jonnythenotes

Point taken

Very fair comment Bassman.... I suppose it's similar to me owning a car, but not wanting to be a mechanic. I just want it to work but I don't care how It works... Fair comment ole chap....

It's back.......Huzzah.....It's back.....

Come on Moderators......give us a clue.....

Where has the recent topic on Chris Wolstenholme gone..... Seems like the plug was pulled, but why? Titled something like Hail Wolstenholme..

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I agree Bassman, but I would much sooner watch someone be 'creative' instantly, on the spot, with no planning beforehand, and fractions of a second to think about what to do, how to do it, and where to go next, beat after beat, bar after bar. A lot of these 'big' players are either playing riffs they have played a thousand times before, or rehearsed to death in a studio, so they can't fail to get it right. Also, these lads a lot of the time are being screamed and yelled at by their adoring public because this adoration is all about familiarity with a song, and not musicianship. I have seen crowds become delirious because they know the chorus to Brown Eyed Girl or Mustang Sally. The crowd go nuts, but it's shallow praise for the band, as its not for them...it's for familiarity, and the audience buying into a chorus they know inside out. Go to the Funk Realm Jam Night in Birmingham, and you will see strangers getting up with each other and hypnotising a crowd with nothing but musicianship and creativity, there and then, on the spot, never heard before or again, and cheered for their skill, and not for reasons of 'familiarity'

I think if I had unlimited time on my hands between stadium gigs, a bottomless pit of money, sponsors drooling over me and offering me any gear I wanted, access to any guitars on the planet a mere phone call way, any tutor in the world at my disposal, never having to worry about my 40 hours a week job, a morgage, re payments on any credit cards etc, in fact no worries about anything that 99% of the population do have, and the luxury to be able to sit around all day and think about all of this good stuff, and when the fancy takes me, nip into my home recording studio at any time, and for as long as I wanted, to rehearse, I reckon I might be able to knock out a couple of dozen decent bass lines every year... On the other hand, a lot of the guys reading this thread have to cover dozens of different styles, know hundreds of songs, be able to 'blag' their way thru some gigs, manage to buy gear on a shoe string budget, learn songs at the drop of a hat, and do it all for peanuts.......'Us.'

When I first had a go at playing this, having never seen how it was done, my natural way was to use the open A for the first two notes, but then jump to the G..fifth fret... on the D string for the third note, back to the open A for the fourth, G fifth fret D string for the fifth note, then to the A seventh fret on D string for the sixth note. If you carry on with this method, you end up playing the whole song, chorus included, never going above the 7th fret on any string. So instead of playing the whole first part of the riff on the A string, covering quite a lot of the fret board, you use the open A for the drone notes and all the other notes are played on the D string from the seventh fret down. Then when the move to the E string comes in, you do the same again using the open E as the drone note and the other notes on the A string from fret seven down...then the same process when you get to the D section. The chorus is then played in the normal place. I find this much more comfortable and accurate than the whole neck method, and the notes sound much stronger as you are using far more string length. Anybody else do it this way, or am I just wierd..

Bonza...... All the best Harlequin......

That's a great approach to take Harlequin....let me know how you get on. All the best with it....

Hi Harlequin. Before you press on any further in your search for a keyboard player, I would really try another way of performing the songs you think you can't do without a keyboard player... Remove all the modern stuff ( effects and trickery)you use in the band until you are left with the guitars, the leads, the amps the speakers and vocals... All the pedals and effects...put em on hold for a while. Once you have painted yourself into a corner, and got rid of everything you think you need, start playing the songs...say a Stevie Wonder tune, and replace what you have got rid of with aggression. It might sound a bit odd at first, but very quickly you will hear your instruments and musicianship shining through, instead of hearing the artificial stuff that hides and stifles so many good musicians. I think you will find it far more exiting if you take a 'lets make do with what we've got' approach to the band, instead of trying to hear and create what you haven't got, and perhaps don't need, or adding things because they were there on the original recordings. Entertaining an audience has nothing to do with the size of the band, the beats per minute, the style of music or how loud you are. It's about getting them to believe in what you are doing and getting them to buy in to every note you play. The delivery of your music is everything... It's not the size of the bore, but the force of the shot that counts.. Just look at the energy The Pistols, The Jam, The Strokes, The Police etc did, and still do, with the most basic of instruments and effects...

I use a couple of Ashdown 4x8 neo cabs.... When I first started using them, I was convinced that they could not handle the really low notes on my five string...( it turns out they can, quite easily.) Anyway, By removing a lot of the really low stuff, I found that it massively improved the ability of the bass to cut thru, and also, the speakers were more responsive and sounded clearer and livelier as they weren't faffing about trying to handle unnecessary super lows, and the speaker excursion time, or whatever its called, seemed quicker in its return, and ready for the next note or signal to hit it. I have probably imagined some of this, but there is without doubt, significant benefits in taking away some of the really low frequencies. I don't know all the technical reasons as to why, but it is exactly as the thread header says....Less bass = more bass.

What Ho ! I'm a Lichfield lad myself.....

