mcgraham

[quote]My point is that if I went to a 36" scale (effectively adding three and a bit frets on the end)[/quote] Actually it'd only be two and a bit. I thought it'd be a lot more too! Point taken though, it isn't a definite rule that 'everyone' can get used to a longer scale. Mark

Saying that, I wouldn't mind having a quick play on it! Mark

Thanks for posting the link to the article Funkmaster, I did enjoy reading that. Though I'm slightly sceptical of how the bass 'seems' to play itself, just because it was Jaco's Mark

If you like a certain bass config you should go for it! It's not like there can only be one of any type of bass out there. You could always ask/pay them to do some kind of custom work on it to set it apart from any others and identify it as yours; a fretboard inlay is perhaps a tad too cliche and common, but there may be something else you'd quite like? By the way are you going to go for Streamer $$ or the 'normal' Streamer? Mark

Congratulations! That's pretty awesome! Do you get to pick a bass, get to spec one out? Or are you issued one? Mark

I was considering getting one on the neck I'm having made for my bass, but I rarely downtune, and if I do, D is not the 'only' note I'm downtuning to. I also find that I'm exceptionally quick at (re)tuning without a tuner in one movement and followed by a quick final adjustment to get it dead on. Depends on what you want it for really! Mark

I honestly attribute a lot of my early progress in bass playing to, at the end of the first month, making myself use my pinky for fretting. Use it! It's great, as bilbo says, I don't know how you [i]can't[/i] use it. On the other hand, quite literally, I also use my pinky for simulating the sound of foam mutes/mute pads. It's great because you can play everything you can normally play but with a muted sound. You can literally just drop your 'mute' right in whenever you feel like it. Mark

Regarding the physics there is definitely no reason for it to increase tension. Some claim that it provides a more secure anchor i.e. reduces stretching experienced beyond the nut. However I was speaking to Mark from BassDirect about the extended B headstock; he'd mentioned to Enrico (at Wood&Tronics who offer/offered this feature) that he felt it didn't make a blind bit of difference. Well, Enrico and his crew sat down over a whole weekend playing basses to try and prove or disprove this with and without the extended B headstock, they even went so far as to use a spectrum analyser. Even they had to concede that they really couldn't tell the difference and may even stop offering it as an option. I'll be checking out a 33" scale bass for the first time in a week or so. I'll let you know how it goes/feels. Mark

[quote]Quite a few people played my 36" scale RIM Custom 5 at the bash and most of them didn't realise it was longer than normal[/quote] +1 I was one of those people. I'd always heard that a 36" scale made 'all' the difference with tension, but that the stretch was just too much. After trying Alex's bass I say that the latter one is hogwash. I felt slightly more tension (in my hands) than my normal bass but I think that was due to his bass having a higher than action than mine than anything else. You've got a great bass Alex! Mark

[quote]I have to spring to James' defence a little there, you have a point about the shinyness, but I saw his one man band tour last year and he is everything but corporate IMO, he is just a guy who likes to play his music to people, again IMO[/quote] I agree, he came across as quite a genuine guy. I [i]thought[/i] (before watching it) that he would've been the best one on there, but alas, his voice is not what it used to be. Still wonderful stuff, but not quite as beautiful as it was even a few years ago. Adele impressed me the most, very good performance and with a good singing voice. Although I wasn't too keen on the nasality/whininess that she placed on some of her notes; that's a personal preference though. +1 on the black kids, that was offensive to my senses. Mark

Finally succumbed to watching the clip... The feel/rhythm/where they placed the beat was quite different to a lot of pop/mainstream stuff, twas nice to hear something original there. I didn't spot any glaringly obvious timing errors; there was a few (literally 2, maybe 3) points where I thought 'oh, are they slightly out? did someone mess up?' but it was so quick and so slight that I may have just imagined it or been overly sensitive to it. I agree with whoever said it got sloppy in the rap. It was more than a little messy during that, going into it and then throughout. With regard to the rest of show, did anyone else find most of the artists quite painful to listen to? I was genuinely vocalising 'ooo, that's painful' throughout all the other acts. The only two I could actually listen to were James Taylor and Adele. Mark

No worries, definitely about time that I uploaded some stuff. Although it will be [i]sans[/i] vid. Mark

