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34 minutes ago, Doddy said:

And yet you still felt the need to reply.

If you think tone doesn't matter, that's cool, but it matters to a lot of people, not just bass players. When big name players talk about losing work because of their sound, I think it's worth listening to them.

Yep. Still needed to reply.  It's a curse.

I'm sure Will Lee knows his poop, but almost certainly I doubt one instance of rejection has hardly made a dent in his career path, endorsements or tenure in Paul Schaeffer's Most Dangerous Band In The World (or whatever they were called).

 

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1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

Yep. Still needed to reply.  It's a curse.

I'm sure Will Lee knows his poop, but almost certainly I doubt one instance of rejection has hardly made a dent in his career path, endorsements or tenure in Paul Schaeffer's Most Dangerous Band In The World (or whatever they were called).

 

He's clearly done very well, quite deservedly-He's one of the best in the buisness. I'm just pointing out that tone does matter to people, especially those who are hiring you. Every great player has spent time on their sound at some point.

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23 minutes ago, Doddy said:

He's clearly done very well, quite deservedly-He's one of the best in the buisness. I'm just pointing out that tone does matter to people, especially those who are hiring you. Every great player has spent time on their sound at some point.

With my producer's hat on, it seems very strange to hire someone well known and then not use them on the actual finished version. IME (unless it is something very extreme and completely different from what I was expecting) tone is nearly always fixable when it come to mixing the track. I'd be more likely to reject the part if the musician had been asked to come up with their own baseline and it wasn't what I was hoping for rather than their sound wasn't right.

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15 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

With my producer's hat on, it seems very strange to hire someone well known and then not use them on the actual finished version. IME (unless it is something very extreme and completely different from what I was expecting) tone is nearly always fixable when it come to mixing the track. I'd be more likely to reject the part if the musician had been asked to come up with their own baseline and it wasn't what I was hoping for rather than their sound wasn't right.

I'm guessing it happens more than you'd think, or at least used to. If a player has a bad sound, there is only so much that an engineer or soundman can do. You can't just have a bad sound and expect someone else to make it better- it should be there from the start.

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52 minutes ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Because there is an edit function, and it's not something I insist on, I think it is relevant to edit your post if you think you didn't manage to get your point clearly through the way you actually meant it when you first time posted a given reply (that aside for purely grammar reasons is the whole point of having an edit function in the first place).

However I perfectly understand why that can be annoying when replying to such posts, but in my defense the main edit of my reply was done before I saw your reply and was notified about it (the one done after was just a minor grammar edit), you probably posted your reply while I was editing mine, and I admit that I do have a bad habit of posting replies before actually making sure I also actually have formulated it in a way that makes my actual point clear and have included everything I actually wanted to say and the way I wanted to say it, and I won't be shy apologizing for the annoyance this bad habit of mine might course. 

For whatever it's worth I guess my excuse is that I am diagnosed with ADHD.

Right, some advice.  Just take a deep breath and relax.

ADHD or otherwise, try and create the post, read it, then re-read it and decide whether you need to post it at that second.  If not, re-read it again.  Keep the post short and to the point.  I understand there's this desire to just go up against someone and fire off a quick riposte because you feel this helps you somehow win an argument, but it's unnecessary to do so and irrespective of your condition, just sit back and wait a few minutes before hitting the submit reply button.  If you do feel it necessary to edit a post, sometimes just think that submitting a single paragraph, then adding three more in the edit, muddies the waters.  For the sake of clarity, just do a new post.

Next, stop calling everyone jerks if they disagree with what you're posting or your opinion.  Stop with the 'you're ignorant/deaf/and so on' responses if people disagree or question what you're posting.  Stop with the opinionated/superior 'you don't know what you're talking about' responses when people mention gear that doesn't fit your set-up, ie Sansamps - you'll find @Tech21NYC are a pretty good at doing what they do and that you don't succeed in this business if you're not fit for purpose.  Quit with the, 'I write like James Joyce' malarky too; this is a frankly awful attitudal position and is both sneering and unclever; this holier than thou attitude might be how it is in Denmark, but recognise this is a global forum.

