51m0n

Yeah, I think you'll struggle here for free. I would make one suggestion on the whole getting my fingers to be faster and so on thing. Get a hold of Michael Manrings old VHS video. He concentrates for the first 3/4 of the video on finger conditioning. He goes into a staggering amount of depth and provides a huge array of well constructed exercises. No they wont change anything overnight, but if you actually do them for 6 months you wont believe the difference they make! And they are very focused on not damaging yourself and good warm ups etc. There is virtually nothing he cant do with his fingers on a fretboard, so I'd say take his advice - it helped me no end.... As for a wide range of styles, thats not my bag at all, although I've played in many styles of music (though not jazz - bleeuugh!) and done fine, and can write a b-line to fit most stuff (my walking is so shocking that we wont go there), I certainly wouldnt say I can jump from style to style and be completely convincing these days. But I could at college (again jazz excluded) because I was in about 12 bands at one point. I think you need to really get into a band in every style you are interested in. The quick way to do this is to learn five songs in each style with as different sounding b-lines as you can find. Preferably the five classic songs in each style. Then go get the bands. Be that bass whore for a while and get in a cover band in each style you want to play in. It will very quickly get you good enough in each style. Other than that listen to a lot of each style. Have a week of evenings where you pick a style and work on that feel exclusively. Then move to the next style for a week, after going through each style a week at a time have a week with a different style each evening, then an evening with a different style each song. I did this to a certain extent when I was in college (instead of getting my reading and walking together I'm afraid) and it definitely works! Afterwards you can stylistically jump ship at the drop of a hat and be convincing. The ones than I think can be very hard to get right (and again I am not including jazz cos thats a world of pain in and of itself) are reggae and funk. Country is pretty easy to cop, cos the b-lines are generally really simple, and the feel is like a 2/4 halftime thing. Rock can have a lot of notes, or not, but the feel is generally pretty easy, its more often than not slightly ahead of the beat and pushes the down beats with emphasis on 1 and 3. Punk is the same but simpler and more aggressive - even more ahead of the beat. But funk and reggae are a real struggle for some people. Its the laid back thing and the syncopation. My advice is to immerse yourself up to the gills in the stuff for a couple to six months and learn all the classic songs you can find. Play along to everything. Eventually it becomes second nature. Some people do this really fast and some people arent convincingly funky ever, however hard they try. They can play funk lines note perfect and sound completely unfunky. The danger with funk and reggae is that they are crystal meth for bassists, I got into funk and never got away, really. Everything I write now has a hint of funk in it, and most of the reggae I try and come up with sounds like ska Its is a powerful addiction! If I weren't ridiculously busy though I'd have a jam and offer some pointers, but I don't do structured teaching anymore, time etc etc....

Vic is great in the early Flecktones stuff, I think he got the mix spot on on Three Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest - one of my favourites. He is a product of his own success now, in that he gets paid to showcase - all the time - and every solo record has to be flashier to keep that income in to a certain extent. Vicious circle I reckon. Personally his solo records have never done it for me like Manrings stuff does. I'm not a huge fan of jazz, but Michael Manrings' Drastic Measures is just awesome. And IMO this is the finest solo bass piece I've ever seen (although its not in any way conventioanl bass playing) I defy anyone to say that isn't staggeringly musical, and taking bass beyond the role of support in a completely convincing fashion. And no widdly slappity tappity stuff anywhere, its mainly great big long whole notes over a drone....

Dunno what you all talkin' 'bout. Low action is where its at for me. Not such that it buzzes if I dig in, but I might get some fret noise, which I think is a really good sound. Having said that my digging in is where most people start.. High action just wastes energy, I dont like fighting my basses. I thought my old bass was sorted action wise till I got the Roscoe, but that has without doubt the best action I've ever played, its not just low, its incredibly consistent across the board. Personally I've been trying to play lightly and evenly for years now, and its pretty much just how I play. I do sometimes catch myself digging in a little more than I would like, but only if I'm not plugged in. I'm not in Gary WIllis' league on this and I dint use a ramp, but it just seems sensible to not waste energy or stress my hands any more than I have to (RSI is a real indicator that you are over doing it). I certainly dont have a weedy tone as a result though, its all in the fingers! As for slapping, well as long as the notes dont choke its fine. I've found that the lower the action the less welly you have to give it to get the same tone, and you can more easily bounce back with a low action than a high action, plus muted left hand slaps are easier, and sound more like muted right hand thumps if your action is low, which is a good thing in my book.

Totally depends on the song dunnit... First time I picked up a bass I was taught Hey Joe in ten minutes flat, and could play it just fine thank you. But its completely trivial. Now Rhythm Stick on the other hand.....

