AdamWoodBass

When I saw them live just before the last album came out I think he was using an ampeg rig and he was indeed using his utterly lush McIntyre's and his Sei. I remember his live sound being like a huge uncomprimising frieght train hitting you at 150mph. It was an astonishingly loud gig to be fair but the impressive thing was that even though James plays in some fairly severe drop tunings on the newest album you could hear all the notes crystal clear but does make a lot more sense now Dood mentioned the Carl Martin pedal and the pickups in his basses. I suppose it all comes down to you get what you pay for. You want definition you've got it but it can be really expensive!

[quote name='subaudio' post='530602' date='Jul 2 2009, 01:39 PM']I can only offer questions I'm afraid as I am just limbering up to dive into the world of Jazz for the first time, when things do fall apart how forgiving is the band/leader on the occasions where there has been no rehearsal etc, is it generally and accepted part of improvising and not having the capability to rehearse for one off gigs? As someone with no experience of playing Jazz this post is a fascinating glimpse into the players side of a jazz gig, so many thanks for that.[/quote] Usually that depends on the band leader's ego. I've done pleanty of gigs where the rest of the band have just fallen apart and I'm the only person still hammering out the groove hoping that someone will realise whats gone wrong and catch up to me. For most parts try to gauge the level of the musicians you're playing with. For example theres a drummer I play with some times and he's just well... terrible! He has no sense of groove and or rhythm and sometimes he'll start doing twiddly stuff that he has nowhere near the technical ability to pull off right slap in the middle of someones solo which is just painful to watch/listen to. My solution to this problem is that I basically do his job for him and take full responsibilty for the rhythm section. I just play a nice simple groove but really hammer it out so everyone knows where "one" is. At the end of the day this drummer always manages to drift off into his own little world not listening to the band at all and missing every single que there is, the worst is when we've all come to a nice gentle ral to end the tune on a lush major 7th and he's totally oblivious and still hammering out his own groove totally destryoing the end of the tune! Oh well what can you do except do your job?!

When you find it cripplingly compulsive to fiddle with something shinny and expensive looking which you have no idea what it is or what its for and inevitably end up breaking it! I have never done this. I am also a compulsive liar!

I remember him, very witty guy. I always enjoyed reading his posts. RIP Nick.

My biggest regret as far as basses goes is constantly buying crap ones, getting frustrated with them cos they're not as good as I've convinced myself they are and selling them at a massive loss. In hind sight I would have just saved up enough money to buy something actually worth having intead of spending £500 a go on basses that just arent really that great! In the past 10 years I've owned about 14 or 15 basses and I've whittled it down to a handful that I actually like! The problem is I kept looking at what people were playing and trying out really expensive basses and then realising I couldn't afford them I bought what I presumed was the next best thing which was obviously nowhere near as good! Nowadays I don't buy a bass unless I can see myself still playing it in 10 years time and I can actually justify owning it!

+4 = 1691

Sounds awesome dude, I'd love to play for a solo artist like this. It's the kind of band which could really go far cos its got that poppy side to it (but in a good way) but its also got the really nice easy listening smooth vibe which really warms it. What I do love about the studio tracks though (I know you didn't play on them) is the fact that it doesn't sound massively over produced like most pop stuff does these days so it still captures the rawness of the artist and the musicians. I find a lot of that stuff is ironed out of bands like this when they get stuff in the charts so you lose the essence of the sound and you're left with a heavily compressed commercial product and I'm really glad that thats clearly not the case here. Keep it up man. Ad

Simply just too many to count on this one! Any mo town stuff just blows me away. They just dont make tunes like that anymore! I'm 24 so I'm way too young to remember the mo town stuff when it was actually in the charts but the only person whos come close to recreating that sound for me is Mark Ronson. Still just a wee bit too digital but it does capture that raw essence of 60's soul.

[quote name='SingLadies' post='520458' date='Jun 22 2009, 01:44 AM']Havona by Weather Report... That Jaco bass line has me in all sorts of trouble.. I've tried and tried but never get it to sound right. One of these days.....Grrrrrr[/quote] Sorry just noticed this post, that tune is rock hard! Its the solo that gets me every bloody time! I'm in the same boat and I've just about given up with it. To be fair like I said in a previous post I'm not really interested in becoming a Jaco clone so I've kind of stopped learning his tunes and gone back to just enjoying listening to them. I still draw huge influence from him, my finger style technique is heavily influenced by him, but I'm aware of it and I don't want it to over power my own sound. At the end of the day as breifly mentioned in another post in this thread (apologies I can't remember who said it!) you're never going to be that player so you'll never be able to recreate that sound and feel. Another post said even those artists struggle to capture the same feel as the recording when they play live. It sounds very leftfield and "out there" but it really is all about the moment and being able to capture that moment in a studio. You could play back the same notes hundreds of times in exactly the same conditions but the chances of you getting it to sound exactly the same are extremely slim.