There are a ton of people here that are more than keen to help out with all manner of queries, questions, advice.  Yes, me included.  By distancing these people by name-calling and detrimental remarks, you distance yourself from them.

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48 minutes ago, Doddy said:

I'm guessing it happens more than you'd think, or at least used to. If a player has a bad sound, there is only so much that an engineer or soundman can do. You can't just have a bad sound and expect someone else to make it better- it should be there from the start.

Maybe before the advent of 24 track recording in the 70s, but since then any engineer worth their salt would have stuck a safety DI on the bass before the amp. IME unless there were some weird electronics in the bass itself it should be perfectly possible to get a bass sound to allow the producer to salvage the take. 

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3 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Right, some advice.  Just take a deep breath and relax.

ADHD or otherwise, try and create the post, read it, then re-read it and decide whether you need to post it at that second.  If not, re-read it again.  Keep the post short and to the point.  I understand there's this desire to just go up against someone and fire off a quick riposte because you feel this helps you somehow win an argument, but it's unnecessary to do so and irrespective of your condition, just sit back and wait a few minutes before hitting the submit reply button.  If you do feel it necessary to edit a post, sometimes just think that submitting a single paragraph, then adding three more in the edit, muddies the waters.  For the sake of clarity, just do a new post.

Next, stop calling everyone jerks if they disagree with what you're posting or your opinion.  Stop with the 'you're ignorant/deaf/and so on' responses if people disagree or question what you're posting.  Stop with the opinionated/superior 'you don't know what you're talking about' responses when people mention gear that doesn't fit your set-up, ie Sansamps - you'll find @Tech21NYC are a pretty good at doing what they do and that you don't succeed in this business if you're not fit for purpose.  Quit with the, 'I write like James Joyce' malarky too; this is a frankly awful attitudal position and is both sneering and unclever; this holier than thou attitude might be how it is in Denmark, but recognise this is a global forum.

There are a ton of people here that are more than keen to help out with all manner of queries, questions, advice.  Yes, me included.  By distancing these people by name-calling and detrimental remarks, you distance yourself from them.

The mid scoop of the Tech 21 Bass driver BBDI is well documented, several people have run it through a frequency analyzer and posted the graphics clearly proving it, but obviously you are oblivious to facts, so this will be my last reply to you, as you seem immune to facts.

Like since when was being able to replicate JJ Burnel's tone or a pedal being able to do what you claim it to be able to do a criteria for success in the effects pedal business?

And where exactly do I claim to write like James Joyce?

Not even in that completely different thread where I do, correctly, mention him, but doesn't, quite on the contrary, claim to write like him.

Also how about you taking a deep look in the mirror.

 A lot of those things you try to pin on me seems to fit surprisingly well on your behaviour in this thread (sorry about not having done the same background checkup on your forum history as you seem to have done on mine, so can't tell if it's a general thing and personality trait of yours or not), and ironically especially true for the quoted reply of yours above.  

Finally one thing is to be opinionated, a completely different thing is insisting on wrong facts being right and trying to dictate what other people should or should not do, but I guess that would be how all British people are, and other people that happens to share some of the personal facts about you, right?

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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3 hours ago, Doddy said:

 When big name players talk about losing work because of their sound, I think it's worth listening to them.

I agree. There are interviews on Youtube with A list session bassists and almost all of them bring at least 6 basses to sessions, when those sessions existed. While most seem to end up using their Precision bass with flats, they have to be capable of providing different sounds at the drop of a hat.

I wonder what was behind that Will Lee story? Seems odd that a player of his stature in the NY session business didn't nail the exact tone they wanted. Maybe he was too busy? I wouldn't have expected to see Lee Sklar on a Billy Cobham record, but he was obviously doing something right.

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9 minutes ago, chris_b said:

 

I wonder what was behind that Will Lee story? Seems odd that a player of his stature in the NY session business didn't nail the exact tone they wanted. Maybe he was too busy? I wouldn't have expected to see Lee Sklar on a Billy Cobham record, but he was obviously doing something right.

But this was before Will Lee became the session legend that he became, and he was part of the band Dreams. He was playing a modified P Bass, and apparently Cobham told him that he needed to get his sound together if he wanted to play sessions. He obviously listened.

