EliasMooseblaster

[quote name='AntLockyer' timestamp='1452095967' post='2946357'] Still no idea how that is ever going to apply to a musical situation though. Is anyone ever going to say it is a II, V, 1 in D Dorian? [/quote] Think of it more as opening up your options. For example, compare the Phrygian with the minor pentatonic: the same notes appear in both scales, but the Phrygian gives you some very colourful extras in between. So the next time you get called upon to take a bass solo at your local blues jam, you could always whip that out and give them a surprise!

Buggers. This will be the second - possibly third - year that I'll be unable to go due to gig commitments. It's starting to make me wonder if the reason we get booked at that time of year is because every other band is out of action due to the absence of their bassist!

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1452091689' post='2946286'] But... er... notes are always in the same place, aren't they? [/quote] Not if I fiddle with your tuners before you go onstage! [/maniacal laughter]

Seven, of which four currently see regular gigging action. I usually take a 4-string and my (only) 8-string along to a gig - I think there were only a few Cherry White gigs last year where I didn't need the HB-8 for at least one song. The choice of 4 has lately been between the Thunderbird and the Epi SG, and sometimes the Schecter Model T if I'm in the mood for something brighter.

[quote name='bluejay' timestamp='1452067149' post='2945957'] I have always thought of my basses as male - probably because the name is masculine in Italian; they say 'il basso', not 'la chitarra bassa'. (Italian has no neuter gender.) [/quote] Interesting...I wonder what the split is like across the different European languages. I'm fairly sure a bass is feminine in both French and German. Edit: The plot thickens. "Bass" is masculine in German, though "guitar" is feminine, so a bass guitar is feminine by association.

[quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1452088659' post='2946248'] If you want to explore it a bit further, you can do the same with any 7-note scale - the Altered Scale beloved of many Jazz players is actually the 7th mode of the (ascending) Melodic minor scale. [/quote] See also the use of fifth mode of the harmonic minor (sometimes referred to as the "Dominant Phrygian") in [i]Gates of Babylon [/i]by Rainbow. Apparently Ritchie Blackmore is very fond of that particular mode.

[quote name='Machines' timestamp='1452084883' post='2946194'] I tried out a 2012 Gibson Grabber in PMT last week. It was without doubt the worst sounding bass i've ever played. 3 x single coils, of which they can only be set on a 3 way as bridge + middle / all 3 and neck / middle pickups. The wide spacing of the pickups meant a very muddy sound I could not get any real definition from it, slap was out of the question. [/quote] [quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1452087767' post='2946234'] That's the same as the wiring on a three pickup Les Paul. Very odd way to do it. [/quote] You have to wonder what precisely stopped them looking at a Fender Stratocaster and having a lightbulb moment...

Never got round to naming my guitars, but my basses? Brenda, Christina, Jo, Aradia, Vriska, Annie, and I recently part-ex'ed Eva for Simone. Is it sexist to give them all female names?

Is there any way for you to hear the raw signal coming out of the Boss? Even with a neutral EQ, every amp will 'colour' the sound it receives to some extent, so there's a good chance the good sound coming out of the amp may be surprisingly different from the signal going in! You're probably right to try and keep your signal chain as uncluttered as possible. I'd be tempted to take the EQ pedal out of it and try to capture as much signal as possible. Then play around with whichever compression and EQ plugins came with Sonar to try and get the signal from the Boss to sound a bit more to your liking.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1451864432' post='2944219'] That in itself sounds great. Collecting royalties as opposed to straight gig making someone else rich. Blue [/quote] I suspect the modest nature of her income may give clues as to where the rest of the money was going! She was by no means an independent artist at the time, so it's highly likely that various managers and label types were enjoying a far more lucrative share of it than she was...

