gjones

To paraphrase an old meme... AI came for the coders and I did nothing. Then it came for the writers, the musicians, the actors and I did nothing. Then it came for the film makers, the customer service advisors, the accountants, the lawyers, the doctors, the scientists and I did nothing. Then it came for me. As Elon Musk has stated, unless regulation is implemented to stop it, in ten years from now all the above jobs - and many more - will be carried out more efficiently and more economically by AI than humans. The economic logic, to do so, will be overwhelming But it will only happen if we passively accept it. Edit: Looks like the record labels are fighting back https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckrrr8yelzvo

I remember trying to get a better live sound at a gig a couple of years ago by adjusting the EQ. It took me a while but in the end I felt there was a big improvement and I got the sound I wanted. At the end of the gig, I looked at the settings on my amp and realised the EQ IN button on my amp was set at OFF. All my knob twiddling was useless, as the EQ section hadn't been switched on. Yet I had been convinced I could hear a big difference. The mind is a strange thing......

I've owned quite a few Japanese Fenders and, in my experience, they're all great. If you're planning on buying one, I recommend trying them before you buy if you can. Normally they go for around £700 in a private sale. Remember if you buy a secondhand Japanese bass, you can always sell it for the same price you bought it for but if you buy a new MIM Player you won't get your money back if you want to sell it on.

Get a secondhand Markbass CMD 121P like I did. I've used GK heads and Barefaced cabs in the past but I found that nothing competes with the Markbass for size weight and how much noise it can put out. Pair it up with a second cab if you're playing Wembley Stadium without a PA. Now they have the new version out the old ones are cheap used. The Fender Rumbles are also loud and light.

He sounds keen

I always wondered why he started using those old woolly sounding Tele basses. The bass sound is so essential to those old Police songs, you'd think he'd pay something that you can hear clearly live, like his old Ibanez. Hopefully his new bass will be an improvement.

I'll report back with a review

Seeing The Foo Fighters in Glasgow on the 17th. My niece is supporting them and is putting me on the guest list. I couldn't name a Foo Fighters song, I suppose I should listen to The Best Of The Foo Fighters to get me up to speed 🤔

My brother in law plays a posh holiday park, caravan type thing, near St Andrews. It's a solo gig and he gets £250 for a two hour set, which is pretty good for a singer/guitarist.

I saw this on Ebay and said to myself, 'This guys just bought himself a Barefaced'. The trouble bass players had just to be heard, back in the day. Now we can pick up our monstrously loud bass cabs with our pinkies. No more hernias for us

His comments are an insult to musicians and songwriters who have put years of effort into creating their art but he is correct in saying that much contemporary 'music' is just content, with very little thought or creativity involved in it's production. Because the need for obscenely, expensive, recording studios is a thing of the past, it does allow anyone to create 'junk music' in their bedroom and upload it to Spotify. There's probably more music being recorded than ever before, which means there's some great stuff out there (if you can find it) but also a lot of rubbish. I've experimented with AI music programs on the internet and I'm amazed at the quality of music it can produce with very little human input. I suspect that, within 10 years, much of the 'content' on Spotify will be AI created, probably by Spotify itself, and the average listener will love it. Which means Daniel Ek won't have to pay any more royalties to those pesky record companies or songwriters.

Does this qualify as an electric bass?

It's for the old slappers

I'm with Deezer, as it pays higher royalties, to the artists, than most other platforms.

Oops I bought a Stingray..... Full story

Having owned high end Fenders and Musicman basses (some of which I still own) I've come to the conclusion that you can buy a cheapo Squier, or Sterling that is easily the equal of their much more expensive cousins. These days the factories are all using automation, so whether the factory is in California or Indonesia, it really doesn't matter. I hate to say it, because I spent a lot of money on the USA built basses but I prefer my Sterling M4 Stingray to my USA built one and I prefer my Squier Jazz Bass (with a John East pre amp) to my Fender Elite Precision. You live and learn.

That's a very good question. I know some bass amps volume controls do effect the level going to the mixing desk (I know the Orange Terror bass head is set up like that) but most modern amp heads make sure the DI out isn't affected by the bassist fiddling with the gain or master volume.

The world needs more people like you

The singer in my band uses one for her harmonica. She's married to the bloke who plays guitar. Her husband has one arm longer than the other from carrying it 🤣

When I bought one of these, 15 years ago, all I thought about was how pretty it looked. I didn't think what a pain it would be humping it up 3 floors to my flat, with nothing to hold it with other than that silly handle on the top. It was like wrestling with a baby elephant. After a couple of months I couldn't wait to get rid of it. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166768518865?_ul=GB

If you're going to be a tribute band then you have to try to be spot on with the music. You don't have to look anything like the band but the music should be as close as possible to the original. Will Lee (the renowned session bass player) is a huge Beatles fan and has his own Beatles Tribute band called The Fab Faux. They don't look anything like the beatles but, as you can imagine, musically they are absolute perfection.

Fooled Again and Warpaint. We never did play them to an audience, as the band broke up due to the members other commitments. Richie Kotzen plays all the bass on his solo stuff and is pretty darn good.

I joined a newly created, classic rock band, a couple of years ago. I hadn't played that style of music before but knew a lot of the set from my teenage years. It was more difficult for the guitarists than myself but to recreate some of those songs, to a decent standard, wasn't a piece of cake for me. They had a couple of Richie Kotzen tunes in the set, with basslines that were definitely not easy. There was also a Gary Moore, called Wild Frontier, that never repeated itself twice, which took forever to learn. Hopefully the band you're playing with will stick to the AC/DC, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy end of the classic rock spectrum.

Bill Paterson is a nice fella. He came up to me at an afternoon gig I was playing at The Virgin Hotel in Edinburgh a few months ago, to say how much he enjoyed the music. The band I was playing with were definitely' background music' and I suspect he wanted to assure us, due to the lack of response from the posh clientele, that somebody appreciated us.

My band used to play Tito and Turantula's 'Strange Face Of Love'. Tito and Turantula are a Mexican/American goth band who were the house band at 'The Titty Twister' bar in From Dusk Til Dawn (think Sema Hayak's dance with the Boa Constrictor). I used to love playing it but it tended to leave the audience a bit shell shocked and confused, considering that most of the rest of the set were danceable crowd pleaser stuff.