44 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Maybe before the advent of 24 track recording in the 70s, but since then any engineer worth their salt would have stuck a safety DI on the bass before the amp. IME unless there were some weird electronics in the bass itself it should be perfectly possible to get a bass sound to allow the producer to salvage the take. 

It's not about salvaging a take at that level though. If someone doesn't sound good, they'll get someone in who does. There are plenty of stories around of players being told that they didn't have their sound together, and/or being replaced in the studio.

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24 minutes ago, Doddy said:

It's not about salvaging a take at that level though. If someone doesn't sound good, they'll get someone in who does. There are plenty of stories around of players being told that they didn't have their sound together, and/or being replaced in the studio.

From what I've seen and read most musicians who get replaced in the studio tend to be those who don't have the ability to play the parts accurately enough in the time allotted. 

27 minutes ago, Doddy said:

But this was before Will Lee became the session legend that he became, and he was part of the band Dreams. He was playing a modified P Bass, and apparently Cobham told him that he needed to get his sound together if he wanted to play sessions. He obviously listened.

If you've got a weird bass that produces unconventional sounds at the source then perhaps this is fair enough. However shouldn't the people booking him for the session have checked this out first?

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I read that Phil Spector had several bassists waiting in reception, just in case Carol Kaye didn't cut it on River Deep, Mountain High.

I know a drummer and a well known bassist who were put in for a Gene Pitney tour, with full orchestra. When it was discovered these guys couldn't read music, they were asked to leave, and as they put their last drum on the pavement, the new guys were unloading their gear! That's how quick they replace you.

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1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

From what I've seen and read most musicians who get replaced in the studio tend to be those who don't have the ability to play the parts accurately enough in the time allotted. 

If you've got a weird bass that produces unconventional sounds at the source then perhaps this is fair enough. However shouldn't the people booking him for the session have checked this out first?

He was in the band Dreams with Cobham at the time, so he it wasn't like he was a random booking. Will did the demos, Cobham didn't like his sound and so called Leland Sklar for the album session. 

If you're booking someone for a gig, especially at a high level, you want someone who has got it all together. They aren't going to have anyone on the session who sounds bad so that they can waste time and money fixing it. They want someone who can come in, nail the part, and sound great. There's a reason why all the top players have got great tone.

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On 08/04/2021 at 10:42, Frank Blank said:

So, there’s usually a reticent quality of endeavour about my bass tone and at the same time, in cognitive and, indeed precognitive terms, it’s a very natural rhapsodic augmentation of my living environment. When someone playing complex passages, passages say, that attempt to convey the minutiae of human lives in all their manifold sensuous and intellectual complexity is asked to define the nuances of their tonal output, we can see for ourselves the branches and leaves of opprobrium working their noble way into the twilight of aural comprehension. Not only that, but the parts of the brain employed when playing or listening to the bass or making love are illuminated by the very act of discussing the inherent architecture of bass tone, or drawin a complex and over detailed diagram of love making.

Long before such tonal schematics became de rigeur,  the Albanian visionary and goat herd, Maximilian Coque, argued that the portrayal of bass, both behaviourally and proto-subjectively, in modern musical culture was actually a comprehensively valid field for theoretical psychoanalysis in a post-reductionist, albeit tonally abstract, environment. Recent advances in aural science allow us to put Croque’s theories to the test under laboratory conditions and it turns out that the old man was right on the money. Fancifully, I wonder how these whimsical speculations over bass tone might appear to the audio technicians of the future, and whether they could turn this endless rumination over what is, in essence, a very basic and fundamental sound in to a simple three dimensional structure composed of papier-mâché and dried macaroni? Food for thought.

In the spirit of Croque and his theoretical ruminations I would describe my bass tone as lamb madras mopped up with the last chapati and then a walk home in the rain because I missed the last bus.

Yes yes, but how do you inhabit that manifold? 🤔

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13 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

 

Anyway, my tone. How would I describe it?

Round, hefty, punchy, reminiscent of pear drops, liquorice and monkey spunk.

Copy cat...

You must have been in the audience at my first ever gig, Clifton Village hall youth club.March 1st 1952.

We did it for the exposure.:crazy:

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