An on/off switch A mute button A gain A DI (Possibly) an FX loop But I want it to sound exactly how I need it too in any and all situations, and better than anything else, with no other controls at all, just automagically (hence I may not need an FX loop since it should handle that too) Oh and it must weigh less than a fart in a teacup (without the teacup) and cost no more than £20.00 inv VAT (with free p&p).

I would have to say an ae410 wouldn't I If you want it to sound a bit more old school, just turn the (fabulous) tweeter all the way down). I dig old school as much as anyone and this nails it for me. Its earth shattering for its size, and IMO sounds every bit as good as an HS410, and weighs significantly less.

[quote name='BottomEndian' post='482010' date='May 7 2009, 02:17 PM']GILF? Give her time. Her kids are only teenagers. I thought she might be a bit up her own arse, but she was genuinely really, really lovely, and spent a fair bit of time with the choir backstage and in rehearsals. [b]A bit too obsessed with her own rack, but lovely nonetheless[/b].[/quote] Me too, I wasn't happy till I'd built bespoke interconnects for mine using only premium grade components and absolute minimum line lengths, seems completely natural that she would view hers in the same way to me.....

The reason its different is because its a shelving eq with a fixed db reduction that you sweep the frequency of. That is different from (most) passive tone controls (at least as described to me at college) as they tend to be a very wide bell that you apply more and more cut to such that the bell effects a wider and wider range of frequencies, but the center freq gets massively more cut (even though that center freq may be as high as 20KHz) Not sure how different the perception of the two is, although the VLE to my ears does tend to leave more detail in than my 4 string's passive tone control, that bad boy will send the brightest strings straight to tonal mushville without any probs.... I'm more than happy to be told I am misinformed re passive tone controls though, this is merely what I have been led to believe....

Joe Osborn - criminally neglected session player:- [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Osborn"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Osborn[/url] He played on some pretty massive tracks throughout his career!

Anyone still interested in the difference in real terms between 16 bit and 24 bit needs to read this fairly comprehensive study over at Recording Review forum. [url="http://forum.recordingreview.com/f18/bit-depth-wars-10872/"]http://forum.recordingreview.com/f18/bit-depth-wars-10872/[/url] Interesting stuff....

Having demo'ed Alex's Compact in GAK the other day (by pure chance) I'd atest to it laying absolute waste to any similar sized cab I have ever tried. Massive low end, lovely grindy mids, and enough top for clarity - really, I whipped the old thumb out for a bit of tasteless nonsense and the top was all there. Fantastic cab, if you want a one cab solution, and having heard what you like I would recommend this or even more Alex' Big One (has a smoother mid range, and hence even more clarity) and an LH500 on top of it. That would be you sorted, for ever (OK you could put 2K through the Big One if you wanted, but you dont need too). 'Nuff said.

[quote name='leschirons' post='480128' date='May 5 2009, 05:25 PM']This is really sound advice. I would just add that in this situation I would also get them into the easiest song that they would actually like to play. I gave a local young girl some guitar lessons a couple of years ago and her choices were all bands like Dragonforce so I was on a loser. Luckily, she was also into Greenday so we started with Basket case. It's all a matter of holding their interest and being able to achieve something no matter how simple although [b]you'll know how keen they are when you get to lesson No2 when you see if they've practiced or not[/b].[/quote] +1 and tp be honest if you are really lucky 5 out of 10 will have, and after 6 months 1/10 will still put the work in. Having said that, that 1 can make the rest worth while. I've been lucky enough to so far have 2 students out of I don't know how many who really wanted to put the work in, and they just improved so fast it was amazing. The rest of the time people improve at a much slower speed, and sometimes they never do. I once had a student for 2 years, she swore she practiced, yet she never improved at all. I told her mum (quietly and privately) that I didn't think bass was really the right thing for her (after 3 months) and her mum just said that she "enjoys the lessons" must be my animal magnetism, cos it wasn't bass playing!!

[quote name='wulf' post='476477' date='Apr 30 2009, 10:51 PM']Tonight I finished off my practise time by investigating [url="http://www.noteflight.com/"]Noteflight[/url]. This is a notation editor but with two big distinguishing features from most of the competition: 1. It is free to use 2. It is an online product which you access via your web browser. I found it relatively easy to pick up and it did everything I demanded of it tonight (rough bass transcription including some triplet runs and a couple of bits of text to mark key points). I have only scratched the surface but suspect there are plenty of things it can't do (I didn't notice an option for cross noteheads to denote ghost notes, for example, although I didn't need them tonight and so didn't look) but if you do like to write notation but find you can't read your scribbles back when it comes to use them, it is definitely worth a look. Wulf[/quote] Nice one cheers! You can definitely change the note head to a x just did it. But I'm not sure how I did it (all a bit hit and miss playing about with it at the moment) OK found it. Select a note, see the orange box with options, it has a down arrow on the bottom edge, click that - it opens up a bundle of extra options for that note including an x note head. Still sounds like normal if you hit play though....

