BigRedX

So what (and how) do you want to compose? I've always found that the act of composing and the act of recording were two entirely different things and approached in entirely different ways. For me composing is done in my head or when I'm playing an instrument. Even in the days when I was playing in bands that used a lot of technology to produce their sounds, the recording equipment didn't get a look in during the compositional process. If I'm writing for my band, I just need to present the others with a basic idea of the main musical themes, and then we'll deconstruct it and flesh out the missing bits in rehearsal. Recording happens when we are ready to capture a definitive version of the song for consumption by the general public. When I've been writing on my own without a band or musical collaborators, I'll have the song almost completely mapped out in my head in both structure and arrangement before committing anything to tape or hard disk. I think the only time I've used the recording process as the composition was for one of the Composition Challenges on here where I wanted to use the inspirational picture as audio data, and therefore I had no idea how the composition was going to develop until I actually had produced the sounds themselves, and even then I went through most of the import options in Audacity until the data produced some audio that I thought I could work with. However it was more of an intellectual process rather than an inspirational one. If you are going to use the recording process as a compositional aid, the most important thing to remember is not to commit to anything in terms of structure or arrangement just because it has already been recorded. Instruments put down early in the compositional process will almost always need to be replaced as the track develops, because by the time you've got the main melody components recorded, you'll be able to hear better versions of them. Don't keep parts recorded early in the compositional process just because they've been "done" already when you can hear a much better version now that the music is more developed. Good luck!

Getting into recording has never been easier of cheaper, than it is right now, and it's only going to get easier and cheaper. Anyone with a computer (and if the you the right ones a smart phone or a tablet) can run free (or very cheap) software that will emulate a far more fully featured recording studio than those used to make most of the "classic" recordings of the last 70 years. When my first band went into the studio in 1980 to record our first vinyl release, one day cost us £50 for the studio hire and the stereo master tapes. This was for recording onto a 4-track tape recorder and mixing to stereo via what appeared to be mostly repurposed PA equipment (mics and desk). The only effect available was tape echo (from an actual tape recorder). That was it. In those days home recording was mostly for the rich and famous, and even the humble 4-track cassette portastudio cost almost £1k. The only downside I see to the modern way of home recording is that you are straight in at the deep end with a steep learning curve ahead of you. No years of recording live in mono or stereo while you save up for a 4-track and 8 (or more) track system, learning bit by bit as more feature become available as you can afford the equipment that has them. Also remember that just because you might be a decent musician and/or songwriter doesn't mean that you also be a decent recording engineer. I learnt that the hard and expensive way.

If you pick the TNT option make sure it is actually being fulfilled by TNT themselves. The last time I used them the UK part of the journey (the parcel went to Japan) was done by either Hermes or Yodel.

Why are your instructions in German?

The MIDI 1.0 specification dates from 1996 some 13 years after the first devices with MIDI sockets appeared. I am 99% certain that when the very original MIDI specification was drawn up in 1982/83, XLRs were the preferred connector. It appears that only the Octave Plateau Voyetra 8 synthesiser used them though. In the late 90s I was playing in a high-tech dance/rock band that made extensive use of MIDI on-stage. Wherever possible we used XLR cables to make the various MIDI connections between the racks of gear we had. Inside the rack the DIN sockets were epoxied into place on the equipment so they couldn't become detached and then the cables terminated on patch panels with XLR sockets. This allowed us to use a single type of cable to make all the connections between the different equipment racks. Everything was properly labelled and I can't recall a single instance of cross-connecting MIDI and audio sockets. Edit: For some MIDI devices the DIN sockets were totally impractical as they simply were not robust enough for live use. The MIDI DIN socket on my Yamaha KX5 keytar was replaced within a week of buying it with an XLR as this was the only way of getting reliable connection and one that didn't produce stuck notes. This is where the connection momentarily failed between playing a note and releasing it, the receiving synth would get the MIDI note on command but would never receive the corresponding note off, and the note would continue to play until you either sent an "all notes off" MIDI command or played enough notes simultaneously to exceed the polyphony limit of the synth.

Of course just to add to the confusion the original MIDI spec called for the use of XLR connections with DIN being a low-cost alternative. Unfortunately almost no-one (including the inventor of MIDI - Dave Smith of synthesiser company Sequential Circuits) went with the XLR option, and the rest unfortunately is history. Despite being the same form-factor DIN as those terrible audio devices of the 70s and early 80s, MIDI devices use different pins on the connector and the protocol is for the transfer of digital performance data (and lots of other things) rather than audio.

I only really listen to music for pleasure. If that leads to an idea for a song that in turn leads to me having to push myself technically in order to be able to play this new song, then so be it. One of the many reasons I left the covers band I used to be in, was that dissecting a song in order to learn how to play it sucked all of the enjoyment out of listening to that song. There are now several pieces of music I used to like a lot, that I never want to hear again because of this process.

Remember there is a difference between writing and recording. For writing all I need is an instrument and my memory.

There's some nastier ones towards the bottom of the page.