I learnt keys before I picked up the bass; I'm very grateful to this day that my piano teacher was a big jazz enthusiast as he planted some very crucial seeds of music theory, which were incredibly useful when I was trying to master the bass under my own steam. I suspect that it may not translate back the other way quite so well, but a lot of the theory you already know may become a lot more obvious when you're forced to think more about the scales and intervals, as you will be when working things out on a keyboard. Compared to a guitar, it is a bit like having a big, linear map of all the possibilities, and I'll echo RhysP's sentiments above regarding writing on a keyboard - it does break you out of familiar shapes and 'boxes' quite effectively!

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1451756363' post='2943158'] They'll tell you stories about a [b]chart act paying £150 a night..and that is someone who has a string of hits.[/b]..?? [/quote] Must admit, this doesn't surprise me all that much - there's obviously a public misconception that if you're having hits then you'll be sleeping on a mattress made of banknotes, which can be quite misleading. Our singer was a pretty big deal back in Lithuania (still is, really - when she visits home there will be people calling up for interviews about her new life in London), but told us about people recognising her whilst looking through the discount section of a clothes shop, and having to explain that actually, royalties from record sales weren't paying much more than she'd have got from a regular office job.

Anybody fancy welcoming the new year with a bit of gratuitous 8-string bass action? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluoaNi1LBg

I'm not sure whether I really like "classic rock" all that much myself...or at least, I'm very selective. More than one person has suggested the offender in this story has been listening with his eyes, and I think my problem with "classic" rock is that a large chunk of its audience have become incredibly conservative about what they deem to be "correct*" - i.e., thou shalt play only Fender/Gibson/Rick, thou shalt play an SVT, thou shalt run it into a back-breaking fridge of a cab, thou shalt use the word "party" as a verb. For a genre that was supposed to be all about breaking the rules, it's amazing how many unwritten ones they've put in place. I say this as somebody who's perfectly happy to run a valve head hell-for-leather, but is very aware that it's personal preference. If you like your MarkBass amp then just ignore him! [size=2]*See [url="https://thecrowfrombelow.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/living-in-the-past/"]https://thecrowfromb...ng-in-the-past/[/url] for a longer rant on that subject...[/size]

For the time being, count me in! Hopefully I won't have to pull out of this one as well.

[quote name='PaulWarning' timestamp='1451676395' post='2942396'] never really thought about the P having the pick ups 'the wrong way round', I'm sure Leo had his reasons and it isn't something he did accidentally, seems to work ok, it is the best selling bass, in the world. [/quote] It is that, and I certainly wouldn't say the original configuration sounded bad. Mainly I just imagine it would be nice to have a bit more growl on the lower notes, and a slightly more rounded tone on the higher ones. I've never actually tried one with a reversed pickup, but I gather that Hoppus bass was very well-received at a bass bash recently.

I got shot of a lot of mine through the Recycling forum: http://basschat.co.uk/topic/265281-to-go-used-rotosound-swing-bass-nickels/ There's plenty of people on here who are happy to take a set of deadened rounds of you!

There's always GIMP - Gnu's free, open source equivalent to Photoshop. It's available for Windows and Linux so I'd be surprised if you can't find a Mac OS port.

I know plenty of you hate it, but I love the Precision design for its simplicity. The one thing that does irk me about it, however, is the control cavity. I've just had to remove 13 screws (well, 12 since I lost one) in order to pop off the scratch plate and find out why my tone pot's crackling. Leo and co managed to solve this problem on the Jazz (and even the Telecaster before that) by having a separate control plate - so why didn't they think to update the Precision's design for ease of access? Alternatively, tell me what grinds your gears about your favoured axes.

Early video footage suggests a P bass, and a right-hand position over the top of the neck. I have heard talk of knackered rounds being used (though flats would probably do the trick), and I believe Laney were Sabbath's amps of choice, being built in the local area as they were.