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='480053' date='May 5 2009, 04:26 PM']Now that's an incredible skill. If you want to take this music lark seriously and make a living from it, I can see a small benefit in learning to read to an average standard, but a huge benefit in learning to sight read a gig. Its something that I will never be able to do that's for sure![/quote] +1 and BBC thats the most sensible post you've ever made I think - whats going on?

[quote name='Linus27' post='479931' date='May 5 2009, 02:19 PM']A lot of what you say is actually really really interesting. The point you make about dialling the VPF up is in your opinion what other amps are flat especially. I usually run my Ashdown and infact most amps flat. I hate mids and so keep things either flat or turn a little bit of treble and bass on or the mids down a little. I really do mean a little. When I plugged into the Ashdown ABM, I just set it flat and it sounded perfect right away. So its no surprise I liked the VPF filter What I should had done was tried the Little Mark with the Ashdown ABM 4 x 10 like you say. I think, the fact I was in there for 2 hours playing and had the whole room to myself, I kind of felt I overstayed my welcome. Still, I should had tried it.[/quote] Absolutely. To be honest I went through a whole mids epiphany when I got back into playing. I used to be definitely of the opinion that a 'little' scoop was always right. But since getting much better kit the mids actually make the sound for me. No I dont boost, but I run everything absolutely flat. And lo and behold in a band mix it just sits absolutely spot on in the mix in a way that it never used to. 2 hours to test out nearly a grands worth of kit (maybe more). No problem if you are going to splash the cash, being a t#sser if you're not. When I bought the ae410 Mark at bassdirect let me play for over 2 hours, we tried the ae210s against the ae410, we checked what I could get in my car, we went through about 12 basses that I wasnt going to buy just then etc etc As a result he's got all my custom for new purchases since (bar my rack tuner cos he doesnt do them). He understands that it is in his best interests to let you fiddle, let the gear sell itself to you - he doesnt really involve himself in that process beyond answering questions and offering advice when asked. As such he is the most dangerous salesman I know - visit him at your peril Fortunately most other shops dont 'get' this at all!

I 'kin [b]HATE[/b] tear down I've been in bands where I ran the PA and was bass bod. I'd end up tearing down with my girlfriend (nothing to do with the band other than wanting to get home) whilst every other b@5t@rd in the band got the beers in and had a chit chat with their mates. I was livid! Nowadays it should be better, but again the vox and keys typically have to get going the moment they come off stage, and we're left doing the hard work. Drives me right up the wall!!!

[quote name='Linus27' post='479897' date='May 5 2009, 01:49 PM']My current rig with one cab only puts out about 180 watts. With two cabs I get 300 watts. My band has a very loud argentinian latin loving drummer, a percussionist and two guitarists and 3 vocals. At the rehearsal rooms, the 300 watt combos (which must be pushing out 180) have struggled. I also want to go down to one cab (thus the question about a single 2 x 10 or possible 4 x 10) and a larger head, something thats going to push out about 300 watts at 8 ohms and 500 at 4 ohms. 300 should easily be enough but I also have the scope to expand if I ever need to.[/quote] LH500 over a berg ae410 will win that battle....

[quote name='Linus27' post='479890' date='May 5 2009, 01:43 PM']OK, I'll try my best. It was running through the Markbass 4 x 10.... ....I don't think there is really anything wrong with the Markbass Little Mark head, its just a case off only finding one setting I was happy with tonally and any other setting really did not suit me. It may have even been the Markbass cab letting it down. I had high hopes for that also as it only weighs 25kg where the Ashdown weighs 36kg.[/quote] Seems like you gave it a decent work out then! I think you are probably bang on about the cab though, the MB 4x10 doesn't shy away from the mid range at all, and a lot of people dont like its sound as a result. I dont think it accentuates them particularly, I do think most cab manufacturers tend to try and engineer in a little dip in response in the mids to clean thing up a bit, or the crossoveer does it. I think the MB cabs definitely colour the sound, whereas with a more neutral cab I prefer the output. Hence me going for Berg (once I heard it it totally convinced me). To be fair the VLE did exactly what it says on the tin though, And it does it in a slightly different way from a more conventional treble IMO, but if you dont like that kind of sound it will never ever be for you. Its good for dub, blues, old school rock and roll or any time when you cant get to the tweeter attenuator. VPF upto 9' O'clock is IMO like dialing in the head to where a lot of amps consider themselves flat - any more than this and you have lost so much mid info that you wont be heard anyway IME. I would say that the EQ is definitely as powerful as any non-sweepable out there, although I think the choice of 40Hz for the low shelving is nuts, 80Hz would be more appropriate for most situations, and again I personally think this is a bit of a reflection on the cabs... If Ashdown floats your boat then congrats for finding the sound that does it for you! Would have been interested to hear what you thought of the LMII into the Ashdown 4x10 though....

