ambient

Yep.

Why I love Logic Pro, though I’m sure other DAWs will do the same. I’ve been doing a remote session for a guy over the last day or so. It’s a kind of prog-rock thing in 7/4, very, very minimal percussion and drums. All he sent me was a WAV of the track. I imported it into Logic Pro, and using the tempo detect the tempo fluctuates quite a lot. So just playing along and recording was ridiculous. There are piano stabs at the start of each bar that you need to hit, which isn’t easy when they don’t fall exactly where you anticipate them. They were only maybe a fraction of a second out, but it sounds messy if you don’t get them exact. The tempo detect function though will not only detect the tempo but also add a click to record along with.

I thought we weren't allowed to mention it?

Thomman used to be my first port of call for most things. Alas not so now, something happened in late June last year that has seen their prices rise so they're no longer as competitive as they were. Could it be that their stock turns around faster than a lot of smaller UK shops, so the prices we're seeing are reflecting the lower value of the pound?

We all have our own preferences I guess. A 125 is what you'd find with those strings in a set. Personally I use a 110 B string on a 6 string bass, I tend to buy a 4 string heavy set and then buy lighter G and C strings. At the end of the day it's what you play and how you play. I do a lot of chordal stuff, and find that very light gauge works well for that. It obviously wouldn't work for other types of playing.

Amazon sell separate D'Addario strings, just buy maybe a 125, 105, 085, 065, or whatever your preferred gauges are.

How old is Tony Levin?

Michael Manring’s Soliloquy, and Steve Lawson’s behind every word. Those two albums opened my eyes to what bass can do. I was never really interested in playing bass as a ‘bass’, always more as an instrument, then I realised that you could. I’m now of the opinion that a groove is something you get stuck in, and should be avoided at all costs 😊.

The one jazz band I play in is made up of guys all in their 70s. This is Les, my student.

Slightly off topic. Did anyone see the news last night, the 84 year old lady sprinter? Music I think is brilliant for mental agility.

You don’t know him! His lady friend is about 30 years his junior 😊

One of my students was 80 in September. He's actually out of all my students the most dedicated. We're currently doing chord melody jazz stuff. He saw me showing off a few weeks ago, and wanted to learn how to do it. He's also getting a 5 string after Christmas. You're never too old.

It does do things a little differently. I'm like where's that?????? I end up posting on Facebook and the legion of people I know who use it come to my aid. I'm really just using it for diffusion. I spent last night bouncing 14 tracks down and importing them into a Reaper project that I've got to take into uni later for a tutorial. Reaper's multichannel capabilities are amazing, especially when combined with some of the GRM plugins. Really, I just need to spend more time with it.

I know, I can do all that in Logic Pro in the blink of an eye, but I really struggle to do anything with Reaper. It just does odd things. Take importing audio files, in Logic pro you click 'file', down comes a drop menu, and you'd click 'import audio'. Nice and simple, plus it would drop the audio file at the start of the arrange window, whereas Reaper it's the 'insert' button that you click on, and 'media type', so not to me at least intuitive, plus when you import an audio file or media type as it calls it, it doesn't automatically drop it at the start, unless you tell the curser to go back to the beginning each time, it'll drop it at the end of the previous file. If you're recording into it, you have to switch on monitoring. Logic Pro automatically creates a folder for each project and saves the files for that project there, Reaper doesn't do that, at least not automatically. To me at least it's a lot of messing about. I do all my recording/composing in Logic Pro, I'm also doing stuff analogue too, on tape, and editing the sound files, that's done in Logic Pro. Logic also comes with a massive library of sounds, a huge library including drums, orchestral, a fantastic array of synths and keyboards and they're really excellent. I've bought other libraries, mainly from Spitfire audio to augment the ones that came with it, and they integrate ever so easily into Logic. So if you want to get into composition, rather than just audio recording then it really is an amazing bargain.

Do you think he'd have been better? I'm not so sure, though I'm really not an expert on that particular genre, it's not really something I'm into. I'd have thought though that he maybe had too much of his own sound for the Stones? I heard a live album by Annie Lennox a while ago, and knew straight away who it was playing bass on it. I think some players can 'just fit in', others are booked for what they individually bring with them, ie sound etc.

Possibly not, but he's played on a few: http://www.dougwimbish.com/disco2.html

I'm struggling with Reaper, it just doesn't to me at least seem logical or at intuitive. I've used Logic Pro for years and years, I'm just very used to it. I'm having to use Reaper for my postgrad course, it seems to be the DAW of choice for many electroacoustic composers, mainly due to it's multichannel diffusion capabilities. Reaper is cheap though. For me the best value is Logic Pro, that's amazing value.

It's what he does.