Fair enough! My apologies for perhaps being a little overzealous. Mark

Hi Mike I'd tried to catch you a bit too late in the afternoon and time was running short. No worries tho! There is always next time. [size=1][s]First off, that tone is really quite special. It has that sweetened jazz bass quality to it, lovely top end sparkle rather than snarl too. But it's also got enough detail to make each note articulate. And boy does it have attack! The notes really jump out of the instrument. It appears to me to have a sound that will sit beautifully in a mix, yet, when it comes times to solo, has enough articulation and detail to demand some attention and do/fulfil something more than just the bass function.... Congrats! First tune, I'm a huge fan of interesting chord progressions with some pushes and less obvious rhythm choices (i.e. not just repetitive and obvious as to where it'll go) so I was digging the progression you had there. Particular tasteful use of the muted accents to move between parts and keep the flow going. Also I really liked your touch, you varied it quite substantially throughout and got some great tones and accents at good points. Often a difficult thing to nail, it really shows the effort you're putting into your phrasing. Musically it kept me interested the whole way through, or at least most of the way through. (I think as it's a loop and the loop was quite intense at the start, it couldn't be taken many other places dynamically, so I acknowledge that as more of a limitation of the medium of looping.) Your phrases were good too, nice and lyrical, but also with some exciting (but still listenable/musical) flair thrown in for good measure. OH! And I liked how you made many 'ups and downs' in intensity of phrasing and speed throughout. Often when we improvise we start slow, then we get faster and faster til we've got nowhere else to go...then we stop. Only goes in one direction, up! But I thought you had a good amount of push and pull in there, particularly as you went from fingerstyle to slap, and then back to fingerstyle, as well as varying the dynamics of the phrasing. All good stuff. Suggestions... I think you had a really interesting backing loop, with lots of potential for playing off of it, but there didn't seem to be much, if any that I could see/hear. I was hoping to hear you doing some perhaps rhythmic push n pull, tension and release, interplay with some of percussive sounds that were looped, or perhaps add some tensions to the chords, as that backing loop really had a lot going for it. In short I would try to think of the loop as a really repetitive band that refuse to do anything other than what they know, and you're trying to make the most of it. Does that make sense? (sorry for the length!) Second tune.... as a disclaimer, I'm not really that bothered about effects (read between the lines; I really don't like them on bass ) so in that regard it didn't do anything for me. Also drawing on the above, the loop wasn't especially interesting and didn't (to me) hold much potential for doing anything interesting with it. Although it started out less intense, so there was greater headroom for you to add intensity to the tune there. Musically (as I've covered generic comments above) didn't do a whole lot for me, if I'm honest. Although I got the feeling (correct me if I'm wrong) it was a bit more of a noodling type improv than a *serious* 'how can I approach this tune?' type improv (apologies if I've completely got that wrong). Those types of improv or great and cool to see, as they represent a good bulk of well spent (or at least reasonably spent) practice time, trying just to coax out phrases over many hours of practice. I've not really got a lot to say on that one... which I'm sure you're glad to hear. [/s][/size] Really liked the first one, second one not so much You look very comfortable and very happy on your new bass Which is always a joy to see. Mark

Looking forward to checking that out when I get home. Such entertainment is blocked at work. Definitely a good thing! I was hoping to at least inspect your Sei at the bash, perhaps another time. How's it working out for you now you've had it for a bit? Mark

[quote]I'm much less of a tw*t in person - will there be anyone there who i've pissed off? And how likely are you to administer a beating?[/quote] Dude don't worry! The more the merrier! Provided you don't sit there playing non-stop without talking to anyone whilst playing 'My Name is Mud' and various other atonal Primus classics from 12pm til sundown then I think you'll be fine Mark

[quote]I've spent the last week working through the Studybass site , in particular working through all the chords. Of course ,I discovered the formal names of a lot of things I was already doing.[/quote] The legend that is Mr Joe Satriani commented in an interview that he learned a lot (if not all) of his harmony knowledge from a chord book that didn't actually state what chord each chord shape showed. So he learned the shapes, patterns and the sound of each, but didn't know what each one was. He said that it meant he would only use them when he felt they should be used, because he knew the sound and where they belonged, not because they had the most tensions or seemed the most difficult. I think that is a great way to go about it, it's often the way I find out interesting chords. I hear a sound, or maybe I qualitatively desire a certain sound; I then work with single notes, then to double stops and upward (guitar specifically) until I've built up a chord that has the feel/sound/tension(s) that I want. That sort of thing has become much easier with time because there's only so many intervals around, and only so many fingers and strings to place the chords on. I'm glad you've seen the light... I mean benefit of theory Mark

[quote]I'm thinking that I might delete references to all of the augmented and diminished intervals except the fourths and fifths, and diminished seventh and augmented second and leave all the rest just as a post-script reminder that all major/minor intervals can also be augmented and diminished.[/quote] I was going to suggest exactly that. It would still be understandable and would reduce the length. You've done a really good job here dlloyd, particularly with the organisation. Knowing it is one thing, knowing how to present it such that it is possible for a relative theory newbie to learn is another, and I think you've managed to tackle that issue. I wonder if there's any other threads we could create that could serve as useful tutorials? Mark

I'm so glad to hear you could move it back a week, means I can be there. If anyone can give me a lift with my cab I can bring my Schroeder 1210L, Acoustic Image Clarus and my Geddy Lee which will be by that time a fully fludged custom, with a new neck courtesy of Mr. J Shuker. Whoever offered the ATK I'd like to try it through my rig if that's cool. The more the merrier! Mark

Hmm, I'm at a wedding on the Saturday and staying til the Sunday... in Edinburgh, so I may not be back in time for it. Rubbish! Mark

PM'd

There are things I think 'hmmm, perhaps my time would've been better spent doing this', but I don't regret them. They have, in some way, shaped the way I play bass. If I had to say there's one thing I wish I had not done, it was listen to the worship/band leader at my church and youth group who said 'don't do that' when I was experimenting with ideas in practice. Discouraged me from breaking out of convention and finding new sounds big time. Another dude said 'there's no need to learn the modes, you will never use them'. Luckily I moved away only a year or so and was required to experiment so it saved me from said environment. Again, that has shaped my musical approach as well. I will concede that that time helped me get the basics of holding a groove and bassline down, with some aspects of songwriting, song learning and melodic approaches. Mark