Little Helios

My background is in traditional folk music, and modes are the bread and butter of that type of music. Most British folk songs are in the Dorian/Aeolian modes or the Mixolydian mode. I say Dorian/Aeolian because a weird thing I've noticed is that a lot of traditional melodies don't use the sixth degree of the scale which would differentiate between the two, so it's not always obvious. I've often wondered if modes came instinctively to our ancestors, because the vast majority of people who came up with these songs would have had no musical education whatsoever, and were simply playing and singing the notes which felt right to them. I originally learned the modes in terms of playing the white keys on a piano starting on different notes, which makes a lot of sense if you're a piano player (as I used to be!) but not much help at learning to apply the modes in practice or understand how they're constructed. So more recently I have been thinking more in terms of 'a major scale with a flattened 3rd and 7th' etc, and that's been much more helpful. That said, I'm not very technically minded as a musician and thinking about scales too much makes my brain hurt, so I usually work with the modes in a more intuitive way. They each have their own character or emotional mood, which can be very powerful to experience. What works especially well with folk music is to use a drone (root or root and fifth) and then explore how the melody creates a harmony against it. The different modes do this in such a different way it is fascinating to experience their different characters. I love modes, even though I'm still a long way off properly understanding them!

They said they found a dodgy contact on a wire to the volume pot. They've re-soldered it and the bass is on its way back to me. Fingers crossed this will have resolved it!

Yes. The battery wasn't going flat, it was just that the sound would die on me and then come back when plugged in again a few hours later. I sent it back to the retailer to be fixed under warranty and it looks like they've been successful, so I'll post an update when I get it back from them.

I became a fan in 1982 after picking up the 12" single of Market Square Heroes in a bargain bin for 50p. It has Grendel on the B-side, which remains one of my all-time favourites. I saw them live in 1984 on the Fugazi tour at the Southend Cliffs Pavilion. Fish took a shine to me (well, I was 15 and pretty) and handed me a glass of coke which he'd been drinking from on the stage. I took a sip and found it was strongly laced with whisky. I kept the empty plastic cup for years with its dessicated whisky/coke residue, until one day my mum cleaned my room while I was out and chucked it out thinking it was rubbish. In the 90s I bought a second hand Aria SB as my first 'serious' bass because Pete Trewavas played one. (Not the exact same model but close enough.)

Yes. Amp is fine.

Thank you for your very sensible responses. I have had some anxiety about sending it off, but I accept it is the only reasonable option. I was just curious as to what might be wrong, for the benefit of educating myself. My experience of passive basses is that they cut out suddenly rather than fading out, so I wondered why it is that active basses do that. But I appreciate there could be any number of causes for it.

I have an issue with a brand new Sterling Stingray Ray4 and am trying to decide what to do about it. I don't tinker with bass innards myself, but I would like to understand what the problem is. I'm completely new to the world of active basses and trying to figure them out! It always works fine when first plugged in, but then it dies on me after a while. It might be three minutes, or it might be an hour. Some days it seems to behave itself and is fine. The sound usually starts to go a bit crackly and distorted for a minute or two before it conks out, and it doesn't just cut out suddenly, it fades away as if someone was turning the volume down. There's no sound at all once it's gone, but after being left alone for a few hours it magically works again. The battery seemed like the obvious thing to try, but a new one makes no difference. I've also tried different cables. Although it was sold as B-stock it is under warranty, and the retailer has offered to courier it back and fix it for me. But it also crossed my mind that if it's simple to fix I could just save the hassle and take it to a local tech, and get a proper set-up done at the same time. It's such a lovely bass, I definitely want to hang on to it.

Brilliant. I usually just try to blend them in, though I discovered Sea Foam Green wasn't such a good idea. Never forget my husband's double take when he saw that.

Hellooooo! I returned to bass playing last summer after a long gap and it's fantastic to be back on the instrument that feels like home. My bass journey began in 1983 when I was 14. I taught myself by playing along to Iron Maiden records in my bedroom, having already honed my craft posing in front of the mirror with a tennis racket. I played in some dreadful teenage rock bands on my little Fender Musicmaster, which I still have, and which still sports the set of Rotosound Swing Bass strings I put on it in 1984. (I'm not a frequent changer of strings.) In my mid 20s I discovered I had a good singing voice and felt I had to move over to guitar in order to accompany myself. Never got very good at it though, and had to rely on collaborators for recording and gigging. After 30 years of everyone saying "Hey, you play your guitar like it's a bass!" I finally got the message. So here I am. I'm having fun exploring a few different basses, and the one which feels like my bass-of-a-lifetime is a Nate Mendel signature Precision – I love it so much. Fortunately my husband hasn't found out how much I spent on the Rickenbacker. Looking forward to getting to know you all and ever learning from your expertise.