paul_c2

OK no worries, I obviously misinterpreted "It could be argued that if you simply follow convention you will end up with nothing new. "

Fender stuff has been available in Lake Placid Blue for a while?? Is the fact a US made one is now blue, an exciting thing? Personally for me, making different colours available/non-available isn't a deciding factor in choosing a guitar ( I guess), I'd just look at the range of colours and decide on the one I liked the look of. I guess if it were only available in one, minging, colour (which I guess could happen if there were limited availability and shopping secondhand, or left-handed etc) then I might just decide not to buy.

But the two aren't mutually exclusive - you can be "creative" AND know how to read music. One does not prevent the other from occurring.

Its already been explained to you. A bar of music contains a fixed (according to the time signature) number of notes. If it didn't, and you simply put extra notes into one bar because they're tied over to the next bar, it would no longer serve its purpose as a bar. By ensuring the bar contains the correct duration of notes (and/or rests) it makes it much easier to follow and play.

It actually makes complete sense - and your idea of a chromatic notation is pretty daft - for music which is based on some kind of diatonic scale or reasonably closely related to it.

What would happen is it would confuse the musicians who are expecting each bar (of, for example, 4/4) to contain 4x crotchets, instead of 6. And also what would you put into the next bar? Just two crotchets? The way it would be done properly, so it could be understood, is to have one bar of 6/4 then one bar of 2/4. But its an inelegant way to do it, requires more thinking time, and looks messier. At the end of the day the standard notation is merely a tool for communicating the music to the people expected to play it. And if sight reading, or reading/playing it after not too much practice (which often happens in commercial and recording situations), you want the sheet music to be laid out according to the standardised rules, as easy to follow as possible, and not cause or introduce any issues of its own.

The circle of fifths is your friend. In addition to listing the key signatures in order of increasing sharps/flats depending on the direction, you'll notice that this is the same order (albeit displaced) the sharps/flats occur in. It has other uses too, and once some of the elements of music theory "click into place" it can be applied to many other areas.

That's syncopation, and is distinctive in that some/all notes deliberately don't fall on "the pulse" as defined by the time signature. But it still requires a time signature to communicate to the musician where the (silent, possibly, if nobody is playing on it) pulse is. In theory you could rewrite each time it occurs by eg 1 bar of 6/4 then 1 bar of 2/4 but in practice if you did that, it would end up a complete mess and be much harder to read/understand.

I hear you, brother:

How far away from Back Alley Music in Mold are you?

It would depend how good your "ear" is already - the OP has been playing for a few years and has played guitar for longer. I'd not disagree that playing by ear is important but if it were already quite well developed, then time would be better spent learning to read music, than a marginal improvement in playing by ear. Its all relative; what's more, its difficult to know yourself where your own weaknesses are (so its kinda a hint at formal lessons too, or discipline if self taught).

Interesting developments on this thread. I don't necessarily keep up-to-date with all the developments in the industry so, while I appreciate any company no matter its size could end up vulnerable, I didn't know Fender was particularly in trouble. It seems, instrument sales have gone up and up to the point of oversupply (when I was a kid, most people had 1 (bass) guitar, nowadays it seems most people have >1 guitar); and that Fender's breadth of range and prices thus far, have kept them reasonably competitive. I guess we in the UK are something of an anomoly partly due to the £ vs Euro/dollar rate influencing prices. Also I'd disassociate myself with any pro-Fender vs anti-Fender sentiments - I fully understand that different things appeal to different people. And I sense I'm not a typical buyer, having only really bought one bass in the past 30 years! My instinct is that there's a place for an original (and an original but updated) bass guitar line (and electric guitars too) because unlike "high tech" stuff (for example, cars, operating systems, etc) there is nothing massively wrong with the design, they "got it right".

By sheer chance, I recently bought a teaspoon for £1800. I was assured, it was a vintage-replica teaspoon with the '54 correct curvature of the handle.

For balance, last Saturday I played the theme tune from "Tom and Jerry" on a Fender Jazz.

Define "similar" - is it just based on specification, or are you considering other factors too?

I am probably the worst person to answer your questions, but I bought my first bass about 30 years ago and only recently bought another one. I loathe going to music shops and trying out instruments. Oh, and I also bought another amp recently, purely as a spare. But now I'm thinking of selling it again simply because it doesn't get used and is too heavy. When I bought the 2nd bass I did a fairly extensive search for one, with no success - they were either not in stock, or (secondhand) overinflated prices. In the end I took a chance and bought one online....from Japan (I am in the UK), obviously I didn't have a chance to try it out. I am completely uninterested in equipment and just like playing it, any bass really. And I have no illusion that a bass that "plays like butter" will inspire me to play better. Focused practicing will make me play better.

My experience is different. I'd say about 60-70% of the stuff is well thought out, the remaining has a range of quirks from few to 'loads'. I've only ever been tempted to play something other than the given bassline when its quite a boring one which could obviously benefit from some variation or ornamentation; and only then, once I've played through the song at least once, to understand where the others might have a solo or distinctive line.

100% agree. I see Fender - not in a bad way - as the "Vauxhall Astra" of guitar manufacturers. They are high-volume, middle of the road, dependable. Yes there's more interesting/exotic stuff out there, but its irrelevant for much of the time. I can't really specifically comment on their most recent financial status or the new prices, because I've always been the kind of person to buy used. Guitars don't really "wear out", or go out of date, well not in the same way as eg cars or operating systems, and s/h prices are better than new, so it just makes sense. Yes, I have a Fender too (of course!). And yes, I did try a number of other basses, before choosing Fender.

I would spend most of it on alcohol and women; and waste the rest. With care, £2000 could be stretched out to cover the entire weekend. If it was not looking possible, then a single day of fun it would be.

Someone remind me, what was the series of fairly standard, US-made guitars called which was dropped just prior to the "American Professional" being launched? I have a sneaky suspicion the "Brand New American Original Series!" isn't actually a completely brand new idea (although of course the guitars themselves will be new, not secondhand etc).

Vaguely similar to the "So What Chord": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_What_chord

That utility is great but incomplete because it doesn't seem to recognise quartal harmony. It assumes, along with 99.9% of musicians, that chords are based on stacked thirds (which is a reasonable assumption to make 99.9% of the time - but not 100% of the time!)

Yes, given the lack of availability of basses at the time, and (what I consider) some people's overinflated opinion of what their bass is worth. PS sorry for the late reply.

I can't claim to have an encyclaepedic knowledge of big bands, but from what I've heard so far Buddy Rich and his band are, IMHO, the pinnacle of high achievement and something to aspire to. I know his character was, errrr, "interesting" but so what? I am intelligent enough to take inspiration from the subset of his activities which I admire (ie the music) and not copy his band management style and expect equal success there.

It would be interesting to do a blind listening test; one with a passage played with fingers, the other played with thumb + a little bit of an EQ tweak.