I have been in Soul / Motown/ Funk bands for years, and every time we have worked with a keyboard player, it all turns to crap. It seems the better a player he or she is, the more they feel they have to prove this by stamping all over the 'space' that Funk / Soul / Motown has to have to work properly. With a bazillion synth and fake sounds at their disposal, they can turn a good band into a Bingo warm up act, with all their synthy /brassy/ stringy sounds instantly available.They take up as much space as a brass section, or a couple of guitar players, and the poor bozo standing behind the keyboard player, with no space whatsoever might as well go home as he can not be seen by the audience, and feels completely removed from the rest of the band.....The 'bozo' is also known as the bass player.....A keyboard player has a habit of holding down block chords ( particularly with his left hand, ) which absolutely ruins any bass lines, or sounds you USED to like playing. Image wise, nothing looks worse rhan the back of a keyboard, with wires spewing out of the back, and a music stand on top of rhe whole wretched thing... It looks gash....My only concession would be a piano player, as this is a percussion instrument, in that when you stop hitting it, it stops making a noise. If you are fortunate enough to find a keyboard player that does none of the above, does not have an over inflated sense of self importance, and also understands the less he does, the more it makes every thing else stand out, then you are extremely lucky, or a miracle worker.Personally, I would avoid a keyboard player like the plague......get a good sax player or sax and trumpet...they look great, take up less room, and act as punctuation in a band,instead of an avalanche of what's not needed...... There you go..... My fire and brimstone anti keyboard sermon is over, but it's true..

Because the amp is so light, I think even Spider-Man/ super grip octopus sucker feet would not keep it on.....I will check it out though...thanks.

I must be missing something here.... How can you have a bass cab that picks up no vibration from the speaker it contains. Unless you float the speaker, and completely isolate it from contacting the cab, you will transfer vibration to the speaker enclosure. Every cab I have ever owned has vibrated.... How else would you explain the 'boomy stage' we have all experienced, or the reasoning behind a Gramma Pad. Give me an example of a speaker cab that I could put my hand on top of, when it is being driven at gigging volume, and not feel any vibration, and I will eat my hat.... There is no such thing....

Great idea Count Bassy, but what do I weigh down the continually emptying pint glasses with...?

Sounds reeeaaaallly nice..... The vibration I get is not like a fifties washing machine on a spin cycle...Think Uncle Buck..., more like a very fast dentists drill type thing. The main problem is a light weight amp....Epifani PS 6000, which has sort of small hard rubber feet which does not have the weight to hold itself in place. The cabs I use are 2 Ashdown ABM Neo 4x8's, stacked, which are the best I have ever owned... and can handle anything I throw at them as they are rated at 1000 watts each. It's just the small surface contact area of the feet, and the weight of the amp, (or lack of ) that cause this problem, which has been fixed for £1.

What sort of amp and cab do you use Chris....?

That's Bang on Chris......I learnt 28 songs a couple of years ago for a pub rock covers band from the original recordings, of which most were extended with extra choruses or verses, guitar solos etc which they forgot to tell me about. The singer bottled out on several songs which had to be replaced with songs I was expected to blag, with chords being shouted across stage by the guitar player, this in full view of the audience. As we progressed through the first set, the actual set list running order became meaningless as songs got replaced or moved within the set. Certain songs I was told moments before we were ready to play them had been drop tuned to D....(and this was if they remembered to tell me they had been dropped...) What made this ghastly nightmare of a gig infinitely more agonising, was every time something happened, the band looked at me, which in turn made the audience look at me as if I was responsible for this unfolding musical disaster.It would not have been so bad if it was a blues based band with three chords to grapple with..... This was Foo Fighters...Muse..... QOTSA.... Snow Patrol territory I was in. Apart from the hardest 80 quid I ever earnt, the best thing to come from this gig was never walk into a dep job unless you are given a written assurance of what is expected from you. That is the reason...as mentioned earlier in this thread, that my current band records our set exactly as we play it ready to hand to a dep if and when required. I would never put any musician in the position I found myself in that night....it was 2 hours of unfolding cringiness that I was stuck in, that I new was going to get much worse as each song progressed... A modern day Greek tragedy....

What my band has done, is record a rehearsal as if its a gig, stick it on a cd and its ready to hand to any dep needed in the band, with any differences to the originals, be it structure or key changes etc. Also, it will be in correct running order for him... Any dep worth his salt will then have a100% accurate record of what is required of him well in advance of the gig which he should be able to knock into shape in a few days... If you are a band with a massive repertoire of songs, just record 30 of the easiest to learn...(chances are he or she will know a lot of em any way )... again, in running order, and there you have a 'dep set,' or a ' someone just left the band set,) all ready to go.

Sorted..... A £1 none slip mat has guaranteed the safety and long life of a £1000 amp..... Cheers guys...

I asked a very similar question a couple of months ago, and got some truly mind bendingly good info back.... check the thread out in general discussions..... To Stack or not to stack..... (Add the word Ashdown, and it will appear on the first page) Get ready for a brilliant science lesson...