thisnameistaken

Are you thinking of buying one on the basis of whether or not you'd be the only person in the UK to have one, or trying to find an aesthetic match for Toneczar pedals? For the record: No, I don't know anyone who's got one. They look the business though, and I like the design philosophy, but I've never heard one.

[url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7468837.stm"]Topical contribution from the BBC[/url].

Mine was an old "Satellite" JapCrap Jazz copy. Sunburst (nice, actually!), tort guard, block inlays, but on a plywood body. Paid £50 for it in McGrane's in Leeds (don't think it's still there, used to be just around the corner from the Leeds Grand). I managed to drop it and snap an ear off one of the machines so I threw it out of my window and set fire to it, which in hindsight may have been a bit of an overreaction. So no, I no longer have it but a friend of mine's still got part of the fingerboard.

It's that busker in Barcelona again. I emptied my wallet in his direction last summer, great player.

Have to admit Toto is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. I don't usually know it's them, but if I find an MOR tune that I actually quite like in a private sort-of way it always turns out to be Toto. Whereas I'll actually admit to liking ELO. Yeah I know.

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='223062' date='Jun 20 2008, 04:22 PM']My own studies of composition have revealed that one of my problems, one of the barriers to my producing anything of value, is my overwhelming desire to complicate things, to look for complex harmonies, melodies and rhythms; in short, to be 'clever'.[/quote] Glad it's not just me. I usually start out with good melodic ideas with no real consideration for how "clever" they are, but as soon as I sit down and try to develop them I end up in exactly that situation. More stuff gets binned for that reason than for being a crap idea in the first place.

[quote name='lowhand_mike' post='222864' date='Jun 20 2008, 01:04 PM']with originals you are creative in the first but then once the song is down you must become totally restriced to the song you have written.[/quote] I've found usually songs start out rigid but actually get less well-defined the more they are played. Unless you're playing to a click because some parts on a computer or DAT or whatever - I don't imagine that's much fun.

I suppose I'd either give up playing bass or look for a U2 tribute band.

[quote name='jakesbass' post='222477' date='Jun 19 2008, 08:48 PM']Heady claims indeed, can we show a little modesty please, I've been talking out of my arse here for months now and have only recently achieved the kind of status you are laying claim to.[/quote] That's because you've spent so much of your time trying to reproduce other peoples' arse chatter, whereas I've been painstakingly honing my 100% original bollock-talking skills the whole time.

My apologies for being such a self-righteous bollock-talker. I don't recall doing any mud-slinging at cover bands so I'm curious as to why all this ire is directed at me - maybe I've struck some raw nerves. Anyway I'll join in the fun by conceding that cover bands do have an important job to do as retirement homes for former musicians.

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='222281' date='Jun 19 2008, 04:30 PM']Whilst I accept ianrunci's point about stagecraft, I do believe that working only in covers bands and neglecting a more directly creative impulse is counter-productive in terms of developing as a potential artist.[/quote] Actually I would also argue that "stagecraft" (rather fluffy word, that, excuse me) would develop more quickly in a band doing originals. With a function band you're guaranteed a room full of punters. Chances are most of them won't have any particular taste in music and won't often actively seek out live music so they'll probably be more appreciative generally of what you're doing, and they'll know the songs you're playing so you don't need to sell them on anything. Doing originals you're sometimes lucky to have an audience at all, and if you do get people in they're likely to be music listeners with their own well-defined tastes, so they'll be more difficult to please. And if they haven't heard your stuff before then that's going to be a hard sell. Maybe in a function band you learn to be slicker, but I think putting up with the struggles of doing originals will give you a better feel for working an audience.

[quote name='ianrunci' post='222088' date='Jun 19 2008, 01:02 PM']I would agree there isn't much nobility in playing in a covers band but then again their isn't much either in continuing to churn out garbage original material that no one wants to listen to.[/quote] Chances are they'll get better. They wouldn't get better if they weren't at least trying to produce their own material. [quote name='ianrunci' post='222088' date='Jun 19 2008, 01:02 PM']I see lots of original bands on the curcuit but I don't see much originality, most of their material is the same old rehashed stuff we have been listening to in one form or another for the last 40 years or so. If you believe that just by saying I'm not going to play covers and instead churn out crap songs because I am no good at writing original material then you are certainly entitled to that opinion.[/quote] So we should all give up trying to do anything new and stick to playing other peoples' old tunes over and over again, because anything new's going to be derivative anyway? [quote name='ianrunci' post='222088' date='Jun 19 2008, 01:02 PM']Personally like a few posters on this forum have stated, I just like playing the bass and just because I play other peoples bass lines doesn't give me less integrity than them in my opinion.[/quote] But does it make you less creative than someone who plays their own music? And more to the point, will it lead to you becoming less creative generally because you're not actively being creative now? Are you even bothered about your own creativity if - as you say - you "just like playing the bass"? [quote name='ianrunci' post='222088' date='Jun 19 2008, 01:02 PM']I find many original artists a bit stuck up their own arse, convinced that their material is the dogs bollox when 9 times out of ten its mediocre at best.[/quote] I find many cover bands to be the most unbearable anti-snobs, and most of them suck at covers too. Let's not get into mud-slinging, eh? Whether a given band is crap or not isn't really relevant to the discussion.

