BigRedX

The last band I was in from the start went from an idea the singer had for a band to our first gig in less than 10 weeks. Two weeks auditioning musicians, and then having settled on a line-up 7-8 weeks to write and rehearse about 25 minutes worth of songs ready for our first support gig. That also included picking the name, an image and designing the band logo.

It might appear to be pointless if you think you have a comprehensive knowledge of music theory, but for the rest of us, asking "stupid" questions helps us to expand our base of information, and because we've endlessly asked "why", we are far more likely to retain this information in the future, than if we has simply learnt it by rote from a book or lesson. I think it is also good for those who do claim to have all the answers to question some of their musical theory beliefs. AFAICS there still doesn't appear to be a definitive answer to the question of whether 2 notes alone are enough to be called a chord, the answer seeming to depend on which expert text you choose to reference. IME two notes are plenty - either any extra missing notes from the chord will be obvious from the musical context, or it won't matter at all.

Audacity also has the ability to turn any file into an audio waveform - useful if you are creating Musique Concète or similar avant garde sounds.

I still haven't seen an answer to my question about why it is so important that a chord is defined as either a major or minor.

Further to my previous post, if a bass rig is supplied at the gig, you could always take a post-EQ line out of your amp into the house amp input (either main in or effects return - whichever is easiest to access), and that way you still have the major component to your sound, with only the cab element being different. Check with mark bass first but IME most class D amps are perfectly happy to be run like this. I have a TecAmp Puma, that I have used in the is way a couple of times to get my sound with the minimum disruption to the bass rig I am borrowing.

TBH your set up is so minimalist, you could have it up and running in less time than it takes for your drummer to set up his cymbals, so unless you are concerned about travelling light, take the full rig and use it.

Why is so important that a chord has at least 3 notes?

There will be some as it V System uses digital signal processing, but it’s no more than any other digital effects unit, and considerably less then any pitch conversion system.

I had 500 copies of the Terrortones vinyl LP delivered on a pallet which somewhere along the route from the pressing plant in France had been smashed to pieces, damaging some of the records and a lot of the sleeves. Nothing is safe from careless delivery companies.

I did reply to you and not only that but also tagged @Ashdown Engineering in my post, so you should have seen it. The re-itterate what I said, unfortunately the emails at my end have long gone - it was 2009 or 2010 (more likely to be the latter). If you want to look for them they will most likely have come from an email address which is similar to my user name here. From what I recall, the responses I got from whoever I was dealing with at Ashdown were not very helpful considering that both the issues my Superfly amp (high pitched whine at from the speaker outputs and problems getting the amp to switch on in the first place) were well known on the internet forums, and at least one of them was generally acknowledged to be a design fault. TBH if it hadn't been for the fact that the amp had been bought from Sound Control who had since gone into receivership, I would have taken it back to the shop and demanded my money back as the amp that produces extraneous high pitched noises and won't switch on reliably was clearly not fit for purpose. Unfortunately this wasn't an option, and so based on all the great customer service reports I'd read about Ashdown here I had hoped that you would be reasonably sympathetic to my plight. This wasn't the case, and I was left with a useless amp and bitter taste from my exchanges with your customer service department. The amp itself was disposed of when I had a big clear out of unused gear about 3 years ago. I would have probably let it lie, and put it down to experience, had it not been for another Basschat member's very positive experience where you apparently repaired his second hand malfunctioning Superfly amp FoC only a few months ago. It was a pity that back in 2010 (or whenever) I couldn't have received a similar high standard of service, for what appeared to be a very similar fault. I don't have anything against the equipment itself. Whenever I've been presented with an Ashdown rig at equipment sharing gigs I've always been able to get a good usable sound out of it, and my Superfly amp, when it was working properly, was fantastic - relatively small and light with MIDI programability and great sound. However an unreliable amp is not one I could take to gigs or rehearsals ad therefore is essentially useless.

When I was in my phase of buying lots of basses the majority of them were from the US and Japan. Collection in person isn't really a cost- or time-effective option when what you want is coming from half-way around the world.

Doesn't "sus" imply that most people would want to hear the chord resolve to the appropriate major or minor? Certainly a sus4 chord has that feel to me. However I would be quite happy to end a song on one of my sus2 chords.