[quote name='Kongo' post='518684' date='Jun 19 2009, 05:48 PM']I find Millers stuff FAR HARDER to pull off than Wooten...would you beleive.[/quote] Couldn't agree more mate but I don't wanna turn this into a "Wooten is a technical excercise" thread lol! That sort of talk'll get you linched round these parts!

Looks like a nice tidy gig matey! Nice to see that there are still some technical metal bands out there with some soul. Keep this up dude!

I was at a drunken party once where we'd covered the floor with inflatables and everyone started jumping off stuff. I remember thinking "Of course I can do a back flip off the sofa! How hard could it be?!" Needless to say I failed, missed the giant inflatable crocodile I was aiming for and crashed into the laminate flooring. I was later rushed to A&E with a baddly dislocated right shoulder and a very brusied ego. That was a couple of weeks worth of gigs and rehearsals scuppered! The moral of this story? Crocodiles are not to be trusted kids!

I know you're saying you're not a qualified teacher and all but maybe if you think you have something to offer you should offer your services. If you've been playing for a few years and you're not struggling with things anymore then you're probably good enough to teach. Remember kids don't need to be taught by Stanley Clarke, they just need someone who can give them a nudge in the right direction. When I started teaching I had no intention to, I'd had no training and I had only done the first 3 months of my music degree. I got a phone call from a mate on my course who worked in a music shop telling me that the bass teacher had quit and that they needed someone to teach a load of students that night. So I just thought screw it I need the money, I've been teaching ever since. The thing is bad technique leads to worse technique and then leads to dangerous technique which leads to RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. If you catch bad technique early enough its fairly easy to correct it but if the student's been playing that way for a couple of years then you'll have a bit of a battle on your hands (been there, its haaaaard work!) Honestly though mate I reckon you should consider it. I know you're thinking about the guitar teachers livelyhood but to be honest no guitar teacher should be teaching people bass unless they have been a bass player before and actually know how to play bass. It really winds me up that most guitarist's still think that the bass is a downgrade from guitar and therefore they can both play it and teach it. Thats like saying I can play trumpet therefore I can play saxophone.

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='518222' date='Jun 19 2009, 11:32 AM']There's so much stripped pine in that photograph, it's like bleedin' Norway in there! [/quote] One of my favorite quotes so far!

For me its Marcus Miller. Theres some lines that sound great when I play them and I can play them note for note but when I compare them to Marcus they just dont feel right. I suppose thats the advantage of developing your own sound for 30 odd years like Marcus has, nobody else is gonna be able to nail it the way you can. It's not just about studying the notes in the song, you have to spend years studying the player and their technique and all you become is a clone of that player. Sure Jaco is amazing but do you really want to just sound like a Jaco wannabe? So with that in mind I do kind of agree with Paul H, put your own identity on it. Obviously if you're in a covers band and you're doing songs that have really distinctive bass lines then learn them but if you're maybe doing jazz or funk or blues and there's nothing specific to play then thats your oportunity to have fun with it and make it your own. I love it when I go see a jazz band and they do their own version or arrangement of a tune, just gives it a fresh feel if its a tune you already know and have maybe gotten bored of.

Yeah seen this guy before when I was looking for examples of the Ken Smith tone. Superb player, his other videos are really good too.

Saw a Zappa plays Zappa concert on Sky. Probably an earlier tour but still really really good!

This is the exact reason I dont really "do" bands any more. Sick of all the crap and politics that comes with it. I learned this the hard way from my last originals band, me and my best mate (front man) were the only people in the band pulling our own wieght and actually trying to get somewhere where as the rest of them were pretty much all talk. I much prefer to be the musical mercenary for want of a better term because there's no "we want to get signed and do a world tour" bullsh*t. You just turn up, play, get paid and go home! If they like you they'll hire you again. That'll do for me! Mind you to look at the flip side of the coin I wouldnt turn away from playing live cos going back to bedroom playing will just frustrate you after a while because you'll want to play with real musicians again. I took about 6 months out of playing after I left uni just to give myself a break (I studied music) and by the end of that time I would have killed for a gig. Maybe give yourself a break from bands and start going down to some jam nights instead. If blues is your thing and you're not too far from Manchester then I think Matt and Phreds still do a blues jam every other Monday night, maybe check it out?

