ras52

Colin Moulding of XTC - inventive without being flash, and mandatory listening for anyone who thinks playing fretless turns one into a Jaco-alike. Tom Fowler of mid-seventies Zappa et al - especially on Over-Nite Sensation and The Helsinki Concert.

Instead of the string, did the pack contain the keyboard player's left-hand little finger?

[quote name='Shockwave' timestamp='1345105265' post='1773480'] Send them an E-mail [/quote] I see what you did there

Just catching up on this, not sure if I'll be able to attend, but for those of you still wondering what sex is:

[quote name='BottomE' timestamp='1345129139' post='1773990'] Thanks. Strange terminology. I do this a lot playing parts of chords but don't see what stopping has to do with it? [/quote] Because the finger "stops" the string, i.e. defines, with the bridge, its vibrating length. [quote name='BottomE' timestamp='1345129139' post='1773990'] Don't give up your day job [/quote] Actually I already have. Unfortunately I start a new one shortly, albeit one with shorter hours, which I hope will give me more time and energy to think up bad jokes.

[quote name='BottomE' timestamp='1345123493' post='1773854'] Can i just ask - what is a double stop? [/quote] A place where you can get on or off more than one bus.

However, the Bee Gees on acid playing London Calling...

[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1345112209' post='1773593'] I use a kind of "pinching" motion using my finger and thumb.... works for me. Thumb plays downwards on the lower string (the E in this case) and finger upwards on the D. Give it a try! [/quote] +1

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1344451544' post='1764845'] 1. The singer starts to want everything transposed to 'his/her' key and you end up with a bland set-list with everything in more or less the same key. [/quote] Hm, I don't agree that everything ends up in the same key. It's more about making sure everything is in the same [i]range [/i]for the singer. For example, I've been playing with a band whose singer's usable range goes up to B. So if the song peaks on the fifth of the scale, we arrange it in E. If it peaks on the major 3rd, we play it in G. Etc... IME it's the guitarist who doesn't want to change key - and I find it weird that capos are commonplace on acoustics but looked down upon on electrics.

It's a bit like playing left-hand/right-hand counterpoint on a keyboard. Practise them separately, put them together s-l-o-w-l-y.

[quote name='deepbass5' timestamp='1344965592' post='1771772'] Athletes have to train for four years to perform live and have blood tests in case they cheat, Then they plan a musical finale' in front of the world to celebrate British music, and crap miming should be band full stop. [/quote] +1

[quote name='spinynorman' timestamp='1344875242' post='1770499'] I can see what you're getting at, and this isn't quite the same, but ... In the early 1970s I bought a recording of Beethoven's 5th Symphony conducted by Pierre Boulez. Didn't know anything about it, it was probably going cheap and I'd seen Boulez conduct at the Proms. When I played it, it was quite brooding and dark, but I liked it, more than other versions I heard later. Recently I rediscovered it, did a search for a CD version, and discovered that version had been slated by the critics as too slow and Boulez had been so upset by the reaction, he refused to allow a CD transfer. So even in classical, there's a bar you have to get over to be acceptable. [/quote] Absolutely, but there are many different acceptable interpretations, and the consensus of taste changes with time. We're fortunate to be able to choose between our Wagner fast or slow, our Mozart on period or modern instruments, and our Handel with massed chorus or one-to-a-part. We are perhaps fortunate that we don't have "original" recorded versions of these which would then be liable to be seen as definitive. It's ironic that what some see as dusty old classical music is actually more alive than "definitive" modern rock/pop works which are preserved in aspic!

[quote name='KiOgon' timestamp='1344496349' post='1765306'] Get a set of Flea fingers [/quote] I thought that too as soon as read the OP!

[quote name='Wolverinebass' timestamp='1344864302' post='1770248'] Who gives a toss who was on bass. If it's not Entwistle, I don't want or care to see The Who. I see that they're off touring Quadrophenia, how is that going to work without the bass playing? Errr... it's not. It's quite simple. As capable as Pino or whomever is, unless you get someone who has a similar stylistic bent to Entwistle and there aren't that many people who do play anything like that, the Who will continue to be crap and I won't be interested. [/quote] I'm guessing you don't like classical music then. Without Wolfie on keyboards, those Mozart piano concertos are crap. Rock/pop/whatever-it-is is a young genre, and it's only recently cottoned on to the idea that the "work" itself may have some lasting value.

