BassTractor

Weird they became extinct, now I think of it. I mean, ivory nuts are famously less prone to hypothermia or cold shock than regular nuts are.

My experiences are within Norway, so maybe of limited value, but I deemed it better to tell you anyway. Here, they can be rented (which I feel is kinda expensive) or bought. We bought ours for 800 quid, which was in the medium price range here, and after that investment I found the right M2M subscription and SIM card to equip it with, which cost a mere 2 quid per month, and the data traffic was virtually free. The machine was of a reputable brand, and technically has lasted for 14 years up to now without a hick-up, but a drawback was when the reputable brand dropped it off the updating service schemes - making it almost obsolete overnight. Those 14 years also mean the battery was of great quality. Exchange batteries for these machines are likely very expensive, but one might be lucky and be able to find a machine that runs on standard rechargeable batteries. "Problems" arose only in areas of bad reception/transmission, like some buildings and remote areas, but in that case a good machine has a second system where it stores all the deals and transmits them when it gets back into an area that is covered. In those cases, the operator had to check the identity of the buyer by looking at the card, and maybe making a note of some of the info. The drawback of that second system is that it can't control whether people really have the money in their account. For my firm this meant that we had some routines in stock for the extremely rare cases we thought the customer was trying to trick us. Merch is cheaper than what we sold, but we had the ideal market for trusting people, so that maybe evens it out.

Less than £50 is a steal for a unique lim.ed. work of art. Come to think of it, in fact it's even less than what I paid for my Picasso, Dali and Vasarely silk screen prints! Order, folks! Order!

Basses: vertically in cases in two cupboards in the bedroom, which is besides the living room. One bass on a stand in the living room. All amps and cabs in the living room. All keyboards and drums in the living room. Everything of value with my ex-wife.

Great. Apparently I'm in then. The £300 number is what I'd have to pay here in Norway for an A2+ size print before P&P, so I thought you could do it including P&P for slightly less in the UK. Of course, if your price is cut to the bone due to P&P being calculated for the UK only, then I'd just wire you more money. Simples. Will PM later.

BTW, and I apologise for the technical stuff in a fun discussion, but when I have a bass that is reluctant, three or four anti-clockwise turns on every screw in the neckplate always make it play like butter. Not like a dream though...

Looks terrible on that boy, but happily I'm a lot prettier than him, so I can probably wear it off.

All the shops carry that stuff here in Norway. Here, the brand is called "I Can't Believe It's Not A Jazz!"

Hehe. The thing is one doesn't even need to advertise them as playing like a dream. I recently sold 15 basses, and four of them were advertised with a warning about them NOT playing like a dream. The buyers confirmed that they knew what they were going to, and paid me the asking price, which was not lower than similar basses that did indeed play like a dream. I guess sometimes it's the specific design that's important, and other times it's the buyer's conviction he/she can do something about it. Also, being honest about these things saves you a lot of trouble afterwards, and it also makes the other ads more trustworthy. Win win.

Simply put, and choosing mild words carefully, this is just bloody fantastic. I also like its graphical style. I'd take one on A2 if the price is right. I'm aware printing on A2 is extremely expensive for you, and this is quite the project, but keep it below 300 quid, and I'm in. Also: a textless version would be best IMHO for graphical reasons as well as the buyer then being able to hang it on the wall in different angles. We could even be ultra cool and turn the portrait view upside down to make make-do lefties. Congrats!

Add to that that you're the first person who has been this positive about it. Everyone else was fumingraging.

What AnAnInginAneAnA said. Me, I haven't played the 70s P, but have owned 4 Classic Vibes, 2* 60s J and 2* 50s P, and except for one easily rectified detail on one of them, all were very impressive instruments and very good value for the money. Reportedly, they can be bought untested as to build quality in itself. Me, I'd lightly sand the neck if needed - initially with some oiled 1200 sandpaper, and than going to 600 or 300 if needed. Reportedly, two areas of potential are the pups and the tuners. Personally, I felt no need for those upgrades, but then I'm no bass guitar player.