Good luck mate, you sound like you've done your homework so if the vibe is right you'll be fine.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='509818' date='Jun 10 2009, 03:00 AM']I'll happily out someone: A few months back I asked the owner (owner!) of MOR Music in York (Fossgate) if he had any short speaker cables (I needed one that night). He said - and these are pretty much his exact words: "No, but you're in luck, because speaker cables are exactly the same as instrument cables". After a brief exchange of posturing I said "So you'd happily put 300W down an instrument cable?" and he said "300W? No." and started rooting around, and eventually found a speaker cable he wanted to sell me for a tenner. It looked home-made and given my rapidly-declining opinion of his technical nouse I said no, and ended up borrowing one at the gig.[/quote] Ah good old MOR strikes again! Never trusted the guys in there as far as I could throw them! They always used to offer me stupidly low trade in prices for gear and whenever I protested the response was always "well we've got to make a bit of profit!" I once tried out a Yamaha BB605 in there, fell in love with it and went down the street to what used to be Rockolla and ordered one from them just cos I didn't want to spend my money in MOR lol! Anyway to stay on topic, at a local church they have a lovely Hartke hybrid valve rig and the speaker cable keeps going walkies. A while ago someone tried using a guitar cable when the speaker cable had done its regular dissapearing act. The result was a melted guitar lead and a rather expensive repair bill for the amp. I've always used speakons, its just so much safer. As previously mentioned in this thread you can't touch them and they can't touch anything around them so that stops the potential 500 watts of power grounding itself and blowing your amp to bits or worse grounding itself through you and blowing you to bits! A decent amp tech would probably be able to replace the jack connector on your cab to a speakon for not a lot of money and provided obviously that your amp has a speakon output it would be a very worthwhile investment.

PM'd you mate

Liking this mate, reminds me of A Perfect Circle. Get it multi tracked so you can get more breathing space between the instruments as everything sounds really close. Sounds good though considering it was improvised in one take. Love the little drum sample, where did that come from?

[quote name='geoffbassist' post='507501' date='Jun 7 2009, 01:34 PM']hey adam, great to hear your tune mate, did you write it? Your playings really come on since i heard you last, i really liked it :-) bass sounds great too, lets see some pics of it! nice one Adam, cheers Geoff[/quote] Geoff me ol' mucker! Hows it goin old buddy old chum?! Thank you kindly for the comments man, yeah I did write it, knocked up a backing track for an little idea I had for a while which turned into the main melody. I thought I should debut the Farida on it! I'll get some pics of it soon I promise, just been crazy busy the past few days doing studio stuff and a few gigs. [quote name='bilbo230763']That was pretty cool, Adam. My only criticism, and I mean this to be constructive, is that the piece if about 3 minutes too long! Any producer worth his salt would edit that back to about 4.00 and fade after the change in the feel of the drum part - there is a lift there that sould start the lead out on a high. After that, there is nothing to maintain the listeners interest. I love the opening groove, though.[/quote] Ta for the criticism it really is much appreciated mate. I did think it was a bit on the long side but to be fair it was only a quick backing track using loops, I just forgot to check how long it was and I was having loads of fun recording it so when I noticed it was over 7 minutes I just thought "bugger it, it'll be reet!" Like I said though I'm really happy with the way it grooves so I intend to revisit it and turn it into a proper track. The recordings I've got on myspace including this one are just quick demos done in my bedroom. Eventually I'll look at the arrangements, write some proper solos instead of just meaningless w**kery and get them in the studio with a new funky jazz band I've been pulling together. Watch this space! By the way, a word of advice for anyone wanting to do some decent quality bedroom recordings on the cheap: 1.Have a basic computer. Mine's about 6 or 7 years old and a heap of crap but does the job quite nicely. Some reasonable standard headphones/speakers are also useful, you can pick up a pair of Sennheiser HD 202's for about £20 and they're ace! 2.Buy a Line 6 Pod Studio GX for about £70 (might be a bit cheaper online) 3.Install all the freebie software. Worth baring in mind though that if you're a total newbie to home recording it'll take a little while to get the hang of the software but there's pleanty of tutorial vids on the tinterweb and after a while it becomes pretty simple. 4.Crack open a frosty (insert beverage of choice) and record til you're little heart's content! If you want decent backing tracks though you do have to shell out a bit, I've got Reason 4 which I use for all my backing tracks and I believe it's about £200 but it's soooo worth it! I know a lot of Mac users recomend Logic but obviously it depends on what you can afford.

Some funny stuff here guys! Depends on the gig for me really. I suppose I normally get there, load in, tune up then go through some quick exercises (modes/scales/chromatics etc) then its to the bar and chill out for a bit. I always try to do some stretches before I play, I know loads of players who've suffered from tendonitis and other repetative strain nastiness so it's best not to tempt fate by not loosening up my fingers.