ambient

He’s been away for quite some time now.

I know Mark is away. I don’t know who’s running it for him.

I can yes. That side of playing has always interested me. I started off as a kid playing violin, then classical guitar. When I switched to playing bass about 13 or 14, I just assumed that you had to read. My MMus was a mixed composition/performance course. I started using extended performance notation that even the greatest sight reader would struggle to read and play at the same time. I’m currently using TAB to notate some of my solo bass stuff. Standard notation doesn’t easily work with it, I’m using different tunings and harmonics. I bought a 6 line TAB book.

I tend to use my fingers.

I think what you don’t like about the sound is the reason people do. The envelope of the sound and the click is I think why people use them. I’m not a pick player. The only time I’ve ever used one was at uni, and that was spectacularly unsuccessful. The thing fell out of my fingers mid song and landed at the feet of the examiner.

If you don’t like the sound of a pick then don’t use one.

If you really want a Fender then buy used. I’m of the opinion that they’ve always been massively overpriced anyway.

There’s an hour or so you won’t get back.

I like Pearl Jam, especially Jeff Ament’s playing. I don’t see the point in smashing up gear. There’s a lot of people would love to own a decent instrument but can’t afford it.

She could retune it. Depending on the setup, she might have a bit of fret noise, but I don’t reset my instrument up every time I change tuning.

If she’s comfortable with it then why not? Why would she need to adjust at some time? I don’t get that. A lot of the metal bassists use non-standard tunings. I find strings will accept quite a bit extra tuning. My is currently tuned C F Bb Eb G C, I also use B G B D A D, and other tunings where the strings are higher than standard tuning. I love the way a bass takes on a different character when it’s tuned differently. If it works for you then do it.

I sold some cables to Jim. A very straightforward transaction, no problem at all.

Had an excellent experience selling a gig bag to Mike.

forScore works well. You can organise your charts into set lists etc.

My bass is currently strung with: .100, .075, .055, .045, .029, .020. For me this works well. Just try a few gauges, see what works best for you.

Excerpts of some recently recorded stuff set to some photos from recent travels. All recorded in real time with no editing.

That’s a very good point there about backing up. I had a panic moment toward the end of my PhD work when I thought I’d lost the stuff I’d recorded over three very long years. Luckily it wasn’t lost. I learned my lesson though, and bought separate hard drive. I use iCloud too. it must be fascinating listening back to your old material. There’s something about recorded sound that I think is more nostalgia inducing than anything else.

I ran a workshop for a group of music students on mastering recently. You're welcome to my Keynote slides and the handout I produced for them.

I’ve read that a few times. I take it with a very large pinch of salt. When I was a student I was practicing for between 12 and 14 hours pretty much every day that I wasn’t in uni, that was for three years. I’ve easily gone past the 10,000 hours, I’m certainly not a master.