Hey! What are you doing, calling Silvia "Silvia"? As a BC member you are bound by the forum rules, and you have to call her "Sylvia"! Everyone else complies!

IMHO profanity filters stem from a kind of philosophy that I strongly disagree with, to put it very, very mildly. I love your "tea under the pier ar Brighton" though.

rock: Yes: Close to the Edge jazz: Miles Davis: beaches Brew ------- Edit: profanity filter at work! It's really B I T C H E S . B R E W Gazillions of other faves, but these two have a special place to me due to their place in my personal music history.

May have found a bug that is not listed yet (i did a search, but did not read the whole thread). Scrolling through a thread, using the mouse wheel whilst the mouse pointer was at the right side of the screen, a post author's user name appeared as: [e-mail address suppressed] or similar. The user was called M@23 if I remember correctly. I seem to remember that hovering the mouse pointer over the name then revealed the user name, after which it stayed there - also after more scrolling and hovering. Will report back if I see it again.

Oh! Luvverly choice! Are you aware of the other two in the same series? In case, they're "Jazz på ryska" with Arne Domnérus and Georg Riedel, and "Jazz på ungerska" with Svend Asmussen. I think I remember loving two of the three mostly, but "Jazz på svenska" was the first and will remain a fave of sorts as it introduced me to that style. BTW, "svenska" means Swedish, "ryska" means Russian, and "ungerska" means Hungarian.

I don't think so. Why would it be? To me it's more like: if you want to paint the Mona Lisa in Renaissance style, then it might be an idea to not use green for Lisa's skin tone.

Ha! Parts of the tongue. I liked that, as I feel that it might be a perfect comparison as it says something about the physical sensitivities before you even talk about the psychological sensitivities - what one is used to, what is experienced as relevant etc. Consecutive fifths were physically a stomach-turning abomination to my ears when I was young. Then I started using them willingly and a lot - but in new music rather than the original baroque environment that had formed my sensitivities. Interestingly (to me at least), when heard in medieval and Renaissance music, they do not turn my stomach so much as invoke a little smile about the naïvité of old music. BTW, I lurv medieval and Renaissance music. But to this day, a melodic line 4 - 3 - 1 in a Major key, as heard in a lot of popular music, still turns my stomach, and though I wish to be open-minded, I never manage to free myself from the notion that the composer of those three notes should've avoided them with a vengeance (polite wording here ). Not to say I delete those songs from my iPod though.

I hate you so much right now! Now I'll have to listen to the coddemn song!

I suspect you and I might be more on the same line than I initially thought. When I wrote the sentence you quoted, I was not trying to refer to composing by numbers, but to the ability to know in advance how the target audience would respond to (new or old) ways of doing things. Playing what you like yourself, and what you feel is expressing the message effectively, then is one good method amongst several. BTW. to me there is no qualitative difference between someone feeling that say the IV-I is a good idea and someone who was taught in college why IV-I could be a good idea. The first person supposedly has the same good ears as the second person, but the second person probably in addition has been told why this is. The first person presumably found the chords on his guitar and saw it was good, where the second person maybe would say beforehand: "I'm gonna opt for the IV-I in this song". The first person remembers it too, and says the same thing the next time. An important factor, to me, in discussing these things is what one understands the term "the rules" to mean, and I willingly use quotation marks consistently for that term when used in certain meanings. To me, "rules" are not commands about how to write music, and are very far from commands about composing by numbers, but are gathered wisdom about what musical elements have what effect on which listener". As an old and maybe still used example: nobody ever commands you to use a tritone interval in the fourth bar but not in the seventh . but the "rules" do state that our world's shared musical experience tells us that this interval has a certain tension in it that to certain listeners, and in certain musical styles, demands to be resolved - or might be experienced as daunting or ugly in certain circumstances. After that, the composer decides freely to use it or not, and in case how. Rules (without quotation marks) do exist though. Say if you want to write a baroque fugue, then you're probably gonna look up what baroque theorists demanded from a fugue. But that I think is outside of what we're discussing here. More could be said about different types of rules, but I'll only mention the analytical patterns one has found in hindsight when analysing music of days yonder. These rules do not tell you what you should do, but what others have done before you. Enough!

