Oscar South

Personally as far as funk playing goes, I found 'the funk' when I gave up all the 'funk gimmicks' (slapping, auto wah etc.) and just started to groove with my fingers and let the music breathe. A noise gate can work well in funk I found for the quick cutoff, one of the paradigms in most young bass players learning is realising that the note cutoff i pretty much as important for the groove as the attack. I spent the first five years or so of playing practicing and messing around with slapping/tapping/effects etc, now I actually do music seriously I've got rid of the crutches and 99% of the times its just fingers and EQ, all you need. [quote name='bass_ferret' post='197086' date='May 12 2008, 12:45 PM']Personally I am sick of all these I hate..., I dont like... threads that keep coming up. Its not a mature thing to post and hopefully they will grow out of it. If you must promote discussion - say what you like/love.[/quote] Doesn't grab peoples attention and incite discussion in the same way, nothing immature about expressing reasonable opinions.

Discussing a musical idea or aspect of performance with the band before a gig then having everyone else chicken out and apologise afterwards or half-arse it so I'm the only one who goes through with it and ends up looking like an idiot. Always happened with this one band as well as every time we agreed to do a jam section it'd sound amazing in practice but live people would just stand around playing whichever riff or groove was relevant and looking at each other. Fair enough I suggested a lot of ideas and not all were good, but if they weren't going to go through with them they shouldn't have agreed to them.

[quote name='bass_ferret' post='196760' date='May 11 2008, 10:20 PM']I dont burden you with my personal problems so why should you burden me with yours. You may get to like it when you grow up, you may not. Thats your problem.[/quote] If you don't like hearing other people opinions, don't read them. Problem solved! Actually, re-reading that post its one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read, "when you grow up you'll learn to like the music I like"? Actually, I used to live on funk from Parliament to C2B3 to Chili Peppers to Mr. Bungle and whatever else, pretty much the full spectrum. I grew out of it , thats to say that my musical taste changed over time by the way, not to mirror the ignorant statement that its somehow immature or childish to like or not like a certain genre. [quote name='benwhiteuk' post='196762' date='May 11 2008, 10:21 PM']aeroplane isnt the sort of funk i was thinking of...more along the lines of the first 2 Jamiroquai albums or the funky Stevie Wonder stuff (Sir Duke, I Wish, Master Blaster...) . Anyone heard of The Mother Funk Conspiracy?[/quote] I was just joking about token 'music shop funk' basslines really, have to admit I do love most Stevie Wonder, its just on a different level to most funk influenced stuff.

Oh yea thats what I do and I can play funk pretty well, I'm just wondering if a lot of other bassists go against the 'bassists = loves funk' thing. When people ask me to 'play something funky' I always play Prog Metal tapping/harmonics riffs just to be contrary, seems to entertain more than playing Aeroplane or Settle For Nothing .

Don't really hate it, just don't really like it. Hate how every bassist is expected to love and embrace funk though, I'm competent at it but give me some Post/Prog Rock/Metal, British Folk or some serious Jazz over funk any day. Anyone else feel similarly?

The Seeker is a favourate of mine.

Already said in this thread I've got a ton of uni stuff on atm plus a few gigs over the next week and a bit, will deal with this when I'm finished with everything else.

I don't think there'd really be a prize unless everyone who entered wanted to donate some old bass junk or change to whoever won. Especially for a 'trial run' of this kind of thing, I don't think a prize (other than a special 'competition winner' title that only the mods could give or something else like that) is that good of an idea.

Not sure what it'd be yet but I think something bass orientated that excludes as few people as possible would be good, could all submit our entries and then have a separate thread where they are all collected up and voted on. I used to post on musicianforums.com and the comps they did there had a good rule where if you entered you had to give feedback on all the other entries or you 'couldn't' win, made sure that everyone got plenty of feedback on their entries. Some ideas for the theme could be: 'Concept composition' (stole this from musicianforums.com), 3 or so pictures posted and all compositions must include a bass track and be related to that pic with some reasoning as to why. 'One track', a single track of unaccompanied bass guitar, anything goes. Free for all, basically anything, as long as its bass centered (difficulty is you get a bunch of people just posting songs from their bands which kind of defeats the point). Technique based comp (IE. tapping, fingerstyle, slapping). etc. Anyone up for something like this? If so any other ideas for the theme? I pretty much don't mind anything apart from I don't really like slapping so if I'm running anything it definately wouldn't be that.