[quote name='chrismuzz' timestamp='1344819221' post='1769754'] Exactly! Why not keep it nice and diverse like this [/quote] Wasn't Neil Tennant wearing one of those on his head last night?

[quote name='Rimskidog' timestamp='1344707966' post='1768263'] or you could just hold down the apple button as you move the slider and it moves in far smaller increments... or you could go into the automation view and adjust it with your mouse... or you could use the pencil tool to draw the automation... or... [you get the picture] [/quote] Boom, BC helps in less than 10 minutes - I <3 BC! My PC doesn't have an Apple button ;-) but CTRL does the trick and a mouse drag moves the slider in 0.1dB increments - thank you! Ideally I'd be able to use the mouse wheel for this, but I can't find a funky key combination that allows that. Perhaps one of you nice people can help with another problem re. not being able to record audio files to an external drive, which has had a tumbleweed response from the Avid/DUC board: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=325571 Thanks again!

Earlier this year I took the DAW plunge and bought an M-Audio Fast Track with Pro Tools SE. So far so (mostly good), but I'm quickly getting frustrated with SE, or possibly not knowing how to do stuff with it as the both documentation and support forum activity are woefully sparse. I'm just using it for home songwriting demos - I don't want to spend hundreds of hours learning how to be an audio engineer, and I think SE actually does pretty much what I want and has an amenable look and feel. My main frustration is with balancing tracks - each track has a tiny little slider that jumps around at the slightest nudge. So my main requirement is something with a mixing view that gives me nice big sliders. (I know I could attach a hardware control surface an even nicer and tactile experience.) So the question is, do I "upgrade" to the next version of Pro Tools, or go back to learning-curve square one and jump to another product line? (Upgrade in quotes as there is no upgrade path from SE, one has to buy an upper version outright.) One thing I'm toying with is exporting material (guide tracks, MIDI keyboard tracks) to take into a studio for finishing off, so I might want to consider whether I'd need to export anything proprietary or just WAV and/or MIDI files. (The local demo studio I've used a couple of times uses Cubase.) BTW I run on Windows 7 (actually on Ubuntu for everything except Pro Tools!). Cheers!

Curse you BC, now I'm gassing for one of these babies: http://www.fender.com/en-GB/products/search.php?partno=0190085800

Aha! Good move. There are a couple of weekends in between the Olympics ending (12 Aug) and the Paralympics opening (29 Aug), the second of those weekends being the Bank Holiday Weekend. Can't help you on the weather though. :-(

[quote name='PlungerModerno' timestamp='1343988450' post='1758202'] +1. It's hard at first but is a great skill to have. [/quote] Yes. Although with the degree of chromaticism and syncopation in Jamerson's playing, "Shadows" might be daunting for a new reader!

Jamiroquai Jamerson Jaco - OK, not Teen Town, but try Come On Come Over

[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1343858172' post='1756588'] If you set yourself too big a goal and don't meet it, you'll be back at square one. Set yourself lots of [b]little[/b] goals, the culmination being ready to record these tracks in September. [/quote] [quote name='seashell' timestamp='1343863274' post='1756683'] When I first started a friend of mine advised me to pick up the bass once a day and play it for at least 15 mins. So if you dont think you've got the time or energy to do any more you can tell tyourself 'well its only 15 mins, then I'll have a rest/do something else'. I find that 15 mins nearly always turns into an hour before I realise it. [/quote] 2 x +1s Picking up Shell's 15-minute idea, going back and doing it every day is the key. And try not to beat yourself up if you don't make it to 15. Maybe you pick up the bass, play a minute of warm-ups, tell yourself it's all pointless and go and hide under the duvet. OK. Go back the next day and do it again. "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett “Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.” - F Scott Fitzgerald