[quote name='thepurpleblob' post='479840' date='May 5 2009, 12:57 PM']I have a theory about this - the absolutely ideal personal "sound check" is to play one note. If it sounds good then shut the **** up!! If you need to do more then keep it to the absolute minimum. [b]Showing off your licks while setting up should be a sackable offence[/b] !![/quote] I helped run a big funk band in college. 18 or 19 piece. After one rehearsal that rule was laid down in stone. Next week we fired one person on the spot for the first transgression (the rule had been reiterated). Never got another unnecessary peep out of anyone for the following 4 months till we folded the band up. Good rule to work with. And to lay down at any audition.

[quote name='Linus27' post='479215' date='May 4 2009, 06:45 PM']HAHA rumbled :) It was more a case of sticking with what I know best. After trying in Andertons The Markbass Little Mark II, Warwick Profet, Ashdown ABM and Ashdown MAG back to back, I found the MAG (which I already own) sounded great and suited my tone but the ABM range was just so much more tonally and much more adjustable. So it is the perfect upgrade from the MAG. [b]The Markbass just sounded horrible and very limiting tonally[/b]. The Warwick actually sounded pretty good but worse than my MAG. I think the Ashdown tone just really suits me. I am very fussy and struggle to get a nice tone out of the Stingray and so far the Ashdown tone has been the best. Saying that, I borrowed an Ashdown Little Giant and despite sounding very good, did not sound better than my MAG. It had less scope tonally. So, yes I could try the Hartke but I thought it would be better to try some of the others out first rather than waste Paul's time. If the Ashdown ABM sounded no better or worse than my MAG then I would be trying the Hartke for sure. As it sounded better, then like I say, just sticking with what I know.[/quote] Errr how on earth did you manage to conclude that an LM II is tonally limiting???? Really I cannot imagine how you came to that conclusion. I expect the filters werent off, but maybe the amp was bust. Honestly, I've never heard a better amp for my needs so to hear someone dismiss it like that is pretty weird to me, the eq section is super powerful, and the filters are a great solution to 90% of player's needs. I'm certainly not trying to suggest you should all be using MB gear but I am interested to find out why you thought it was so poor, in what way was it tonally limited? My son gigs with a Berg HT210 vertically, with an LH500 on top, works a treat.....

Really important you get the most basic bits down first. Strap length, left hand (not squeezing to hard) right hand not plucking to hard, no hard break angles on wrists. Check their bass over - high action is a bad thing for a 14 yr old beginner, sort it out if necessary (and you can). Great starting riff is Hey Joe - first the roots then the little walking lick. Its trivially easy and will in 10 mins make them feel like they can play a classic song.

Couple of hours tops. Working out where everything goes is the biggest issue. Lots of monitors, reasonable PA (we can go really big but dont have to normally). Then there the drummer - whose PA it is, because him and I do the majority of the PA he is then left with his kit to set up afterwards/during the end of the PA set up. Which means this all takes longer. We dont rush mind, but we dont stop either. Otherwise we're knackered in time for the show, which is not good! Soundcheck is a luxury we never seem to get to, which annoys me, since usually we dont get a soundcheck as we end up waiting for someone to turn up who wasnt involved with the heavy gear. If we do a soundcheck it takes about 15 mins. If the venue had its own (decent) PA we would be set up in about 20 minutes I reckon, ready for a 15 minute soundcheck On the other hand if I'm depping I can be there from car to stage and ready to go in 10 to 15 minutes tops...

Relax - Frankie Goes To Hollywood One note.....

[quote name='alexclaber' post='477103' date='May 1 2009, 03:27 PM']a lot of airflow must shift from[b] laminar to turbulent [/b]at that speed hence the big leap in fuel consumption.[/quote] You're such a nerd Alex

[quote name='bumfrog' post='477057' date='May 1 2009, 02:33 PM'] think you've described half the bands / venues I've been in with that list [/quote] Oh don't worry I've played in them too! IMO the more you can do to control your part of the operation and the more parts of the operation you have some control over (obviously the acoustics are only improvable often by bringing a big crowd!) the better yo can make things. If you have a great sound guy and PA, if you keep you kit in great working order, if you know your parts, if you use sensible tones/fx live to get the best of any venue, if you control your volume, if you perform with gusto and aplomb then 9/10 you'll sound great. And I hate hour long soundchecks too, 15 to 20 minutes is more than enough for anyone in a smaller venue. I'm aiming these comments at the people who play in little venues (ie most of us) as we dont have the luxury of a bunch of blokes to soundcheck everything for us. So its even more important to get control over this stuff yourselves such that when you get to play you have the best chance of sounding really good to the punters in the shortest possible time frame.