Justin Chancellor on Lateralus or Geddy Lee on Rush In Rio (Live)

Interesting to see that a few people run their comp after distortion, I read or was told a while back that its much less effective that way as its much harder to compress a distorted signal than a clean one (something to do with all the extra overtones the distortion creates or something).

Personally I run: Bass (makes sounds) | v Boss CS3 w/Monte Allums mod ('gets the job done', I just use this to smooth out the signal, I usually turn it off for basic finger playing though) | v MXR M80 (distortion/tone shaping, always after compressor, If I'm running through a good PA I often run the parallel out to the bass amp and use it as a clean channel) | v EHX Q-Tron+ (funkfize!, I only really use a basic auto-wah setting and I don't really use it that often, its a fun gimmick for once or twice a set) | v EXH Stereo Memory Man w/Hazarai (just fun, its got no 'real' uses but the looper can be great fun and the delays and mod can be useful for soloing/jamming)

There was a really good photographer at my last gig who got some nice shots, heres a few with me in if you're interested. I looked for a 'gig pics' thread but couldn't find one and the 'gigs' forum just seemed to be for advertising gigs, someone tell me if I just missed it. If there isn't then everyone feel free to add their own to this thread and we can start one in here.

Free/Tips The Double Bass strings are quite old though, not sure how well you could rejuvenate them but I think they've had at least a few years worth of use. Also I've got a bunch of essays in/exams to revise for over the next few days so I've not really got time to sort anything out until they're done.

I've got a bunch including: Roto Swing Bass La Bella Slappers La Bella Hard Rockin' Steels Warwick Yellow Labels Thomastik Infield Superflexibles (Double Bass strings) Hung onto all my strings from the last year for some reason, there are a bunch of them. All are EADGC sets other than the Double Bass strings. These useful to anyone? Only used once each so you could probably get a few years playing out of them if you boiled them or soaked em in alcohol.

This is an interesting and fun song to play because you can't just take it at face value and play the melody then Bb blues scale solos over the two chord vamp, you've got to be innovative to keep it interesting the whole way though. My 'uni course' band played it for our assessment, we split it into two parts, a jazz-funk styled part which covered the first half of the recording and then a 'rocked up' reprise at the end of the set following Tom Sawyer and a rocked up version of 'Shut up and Drive' where we went into the riff variations then rocked out with overdrive and heavy drumming at the end. In the first part we played the head and broke it down then brought it back pretty much as on the original version, when we came back in we had the singers sing a two bar harmonised vamp to the words of 'put your hands up for herbie hancock' (was just a part of the groove really though, words weren't significant), after a few bars we traded some licks over it then the singing dropped out and we started passing the bassline between us; first the clav played it while I comped over it with bass-wah chords (High C string ) and the guitarist took a solo, after that the guitar picked up the bassline and the keys went back to comping while I took a solo, after that the guitar and bass returned to the original format and the keys took a solo and brought us into the second breakdown where we ended the 'song'. In the reprise we came out of shut up and drive into the first riff variation (the one that starts on a G# and walks chromatically to a Bb and its minor third), the guitar played a pretty cool riff that develops into a climax then hits a sustained note as we go into the second variation (the chromatic walk from Bb to C# with a high fill bit), the guitar comes in after two times through and harmonises it by a major third, a perfect fifth, a minor seventh and then an octave (shouldn't work and the guitarist plays all 12 tones in that too, we were just messing about when we 'discovered' it but it works surprisingly well) we come out of that with a lot of tension which we 'release' with a fancy unaccompanied bass run back to the original riff, a few quick flashy solos by guitar and keys then the guitar joins the bass vamp in unison for a few bars then goes into a sustained powerchord type thing while the drums go wild, I start slapping the riff really hard (the change in timbre seems to work well) then out of nowhere we go into the 'breakdown' riff in unison, just one time and out. Anyone here play this song? How do you play it in your versions?