SimonK

Had band practice last night and it seems the Mixing Station App may be compatible with our system - I've been given permission to try it out... Songs for this week: King of Kings (Ligertwood, Ingram, 7127647) [D] Open the Eyes of my Heart (Baloche, 2298355) [D] The Lord's My Shepherd (Townend, 1585970) [D] Reckless Love (Culver, Asbury, Jackson, 7089641) [D] Mercy Road (James, Gauton, Hellebronth, 7084589) [E] Some fun ones with excuse for doubling the motif on King of Kings, Fuzz on Reckless Love and slap on Mercy Road!

It is almost classical guitar but on a bass - except the longer scale length allows for the tapping which is much harder to get quite the same on a nylon string classical guitar. But yes - I would rate Charles as one of the most impressive musicians on any instrument at the moment.

Not quite playing with, but Pete Devereaux, one half of Artful Dodger (who launched Craig David) now runs a coffee shop in my village called The Artful Roaster!

This was the kid I mentioned on the other thread who we let audition, and then realised he was rather good:

...of course if you never sell anything you don't then suffer from sellers remorse and have to spend the next ten years tracking down either the instrument you sold or something as close to it as you can get...

My music fund took a hit this month after both sons broke last season's bats during pre-season nets within a week of each other - and that was with me carefully oiling them at the end of last season and putting new handles on! Apparently the spare/patched up bats are not the same as the "number 1" bat - something I might need to remember next time getting a new guitar/bass comes up in conversation... problem is new bats are somewhat cheaper than basses...

I see the Behringer is one option with the individual mixers they provide, but doing it via people's phones seems a better longterm option as smartphones get cleverer and faster - what is the software/system that people use for this? I think I saw someone say that they just logged in and set their own mix on their phone...

I gig with two MM Stingrays, one fretless but both with the same onboard 3EQ preamp. That way the signal I get from the two of them into my board and amp is pretty similar so I don't need to tweak when changing basses (and likewise when awkward sound engineer insist on their own DI before my board!). I am, however, in the market for a five string, but can't work out whether to just get a Stingray V for the same reason, or branch out to other brands that may require some thinking about the pedal board! With my guitar rig I switch between single coils, P90s and humbuckers all the time, knowing that the signal on the latter in particular will be much hotter, but I think the fact that bass is expected to be cleaner means having radically different outputs feels less appropriate/useful with bass.

...not exactly a worst audition story, but he was such a damn good drummer that we spent three year's trying to keep up with him after letting him into our band! He had the uncanny ability to be able to accent pretty much any beat (down to quarter beats) that you asked him to.

About ten years ago we were looking for a new drummer. First chap we tried spent over an hour setting up the biggest kit we had ever seen, and then proceeded to drown the rest of us out. Mutual agreement he wasn't the best for the band. Out of desperation we then tried a 14 year old kid who volunteered through a friend. Sort of did it as a favour as he had never been in a band before - turns out Sam was God's gift to drumming. He won the Yamaha U18 drummer of the year competition a year later, we recorded a bunch of Toto songs for his A-levels, and then he left us in his dust when he disappeared off to become a session musician! It was quite humbling to have a tiny part in his development.

...so in the thread I started the other day we started posting sound-clips (slightly dodgy in my case) from our pedal boards: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/490056-moving-in-effective-circles/ ...there are some amazing boards on this thread that I would love to hear some sounds from 🙂 hint hint - although maybe that needs to be a new thread?

My favourite was being at a charity day in Cromer, Norfolk, and suggesting to the organisers they have a live band that evening for their fund raising dinner. When he said yes I phoned my bandmates in Southampton who dropped everything, jumped in the car and we were playing by 6 (for no fee). They then drove home afterwards... them were the days...

Update from Gibson RE their London garage (definitely playing on the UK artist link!):

Ooh good point - its the stock pickups which means, I think, they are indeed passive pickups with active onboard preamp. But from a practical players perspective it is often anything that needs a battery in the guitar, vs anything that doesn't - but I get the technical difference!

I use Stingrays with active pickups, and have just thought it was to do with the designers preference for how they want the pickup to sound, coupled with the convenience of being able to boost frequencies directly on the guitar (rather than just cut). Granted off-instrument preamps kind of do the same thing, but for me the convenience of a preamp pedal is to add some more colour on top of the sound of the bass itself. Granted I have often not used any external preamp, going straight into DI, but having an extra box on the floor with some EQ/tone options can be quite helpful especially when moving between different rooms/bands and needing to tweak a sound to fit the mix. Nothing ever sounds the same as you move between different contexts so the more tweakery the better!

It depends on where you are in life - when I was a teenager/early twenties I would go almost any distance for a practice or gig so long as I could afford it. With my last band we recorded a whole album, but then couldn't be bothered to do any gigs (also not helped by COVID). If you are having fun do it, if not ditch it!

The difference between nationalism and tribalism is always one to think about - and to a certain extent we are cursed by evolution (certainly social evolution) to lean in these ways. That manufacturers can capitalise on this with their prices and marketing is a straight business decision!

That sports hall must be fun acoustically - reminds me of my youth at cutting edge events in Littlehampton...

That's a lot of filth on the bass - sounds great in isolation but do you find you disappear into the mix live? The big muff sound I have above is about as much drive I can put on it while still cutting through.

Right - quick guitar loop on a Digitech Trio (to get drums) straight into audacity, but these are the similarish sounds I get from my board, all of which are usable but not ever so exciting (apologies for the dodgy bass playing - monitoring was a bit of an issue!). TEST.mp3 1 - Just compressor (which stayed on for the rest) 2 - Hartke shape at 280ish 3 - Hartke shape + pre 4 - Big Muff 5 - Slap with Boss GEB7 6 - Chorus (Stingray Bass, 3EQ set flat)

Cool - thanks - I liked the fuzz at the beginning (16 seconds) which isn't far from the big muff sound I sometimes use (my reference is normally the Bass fuzz from Ben Fold's Kate). But the other sounds do you actually use them in gigs - I kind of imagine some sort of psychedelic trance type thing if you do... ...I will see if I have a moment to record some of the different tones I get out of my board, although as mentioned they are better described as different EQ curves rather than effects... PS love the reverse headstock on the p!

So I play guitar and bass, and certainly from a guitar perspective view compression, delay, chorus, a few drives and recently the awesome FreqOut as essential for almost every time I play. For acoustic I like some compression & chorus. But the truth is I play gigs on bass far more than guitar, so naturally have wanted bass effects. But the more I try bass effects the less I seem to use them, finding that compression plus various EQ shaping options seem the most useful once the band starts to play. This week I put my envelope filter and octaver back on the bass board determined to use them, but again after one practice swapped them out for the Hartke bass attack because of the two tonal options - a warmer mild crunch & the pre-shape that seems to just work better in a band setting. Generally I plug in, fiddle with the amp/pre-amp to get the 90% of the time sound (hence having a couple options as even in the same room things just change), use the Bass EQ for slap, chorus for fretless and very occasionally big muff when things get crazy, but nothing else seems needed. I then see some of the awesome pedal boards on here and start wondering what I am missing - what do people use their effects for beyond getting a solid basic sound?

Weekend pedalboard - decided to include octave, filter & chorus options this week - not that I ever use them but one day...

...and after some googling it seems it was Nathan East, probably on a Yamaha BBNE2, and into a LA-2A levelling amplifier - so no way of replicating that sound easily!

Just got the ZS10 Pros through and thought I would test them with Daft Punk's Random Access Memories based on the above discussion - pretty awesome, especially the bass guitar tone - something to aspire to!