The Sandbergs look nice, doubt they show up on the used market very often though. I can't pay a grand for a bass. Getting a MM pup added to a Jap Fender sounds like a good idea and I hadn't thought of it, but again I'm wary of buying a new Fender and having it go completely to **** within six months like the last two did, so I'd probably want a used one just for the reassurance that someone else has already broken it in. Looks like I'm going to be scouring music shops and the web for some time...

Ah, never seen one of those. Looks just the job. I don't really trust Fender after some bad experiences with their basses in the '90s though. Have to find one to try in person rather than looking on the internets. Any other ideas?

Haven't gone above 4 strings for about... ten years, but I'm considering buying a 5. Any ideas? I think I'd like a MM pup and a P pup too - does anyone make a bass with that config? Nothing exotic-looking, something traditional preferably, pickguard maybe. And I'd rather not pay over £700. Am I basically stuck with finding a used G&L L2500? I love the sounds they've got but I find they don't look too inspiring. Bit "flat". Anything else I could look at?

[quote name='alexclaber' post='221827' date='Jun 18 2008, 11:41 PM']Oh yes, and the most important chops for a bass player are the ones everyone takes for granted yet are often so bad at - tone, timing and taste.[/quote] Big +1 At the moment I'm in the early stages of getting together a sort of stripped-down soul/r&b-based outfit and the bass stuff really is a huge challenge for me. Playing very little but right at the front of the mix, trying to outline the changes behind the vocal without stepping on it, basically being the whole song whilst being invisible and [i]still[/i] grooving. I've done funk gigs before and thought that was a good grounding for anything, but this gig requires a fraction of those chops and yet 100x more skill. Listening to lots of Pino and Hub at the moment. Huge respect for those guys

[quote name='queenofthedepths' post='221782' date='Jun 18 2008, 10:38 PM']Not at all; I quite agree with you. I was responding to thisnameistaken's argument, which struck me as more than a little flippant![/quote] I was trying to make a point about how useless analogies of that kind can be. [quote name='ianrunci' post='221755' date='Jun 18 2008, 10:07 PM']So learning shakespeare and performing it on stage doesn't make people better actors?[/quote] Actors are rarely asked to do anything but deliver lines which were written by somebody else. If all you want to do is skilfully deliver things that are written by somebody else then yes by all means learning covers is a great idea. Is that a creative exercise? My answer is still "no". What you didn't consider was that actors rarely mimic other actors, whereas musicians in cover bands routinely mimic other musicians. So again we have an analogy just doesn't work. Have you ever read a review where an actor was lauded for his accurate reproduction of Gielgud's portrayal of Hamlet? [quote name='ianrunci' post='221755' date='Jun 18 2008, 10:07 PM']To truly learn to play a complicated bassline from any record that you find difficult and challenging to play is a learning experience surely.[/quote] Sure, but does it do anything for your creativity? [quote name='ianrunci' post='221755' date='Jun 18 2008, 10:07 PM']I imagine there are only two ways to improve as a player and that is to learn challenging lines or to constantly practice scales.[/quote] I think those two exercises will improve your movement on the instrument, and would of course be a good starting point for any musician, but again I don't think they'd do much for creativity. Certainly not compared to spending the same amount of time either working on a new song or a new arrangement of an old song or even just noodling with the bass on your own. [quote name='ianrunci' post='221755' date='Jun 18 2008, 10:07 PM']I don't think there is much difference whether your playing in a cover band or playing in an original band as far as playing skills go, but when it comes to writing an interesting bassline, having a good idea of how to string one together helps. And surely it depends anyway on what covers you are learning. If you go from playing original indie music to learning tunes by Pastorios & Clarke etc then how can that not make you a better player?[/quote] Well I might be in the minority here but I don't see a hierarchy of bassists with Mani at the bottom and Stanley Clarke at the top. I always loved the stuff Bruce Foxton did on the old Jam records but I doubt he'd spent much time working out Stanley Clarke tunes. The point I'm trying to make is that for a non-professional musician like myself, the time you actually get to spend with your instrument is likely to be fairly limited, and in terms of maintaining creative skills I think learning covers is a big waste of what precious little time you can find. Yeah it might keep your chops in good order, but if you're a bass player in 99% of situations you'll be playing well within your physical limits anyway, so time spent on physically difficult stuff is IMHO time that could be better spent learning something else.