The problem with that notion, I personally think, is that while it's true, it's not the whole truth. Yes, different people have different sensitivities to different things in music (that, I think is your "it's all subjective" bit), but also: some people's ears perform on a higher level than others'. Taste comes in to it, as does getting used to (for example I used to hate hard rock music 45-50 years ago before I heard Deep Purple, but now love death metal too). Most people also have a shared sense for most of the musical forces that are at play, and that's why we for example mostly see regular songs ending in V-I. One could of course go on and on about this, but I assume you get the gist. However, there is no such thing as THE expected in that given situation, as in that there's one option only. As an example I've often written a certain type of church music that for music psychology reasons ended in a IV-I instead as it puts the expected listener in a different state of mind. A pro knows what tools to use to generate certain responses, whilst many composers do not. Example at the bottom. When Prince or other composers create a song, they're essentially working with music psychology - out of what we know about (Western) man's response to certain musical information. Somebody like Prince (in my personal, not generally valid, view), when he wants to invoke certain responses from certain audiences (maybe his own fanatic fans or maybe the generic radio listener), is better than some other composers at choosing melodies, rhythms and harmonic developments so that his musical language is at its most effective in reaching those goals. "Expected in that given situation" does exist, I agree, but is more about that V-I ending and similar harmonic development powers, and about melodic and rhythmic expectancies too, and less about whether one wants to write certain songs and which tools to choose for those songs to be effective at reaching the goal. The people who wrote about "I'm a Barbie Girl" were IMO very effective in that particular endeavour, and I love the song, but I also strongly suspect that they would hardly be able to write a Prince song. People like Zappa OTOH would improvisingly create a new song live without too much insecurity and miscommunication. One would use that which is common music knowledge as a tool to fill out the idea that one of the players (say Zappa himself) started with, but the resulting song would most probably lack finesse or an overall coherence of every element within. I think a lot of jazz might be within the processes I try to describe here. Here's an example of music that I think might be "perfect" as to following all the "rules" (though I can't bear listening to it long enough to even check and I also seriously doubt that they're able at all), but it also shows that this band lacks everything in the departments of control, finesse or even a deeper awareness of what the "rules" are - beyond the most rudimentary. Listen at your own risk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKFDHbP7R50

It's very late - during a terrible, sleepless night - but I'll try from my personal perspective. To me it's about how the music has a certain flowing, waving character with perfect placement of rhythmic and chordal elements. I think I hear how Prince really hears the musical driving forces in his head before writing them down, and feels them with great sensitivity and sense of balance. With many other hit artists, I think I hear how they struggle with the material and are not really able to convey more than a rough idea (nice and great as that may be, and my iPod is filled with them), and many artists lend their often called "unique sound" from their severe limitations. Not so with Prince. He reminds me of Mozart and partially of Green Gartside (Scritti Politti). This post should've been much longer and with analytical depth, but I have to give up now. Hope it helps somewhat.

Nope. Sustain is in the fingers.

, but that is actually what worries me most about this thread, and it had felt better to me as a Norse Dutchman, if this group hug / top man thing had been less prominent. But I knew there was a considerable risk that that would happen on a British forum, and I felt I had to accept that before even starting to write. Writing this OP was more important than avoiding these likely consequences. At the same time, and at several levels, it's also very heartwarming and highly appreciated, so this really is a mixed bag to me. To compensate though, I stand by my views in several of that "talented" topic's elements, and as such am still the condescending tw*t that some people always have known that I am. I'm not sorry for having a strong opinion about Bassman7755's stance in the matter, but I'm sorry for having invoked the Dunning-Krueger effect about people whom I know little about, and who are not part in the "treating talents badly" thing I wrote about in a later post.