1. Will I need to know any notes besides G, C or D? 2. Are all your gigs on my local bus route? 3. Can you ensure all gigs finish in enough time for me to be home by 11? 4. Are any of the venues less than 500yds from a school, park or playground? [size=2](http://weinterrupt.com/2013/04/bassists-craigslist-ad-could-be-funniest-ever-goes-viral/ for those scratching their heads as to the reference!)[/size]

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1450865129' post='2936463'] Sorry Ralph, but I have to pick you up on that. The whole reason for England's obsession with class is that England more-or-less invented the whole concept and did so WAY before anyone else followed on. The Industrial Revolution was something that happened at different times in different places. It happened first in England (mid-18th century) largely because a substantial, wealthy, well-established Middle Class had already existed for well over a century by then, and had pretty much taken over running the country in the mid-17th century by winning a Civil War against the aristocracy. By the mid-19th century, when England's innovation was being actively copied across Europe and others were having their own Industrial Revolutions, the Middle Class in Spain, France and Germany was relatively small and politically weak. The appalling destruction of the wars of the 20th century also destroyed any chance of class becoming an obsession in those countries. Meanwhile in England the class structure which had emerged in the 1640s sailed sublimely on, virtually untouched by three centuries of upheaval and becoming progressively more and more ingrained. [/lecture] [/quote] Not at all, I suspected the seams would show on my limited knowledge! (Must admit I'd always thought even the civil war was fought between two different factions of the aristocracy, so thank you for correcting me on that... )

You could always do the first album that way, and then open up the floor for everyone else's input when you come to write a new set of material - didn't do the Foo Fighters any harm! Like that first sound clip, by the way, it's got a nice groove going on!

That is lovely...I'd normally make a facetious comment about routing the front pickup slot to take a Precision split coil, but then reading Jack's criteria, it occurred to me that my only acquisition this year was a fretless Jazz. (Fender, mind you, not one of these trendy names I can't pronounce!)

[quote name='Doctor J' timestamp='1450824589' post='2936298'] Although I was born in the UK, I grew up elsewhere and this fascination with supposed "class" is equally fascinating and baffling. From the outside looking in it looks like a self-imposed categorisation which doesn't exist except in the minds of those who subscribe to the notion. I can't think of any other country where the social origin they were born into in would be factored into the potential or authenticity of a band. It's an amazing concept to think of yourself in that way. [/quote] Just to make it even more baffling/fascinating, we still insist on basing the categories on a system which had already been compromised by the Industrial Revolution. My understanding (disclaimer: GCSE History, so I'm happy to be corrected on the details as it was a while ago) is that originally Britain had a Ruling or "Upper" Class, who owned and inherited the land, and a Working Class, who worked on said land ([i]very[/i] broadly speaking). There would have been a small and rather limited group in between the two (guess what they were called) who had managed to drag themselves out of serfdom by whatever good fortune, but who were disliked by the Upper Classes, who saw them as "new money," which was greatly inferior to inheriting your money - contrast that with today's attitudes! The Industrial Revolution is usually cited as the point at which this Middle Class started to grow, and become much more influential. At some point during the 20th Century, it became quite clear that these three strata were inadequate to describe all the different echelons of society, particularly as very wealthy businessmen were emerging from "middle class" backgrounds, but couldn't be described as "upper class" because they had worked for their fortune. What about those who were working in technical, non-manual jobs, but not necessarily with the level of remuneration that would give them the typical comfort associated with being "middle class?" So terms like "upper middle class" and "lower middle class" got bandied about, however informally. "Middle class" now covers such a colossal section of British society that, whichever prefix you tack onto it, it's pretty much meaningless. [quote name='Drax' timestamp='1450859336' post='2936409'] Back to the OP, do the media really persist in the notion that working class bands are more legitimate? Struggling to think of a successful band* in the last 10yrs the media would label 'working class'.. *band - not solo urban acts [/quote] Very good point, actually - as someone pointed out above, Florence Welch, James Blunt would be laughed out of court if they pretended to be working class (just look at Jamie Oliver), but there does seem to be a requirement that urban/grime/dubstep artists should be "street."