But what happens when you don't define the "3rd" but also add another note to the chord? As I said in a previous post in this thread I don't like 3rds on the guitar much, and usually replace them with a 9th. So my favoured version of A will be - A E A B E; and D is D G D E. Generally these will be replacing the A and D maj. but occasionally I'll use them instead of the minor version. IME if you don't define whether the 3rd is a major or minor 3rd, it's usually obvious from the rest of the music.

And just to throw another spanner in the works, what do you call it when you play the same note simultaneously on two different strings - i.e. D-string open, and the A string fretted at the 5th fret? In theory they should sound the same, but in practice because of tuning, inconsistencies in fretting pressure and the overall tonality of the strings in question they don't, and the result is always richer sounding than just playing a single string. Also is there a way of indicating this in notation?

Why do you need to? I don't like thirds much (especially the major 3rd) which on the guitar always sounds slightly dissonant to me so I'll either leave it out all together or replace it with a 9th which I find far more interesting and musically pleasing. And to answer the OP as soon as you play more than one note at the same time it's a chord IMO.

It is posts like the two above that add to my misery, as it seems obvious that most of the time @Ashdown Engineering are providing great customer service, I must have just got them on an off week. And it's even more galling when I discover that they were able to repair another Basschat members second-hand Superfly amp FOC when enquiries about getting a fix for mine (owned from new) with what sounds like a similar fault was met with evasion, indifference and finally silence when I was politely persistent.

I don't think so. The Hammond and Halewood claim is based on the middle 8 section of Creep, while the Lana del Rey song takes from the verses which AFAICS are original to Radiohead.

As I said in my post above... The track in question has not been officially released as a single. As a download it scraped into the lower reaches of the US top 50 last year (I don't know what that actually means in terms of actual sales). In the days before streaming and downloading on the internet, in the UK, something like this might possibly have generated a short news item on Radio One, and a couple of column inches in the weekly music press, and that would have been it. The publicity would have generated little additional airplay or record sales. However, I suspect that almost everyone taking part in this thread has had a listen to the Lana del Rey song in question on Spotify, and we're by far not the only ones who will have checked it out from curiosity. Spotify might not pay a lot for a single listen, but they all add up...

That might be OK if you are a "one-man-band", although IMO these days it's not acceptable for any business venture that wants to take itself seriously no matter how small. However Ashdown aren't a one man band. They are a reasonably big company with a global presence. Their marketing department should be regularly checking all on-line mentions of the brand especially sites like Basschat which can be very influential when it comes to making or breaking a brand/product. TBH it would probably be better for their reputation if Ashdown didn't have any presence here, as dipping into threads weeks apart and only dealing with the easy questions that superficially make them look good is probably more damaging in the long term.

A cynical ploy by the artist, her record label and publisher to generate publicity and get more people to listen to the song and therefore make up for the loss of royalties that will ultimately happen when this matter is finally settled?

Yes it is entirely subjective, but I would also suggest that you have had anything up to 45 years to get used to the sound of the vinyl version, so anything that sounds different may well sound wrong to your ears. The only true test IMO is to take a brand new piece of music of your own creation and have in properly mastered for both CD and vinyl and then compare final results from each delivery medium. Having done this myself twice - for the "Invasion Of The SpiderQueen" single and the "SnakeOil For Snakes" LP by The terrortones, I can say IMO the CD version of both is not only sonically superior to the vinyl, but is also the version that sounds the way we wanted it to when we were recording and mixing it in the studio.

I take it you've had a look at his other guitars for sale?

Normally when artists say this it means that they don't own the recordings. Most of the time record companies will retain the mechanical copyright - certainly for any band that is successful and still selling albums. They will only release the rights to the recordings when it no longer profitable for them to continue to own them. Ownership of the song/music itself and publishing is completely different and this is what is in dispute. Unless the songwriters in Radiohead signed a very poor publishing deal initially they should still own at least 50% of the rights to the song between all the named songwriters. However anyone with a financial interest in the the actual song could be the one instigating this action.

Essentially doing what I suggested in my previous post, but in a way and terminology aimed at people who haven't spent years deciphering MIDI implementation charts which is almost definitely a good thing.

In that case, you'll need to make sure that both units are set to the same MIDI channel, and then you should get program switching at the most basic level - i.e. selecting patch 1 on the Helix will select patch 1 on the Big Sky. I would suspect that at least the Helix will have MIDI program mapping (I haven't delved that far into mine yet) so that you can assign the program number that the Helix sends via MIDI on selecting a patch independently of the actual patch number selected on the Helix. If in doubt consult the MIDI implementation chart for each device.