Your filter should work better if you put the compressor after it, other than that I don't have any suggestions for you. Distortion tends to sound better before a filter (when they're both on) but again, distortion tends to even out the peaks and gives the filter's envelope follower less to work with. Might be worth trying the distortion first though, depending on how much you crank it.

Still on the writing metaphor: My girlfriend reads more than anyone I know, but always has me proof-read anything she writes and asks me for spellings. Apparently all that reading hasn't been much of a help to her writing.

[quote name='peteb' post='221713' date='Jun 18 2008, 08:54 PM']Surely when you learn a cover you not only work out the bass line – to do it justice you need to have an understanding of the mechanics and arrangement of that song[/quote] Depends. As a bass player you probably don't need to know anything except the order the notes are in and what the song's supposed to sound like. Whereas you'd need a much better understanding to have written the song in the first place, so again I'll contend that playing covers is not a creative pursuit and it will not bring any benefits to other creative pursuits you may... er... pursue. [quote name='peteb' post='221713' date='Jun 18 2008, 08:54 PM']Also, it’s pretty obvious that the more you play live the better a player and performer you become[/quote] Objection, yer honour; cover bands are only one of many different types of acts which perform live.

It'll be a couple of weeks I think before I get my hands on it, but I'll no doubt be posting in here like a kid at christmas when I do.

[quote name='ianrunci' post='221645' date='Jun 18 2008, 07:01 PM']Learning new riffs is expanding your knowledge and that can only help when it comes to creating original material.[/quote] I disagree. Learning other peoples' songs only teaches you other peoples' songs. If you sat down with them and studied them in depth then maybe you'd learn something more generally useful about music, but simply lifting the line off a record and memorising it in order to repeat it in a pub at the weekend will teach you nothing. More importantly, that's time you could've spent either studying something more challenging or experimenting on your own, either of which would've had greater returns. [quote name='ianrunci' post='221645' date='Jun 18 2008, 07:01 PM']Its like an author doing an English degree, its hardly going to make his writing worse is it, quite the opposite I would presume[/quote] I would argue that dissecting a work of literature and demonstrating an understanding of it is a markedly different pursuit to memorising a bass line.

I recently ordered one of [url="http://www.martoneaudio.com/PulseSynth.htm"]these[/url] to try to cop more authentic-sounding mono synth tones - I think it will work pretty well on bass. I also ordered the "Meatwad" (Meatball clone) from him because you can turn off the envelope follower and just use it as a static filter, or sweep it with an exp. pedal. That's a pretty pricey solution though, and I can't tell you whether it works yet because they're still in the mail. Fingers crossed though! The Moog FreqBox should also be able to produce authentic synth sounds with the osc hard-synced to the input signal, but again you'd probably want a filter after it to shape it. There's also the upcoming Octavius Squeezer from Chunk Systems which will be able to do similar things. Apparently the waveform sounds from the Boss SYB pedals is pretty good too, it just doesn't track very well. Not sure what other options there are, except buying a synth. There's a few SH-101s on eBay at the moment?

[quote name='peteb' post='220825' date='Jun 17 2008, 06:38 PM']Jake, I don’t think that Gypsymoth is talking about avoiding people because of prejudice or any sort of bigotry, simply that he would rather not seek out the company of people who are a bit pretentious and take themselves too seriously[/quote] There's a large gulf between being pretentious and being discerning. I'd rather dismiss mainstream garbage for what it is and take the risk of being called pretentious by thick people, frankly. [url="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=O-kHB2fWUS8"]A bit of light relief[/url].

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='220710' date='Jun 17 2008, 04:15 PM']I am both but the industry I operate in seems to require a considerably higher number of craftsmen than artists (like most industries, I guess).[/quote] That's not necessarily such a bad thing I suppose. A band full of John Lennons or Joe Strummers would no doubt self-destruct in pretty short order. Every great artist needs quality sidemen. That's not so say I wouldn't rather be the great artist than the quality sideman, of course. Anyway, to fulfil the requirement of the thread: I think I get hired because I can play my instrument and sing a bit, but I've always contributed to the writing too. I think if I wasn't contributing any ideas beyond a bass riff per tune I would start to feel uncomfortably replacable!