They don't have any necks in stock at the moment, so it's difficult to say for those, although my gut feeling would be to avoid any necks with more than cosmetic faults. The bodies are definitely worth considering. However a there doesn't seem to be a lot of correlation between the price and the extent of the problems. There's a particularly nasty Strat looking body that is more expensive than some with seemingly less acute problems?

I think that you tend not to notice that the strings are wearing out as much, when you play an instrument regularly, and more so if you are not actually playing in a band. I'm sure if you fitted a new set now you would be surprised at how rubbish the old ones sounded in comparison.

With a decent recording and/or PA engineer they all end sounding like bass guitars in the band mix.

I don't have a problem with the shape, but the mechanical design leaves a bit to be desired as the positioning of the string retainers means that there are three different break angles for the strings. However the rest of the bass is so good I can almost forgive this...

It's essentially a straight copy of Hooky's Shergold Marathon 6-string bass, and having played one (not Hooky's and a long time ago) I'd say they got it pretty much spot on! It's certainly the right Bass VI for me until I have the cash to get Gus to make me one with the same string spacing.

The Axions (100 E) are under £20 (even with postage IIRC), and they work fine for me on the Burns Barracuda, although it does have a wider neck (but narrower string spacing at the bridge) than the Fender/Squier Bass VIs. If you want heavier then the GHS Hooky 6 set has thicker gauges on all the strings 105 to 30, but as you've found the neck width (or lack of it) may be a problem.

Yes, but it's still wider at the nut compared with all the other Bass VIs that I have tried - 50mm nut with 43mm between the high and low E strings.

As the standard LaBella round-wound set has a 95 low E, you probably went for a 100 and then scaled everything up from there. When you come to replace them, have a look at the Newtone Axions as they have suitably heavy low strings and slightly lighter high ones and are about a third of the price of the LaBella's.

If you like the sound of the Sandberg, why not get one of those instead of an Overwater?

Are the songs don't use A=440 still in fairly standard "guitar" keys? Normally when old recordings don't use A=440 it's either because the studio tuning reference is different, but then all the tracks should be out by the same amount, or because they have been vary-speeded at mix-down to improve the feel, but that tends to involve making them faster rather than slower. I'm just wondering if instead of being slightly flat they should actually be considered to be not quite a semi-tone sharp?

The SY-1000 is going to be used with my recently acquired Eastwood Hooky Bass 6 (a copy of the Shergold Marathon 6-string bass) and which has a 13.5 string spacing at the bridge which is too wide for the guitar version and too narrow for the bass version of the Roland pickup system, hence the need for the custom pickup. This has turned out to exactly the right Bass VI for my playing style, and so the others I currently have will soon be up for sale. Believe me, if I could get away with an off-the-shelf solution, in this case I would be more than happy to do so. However because of the nature of the pickup I've chosen, it has to be properly fitted to the bass which will mean a custom body for the routing for the pickup and associated electronics as I don't want to alter the original body. Also it's not so much scrimping on the cost, but more of a result of spending most of my playing time on the 70s and 80s having to make do with all sorts of compromises with the equipment I had, either because I couldn't afford something that did what I needed, or at the time it simply didn't exist because the technology hadn't caught up with my imagination; therefore now that I can afford most of the things that I want and that someone, somewhere is already making them, I don't mind paying the money to get the right tool for the job.

Which gauges did you pick? Last time I looked at the custom gauge set on the LaBella website it was less than simple to use. I suspect that also the existence of the Newtone Axions and the now the GHS Hooky 6 set will have negated much of the advantage that LaBella used to have.

No definite time scale yet. It will very much depend on 1. my band getting back together for rehearsing, which won't be happening until all this COVID-19 nonsense is over and 2. Getting new body made for the Eastwood Hooky 6 Bass with routing for the custom 6-way pickup which I'll need for the SY-1000. Regarding using synths or stringed instruments with synth pedals, I've found that even with my appalling keyboard technique, there is less practicing required for me to be able to play convincing synth parts from a keyboard than it is to do the same using a guitar or bass.

The worst bits were all near the beginning from where you had posted, both in terms of glitches and where playing the part on the guitar showed how much more appropriate (and easy) it would have been using a keyboard synth. Having spent a good deal of my younger years trying very hard to firstly make synths sound like guitars and then make guitars (and bass) sound like synths, I now realise that both the controller and the sound generating system are equally important, and that choosing the right method of playing a sound is just as important as the sound itself. For that reason even when I do get an SY-1000, I will still be playing some parts from a keyboard. For me the SY-1000's strengths are the ability to do synth-type sounds and general sound modification via signal processing rather than pitch to synth engine conversion. And the ability to process separate strings with separate sounds, which will be ideal for the band where I use the bass VI as I won't have the change patches when swapping from "bass" to "guitar" sounds.

Thanks - I know Momento Mori - I'm pretty certain one of the bands I've been in has shared a stage with them at some point...

I have to disagree with that. Some nasty glitching of the sounds, a few good demonstrations of why some of these parts were played using a keyboard to control the synth rather than a guitar, and many of the tunes that I recognised sounded liked they were being played using a cheap Casio Keyboard. Luckily I'm sold on the overall concept, because based on the video alone I'd be having second thoughts about buying one.