AdamWoodBass

[quote name='bassninja' post='603050' date='Sep 19 2009, 06:21 PM']*EDIT* A 'line from the mixer' merely refers to a stereo audio output, your honour...[/quote]

Signed Sealed Delivered. Usually I'm fine with it and I know that I'm more than competant to play the line but sometimes when somethings distracted me on the gig I totally mess up the break down! It's one of the easiest things I know for goodness sake! The drummer will look at me as if to say "what the hell are you playing mate?!" and I'll just shake my head as if to say "I have no idea!"

Massive +1's to Trace Elliot and Ashdown. Utter crap and stupidly over priced. Ashdown cabs are severely underpowered and I've had far nicer tones out of amps which cost about half the retail price. Big +1 to Fender, yeah they're nice but you're paying at the very least £400 for the name on an American model and besides Leo Fender designed them as cheap guitars which everyone could afford. I get particularly bored when people start talking about vintage Fenders too. I've played a few 60's and 70's jazz basses and I could never ever ever justify spending that kind of money when I could go and buy myself a Fodera/F Bass/MTD/"Insert extremely expensive boutique instrument name here" for the same money! Rickenbackers or Ricken Cackers as I've come to refer to them. Haaaaaaaaaate them! I've played 3 each in excess of £2000 and was massively underwhelmed by them all. Love the sound in the hands of someone like Chris Squire but they are horrible to play and horrible to look at. Warwick basses are a little over rated In my opinion. I had a Corvette ProLine 5 and I've played a few Thumbs and Streamer Stage I's and II's. With mine I loved the sound but it was a real pig to play and it had this really nasty locking nut with razor sharp edges which would take chunks out of your hand if you played anything on 1st fret. Similar stories with all the others I've played. Warwick amps however are awesome and excellent value for money. My 4x10 and head have probably done around 6 years worth of gigs now and they've always been fantastic. Please don't hate me for this! I think I'll lay low for a while now! Adam

I like that a lot. If it had been me though I'd have gone for the bigger lower cutaway as you pointed out ala Zon Hyperbass. I find it a real pain when I have to radically change my hand position to play right up on the 24th fret on some basses. I'm actually thinking about getting my mate to do a hack job on my Yamaha for this very reason, I'm gonna be restringing it to high C too. Don't worry my mate is a carpenter by trade and very good at figuring wood so he does know what he's doing! He's also quite a good bass player so he'll have a really good understanding of what I want. Otherwise mate that looks superb, excellent work! Adam

So I was on a really random gig tonight at a campus bar in Liverpool. It was me, a guitarist and a singer and we were playing some unplugged stuff. We decided to do With or Without You by U2 and with it being unplugged I decided not to go for the normal bassline but instead play a kind of dotted crotchet/triplet type thing and try to simulate a double bass. So I was playing quite softly with my thumb resting on the end of the neck plucking the strings just before the neck pickup as I usually do when I'm trying to get this kind of sound except tonight was different. Normally I turn the rear pickup off to get that dull mellow p bass sound but tonight I forgot for some reason and left it with the bridge pickup soloed. The result was this really cool subby almost square wave kind of sound. I was using my Yamaha tonight so I'm gonna try it on my jazz tomorrow and see if it works for any bass with a Jazz pickup in the bridge. I'll also try running it through pod farm with a sub octaver, chorus and distortion and see what happens. I'll report back with my findings! Hopefully it wasn't just by fluke because of the room or the amp settings and I can actually recreate the sound! If I can I'll record some samples and post them on here. Cheers Adam

I do also know of someone who went to an Anthony Jackson clinic and said "so Anthony, you were one of the pioneers of the six string bass. Can you tell us a little about that?" To which he replied totally dead pan "It's just a tool." Taxi!

Met Jullian Crampton on a jazz gig we were playing at and didn't realise who he was until someone introduced him, I just thought he was just some bald guy who was particularly amazing on bass. That was awakward, although I did have a really good chat with him about why he turned down the Massive Attack gig after apologising for not knowing who he was and he just said "no one ever remembers the bass player!" Met Terry Gregory and John Curry when auditioning for Bass Tech and that made me lose my nerve in the audition, so much so that I couldn't even describe what a triad was. John was really cool about it though and just told me to relax and play the best bass lines I knew. I passed but couldn't afford to go which sucked. Met Janek Gwizdala while he was warming up on the Markbass stand and Steve Lawson at the bar at Bass Day 2005 and just didn't know what to say to either of them other than "you're awesome man... I mean... you're really awesome... wow... you're awesome!" That was also quite awkward.

