays only looking at a very small fraction of the wider picture, so the original piece doesn't worry me at all. There's lots of new rules for the Hit Parade (like No Artist Can Have More Than Three Songs In The Top 40), the Accelerated Chart Ratio* and the Standard Chart Ratio, so, although the Goode Olde Days saw lots of sales shenanigans, today it's even more manipulated, which is very depressing, and one reason I pay no attention to it. Here's an example: The ratio for an album stream in 1000:1. So that’s 1000 streams of a single track counting as a listen to an album. It doesn’t matter if you listened to one track 1000 times or the whole album front to back, it counts the same. * Although without this, Mr Brightside wouldn't have left the Top 40 pretty much since its release: it was in the Top 100 for 298 weeks...

It takes years off you, y'know... 🙂

Was talking about this the other day with my Lad, who's 19, likes music (tho his taste and mine don't converge much), listens to all sorts of music from 70s disco onwards, and has an 85 hour Spotify playlist. He has, however, never listened to an album, and has no interest in them as an art form. The way music is presented and consumed these days (primarily by the younger generations, tho I have to say it's a good while since I listened to a whole album) has changed dramatically. If he likes a song he likes a song, but there's so much more music available from all sorts of places that he feels no need to delve into that artist's catalogue.

Ohhh, thanks for that 🙂 Well, I don't think the Ted Hughes Award Committee's going to be troubled much, but it's a lot better. And at least it didn't, like Jon Bon Jovi did once, rhyme 'I wanna be just as close as' with 'The Holy Ghost is'...four times in one song... 😀

Oh, please; you know exactly what I was referring to by using the terms empirical and non-empirical. Bandying semantics changes nothing.

And the geese fly South early this year. Do you have the dossier? 😁

Are you new here? 😀

One of Roger's opening lines is '...over time I've come to realise...' which is, yet again, non-empirical, and rather undermines the rest of it... Show me where somebody said that. I have implied that luthiers selling expensive instruments have employed marketing flimflam (and a good read of that Alembic page illustrates that) to help sell their instruments, for sound business reasons. I've also alluded to where bass makers who don't need such a marketing edge (Fender, for example), markedly don't. Odd you mention religion (again): the complete lack of empirical evidence for any of the claims about specific tonewoods making specific tones means that people claiming (without any possible material gain) that is so believe in something without any proof. I believe in other circles that's called 'faith'... No-one's hiding behind science; a healthy request for anything, anything at all to prove any of it is hardly unreasonable. Then again, as I say, you do you, I'll do me.

Or a wedding gig with a vicious sound limiter set at 'Murmur' and a polished dance floor; you could hear squeaking shoes from the dancers, and the odd cough...it was like one of those joke Tiktok vids....

They are two different basses. No matter how you turn the argument, you don't know that, and it's your judgement. Non-empirical, yet again. We're talking here (or trying to, despite the derails) about tone coming from wood itself, not from acoustics, which you actually do refer to here: 'Rosewood...predominantly having more bass and less mid, where as Mahogany has predominantly less bass and more mid' How? Oh, and for reference, Alembic call Rosewood 'both bright and dark', if that helps... Still waiting to hear 'huge effect in sound' in terms of electric instruments, which, again, is what we're talking about here.

Non-empirical again, which is what I was describing earlier. Identical? Same wood from the same bit of the same tree? They are the same wood, right? Is the neck joint exactly the same in each?

The poetic wood descriptions are rather O Level, too, although they describe the look and construction (eeeek, I mean how the wood is worked, like spalted maple) pretty well.

Beefy glue?

It's technically plywood... 😐

I've just looked at the lyrics (for the first time, despite 'knowing' this song for decades) and Oh My Sainted Trousers it is indeed a shocker. I mean, it's not the lyricist's native language, but even so... blimey. Now I really want to hear what AI made of it... 🙂

Good grief, I'm not 'admitting'...there have been many discussions on this (wayyyyy too many, to be honest) and I've never said anything to the contrary. I already alluded (just above) to RS's very well-made (handmade) basses benefiting from this process, which is part of their construction. Now then, what about this wood? You know, the title of the thread?

Wait till you read what my manifesto says about Class D and Heft...😀

I have - construction is a factor in sound, as is pickup placement, pickup, loom/EQ, strings, yadda yadda yadda. There are many, many factors which will change the response of the instrument, some cumulative, some greater, some smaller. You've stated wood is a huge factor. Care to back that up with anything?

Construction is indeed a factor in sound. But the wood? Huge? Tell me how and why.

I thought we were done at marketing flimflam, really...I'm not saying it's a ripoff, I'm sure (and I've said this before, too) that his top-end instruments are very, very well made (and that in itself is a contributing factor to how well they sound/play), but unfounded marketing flimflam claims are just that. If he said 'there is a difference, I don't know why, and it's very small compared to how well we make the basses and the quality of the parts', that'd be a clearer. But if he's the only person in his market sector saying that, he'd lose sales...

I'll take not believing in the flimflam...

Also worth noting that the company who sell more instruments than any other are very coy about any effects from wood; they list lots of details, but stick to the facts: pickup model, nut width, scale, etc - even their £2.6k Ltd Edition American Ultra PJ bodies are 'Alder or Ash' The more strident proponents of the effects of wood on tone (what I'm assuming we're referring to here as 'tonewood') are the higher end luthiers, because, and I almost can't believe I'm saying this again, it's a distinguishing selling point for their product, true or not...and it can't be proven false, because it's a non-empirical claim.

Well at least they go for 'not a huge factor'... 🙂

Ohhhh, go on; show us the AI rewritten lyrics... 😁