I was going to suggest getting a 4 and tuning it to C mate. Ideally though I'd try to stick to standard BEADG and learn the riffs. It does make it a lot harder but in the end it will improve your playing and your technique and when you do gigs you won't have to faff about changing basses and tunings. Adam

[quote name='Wil' post='599936' date='Sep 16 2009, 10:07 AM']What's the weather like on dubstep island? Warmwarmwarmwarmwarmwarmwarm.[/quote] Thought that was great! Cheers for the input guys. I really don't know where this is gonna go, it could end up being a total disaster but could also end up being really good! The keys player's just started his PGCE so he's crazy busy at the mo, like I said though we're hoping to start writing soon and just see what happens with it.

Hey guys, Been getting really into dubstep recently (for those who don't know what it is get on youtube or spotify) and I'm just wondering if anyone here is in a live band playing this kind of stuff? If so is it fairly easy to get gigs? Does it tend to go down well? Alternatively are there any of you who play drum and bass and drop a dub groove in the mix? This is all info I'm pulling together for a new project with a really good keys player and a really good drummer. Gonna be a a sort of jazz/breakbeat/drum and bass/dubstep kind of thing! Where gonna start writing in a week or so and hopefully get it in the studio asap. Cheers again guys Adam

Cool idea for a thread mate. I started being interested in music when I was about 12, started having piano lessons but didnt get on with it. I was playing keys in a garage band and I was using a bass amp for my keyboard. When I told my dad (awesome blues guitarist) that I wanted to jack in the keys he said he'd really like me to stay the course with music and asked me if there was another instrument I'd be interested in learning. I wasn't sure so he suggested I try bass cos I already had a bass amp. Got my first bass when I was 13 and I've been playing for about 11 years. As far as aspirations goes I've wanted to be a pro musician since I was about 12, I suppose I'm getting to that point slowly but surely but its very very tough to get your foot in the door so to speak. I'm doing more and more decent gigs and I'm getting called a lot to get involved with a fair few projects with some very very good players. I'm also teaching a lot more now which is great and is nice additional income. I now have an endorsement with Farida Guitars and I'm just doing as much as I can to raise my profile at the moment. As far as time scales goes I agree with Doddy, you can't put a limit on it. It depends what kind of person you are; whether you're dedicated or you get bored easily, whether you can deal with creativity block or you just dry up, whether you're naturally a creative person or you need a bit of guidance. I would certainly recomend getting some regular lessons from a decent bass tutor in your area. That will stop you from developing bad habbits early on and help you to progress in a much more logical way. As far as practice goes I try to do at least 2 hours a day but aim for 3. If you're just starting out maybe try getting half an hour in a day to make sure that you're not putting loads of strain on your muscles. Also make sure your practice routine is structured i.e. don't just sit there and jam along and not really take much notice of what you're doing. This isn't really practicing although a lot of players will say it is. The reason it's not is because you're not really learning anything from it. My old bass teacher Geoff Chalmers (sometimes appears on this forum) said that you should structure your practice into scales, chords and harmony practice for one half of the session and for the second half you should look at your reading. Try and learn a tune you know you can't play and maybe look at your technique if you're just starting out, make sure you're getting things right. Better it takes you months to get it right than you rush it and end up developing a really bad habbit which can restrict your playing or even cause you physical harm. Sorry to ramble on a bit but I think a lot of bass players that have been playing for a while forget what it was like to start out. Nothing wrong with getting a little grass roots knowledge back into your routine. Cheers Adam

Funky as anything mate, good work!

I use a Studio GX and yes I'm able to play along to stuff through it. A word on Riffworks, personally I think its crap. If you're used to using programs to record stuff you're best off sticking with ableton. The only good thing for me about riffworks is the drum loops so I just record the loop I want then export it into ableton. Ableton is much nicer to use than Riffworks and you get it free with the GX. Just my 2p.

As far as I've seen you can only get it from Gospelchops.com and it works out about £50ish after import. A mate of mine (not a bass player just a big music fan) has it, it's quality!

Hey guys I've been having a few mad thoughts recently about buying a synth. There are some simply increadible synth bass lines out there which just don't sound right on an electric bass. I've been getting into a lot of mid 80's/90's pop stuff recently, mostly Quincey, MJ and Prince! (By the way the "Rave unto the year 2000" dvd is a fiver in HMV at the moment! It's mint!) What I'm wondering is this: Does anyone play a synth? If so what do you play? Was it hard to learn? Would you say it's worth it? I guess it's another string to the bow however you look at it but I know almost nothing about it! Any help or advice is most welcome as always! Cheers guys! Much love. Adam

Top bloke, really easy to deal with. We just arranged a time, exchanged and it was all done and dusted. Hope the bass serves you well mate. Cheers Adam