chrisba

My Squier P used to have a rattle on the open A string, pretty sure it was the truss rod, but it definitely wasn't broken. If it was broken, then it would turn very easily, wouldn't it ?

Hmmm. My daughter is at Warwick University. I feel a surprise parental visit coming on...

We play it starting on E, saves all that retuning nonsense. I don't change any settings, as we are an ( apart from me ) acoustic band, and the guitarists don't ever change theirs. I might try switching in the sub-octaver on my amp when nobody's looking, but I'm worried I might forget to switch it off again. For the synth riff that opens song, we have used a Stylophone in the past, but have just acquired a violinist, so she gets to play it instead. Apart from that ( and some close-harmonies in the chorus ) we play it exactly like the original :-)

[quote name='karlthebassist' post='783852' date='Mar 23 2010, 07:35 PM']...and all I can say is wow.[/quote] Please elaborate ! What differences have you noticed, both to sound and playability, that are attributable to lighter strings ?

We got asked to learn this for a student gig. I diligently learnt the bass line, but the rest of the band decided it was too corny. I gained a little kudos with the audience by just playing the bassline while the others were switching off. Their loss.

Taking the real thing off is not terribly hard, just undo 13 screws and undo the nuts that hold the pots and jack. 5 minute job. You will need to do this at some point because I doubt if it is identical to the standard Fender shape ( I looked into this when I had an Affinity P, and concluded it was different, although I didn't actually try one ). Alternatively, take or find a photo ( square on, to avoid distortion ), crop it to just the guard and then scale it up to full size.

Radio 6 were saying this morning that Andrew Lloyd Webber was putting up the cash.

[quote name='chrisba' post='743274' date='Feb 12 2010, 04:38 PM']The solo at the beginning of Sweet Child O' Mine. We play it in just about every gig but I think I have only about a 50% success rate on stage. I can play with my eyes closed, standing on one leg whilst reading War and Peace on my own at home.[/quote] [quote name='ThomBassmonkey' post='744300' date='Feb 13 2010, 08:26 PM']That's pretty impressive. [/quote] I meant reading the Braille version with my toes

Expensive basses are often expensive because a lot of time and money has gone into making them [i]look good[/i], both from a design point of view, and fancy pieces of timber, expensive and complex finishes etc. You don't need a bass to look good when you are playing it on your own, only when other people are watching you play it !

The solo at the beginning of Sweet Child O' Mine. We play it in just about every gig but I think I have only about a 50% success rate on stage. I can play with my eyes closed, standing on one leg whilst reading War and Peace on my own at home.

[quote name='BottomEndian' post='725988' date='Jan 27 2010, 06:26 AM']Does that have the feature that the CD-BT2 does whereby you can monitor a single channel of the backing track? I've got loads of those tuition-type CDs with the bass panned hard to one side and the accompaniment to the other. On the CD version of the Tascam, you can listen to just one side, with your bass signal playing along. It'd be really useful to have that option on the MP3 version, but I can't find any mention of it in the Tascam bumf or the manual.[/quote] No, it doesn't ( at least, I've never found it ). Several solutions come to mind. Listen through a stereo amp with balance control, only use one of the earphones, use Audacity or similar to do a "with" and a "without" version of the track, build yourself a little headphone switch that cuts out one side or the other.

Malcolm, Mr Guitar Emporium, operates out of his house in SW London. ( I think he has a relationship with a shop near there too ), and was happy for me to go and meet him there to hand over the cash and pickup my luverly MIJ P. Nice guy to deal with too. Just drop him an email ( and be prepared to wait a day or two )

[quote]Good shout dude, but my thumb is what's muting the E in this track![/quote] Maybe an unmuted E string is the best compromise. If this is the last song of the night, with the birthday girl on stage, do you think anybody in the audience is going to say "Oooh look at the bassist, his E string isn't muted"

[quote]Without getting all Health 'n' Safety obsessive about it though - using a chainsaw without eye, hand and toe protection is fecking stupid!![/quote] The stupidest bit of all was wearing that loose fitting scarf. Very Isadora Duncan. <edit> Sorry, didn't mean to sound all grumpy. That's a pretty cool experiment...

To learn to play properly with a pick ( strictly fingerstyle for me at the moment ), and mix the two styles appropriately.

[quote name='hillbilly deluxe' post='686746' date='Dec 16 2009, 08:07 PM']Rock City - banged my head every time going into the used guitars bit. Jeavons - first bass Hagstrom £35,no deposit,no guarantor,supplied name and address,paid weekly. Paul Garvey - Hondo Rick copy,Aria ZZ Sound Control - F.A. Mckays - like wow,far out man,Ibanez Musician Fretless. Howards Bass Place - Sould my soul.......Or bought it..........Allegedly,almost every good bass i owned was either bought,built or traded there. Windows - F.A. Any other shops ?[/quote] I went past a place called Air Guitars in a taxi earlier today. Couldn't tell you where, as I don't know Newcastle well, but I was going from Jury's Inn to the Airport. Didn't stop to have a look though.

I came across the subject of Temperament a couple of years ago and found it interesting, so here is a short summary. If you play a note, then play another note with double the frequency, it will be an octave higher than the first ( and sounds "right") . That is fundamental to all music. If you play another note with three times the frequency, that will be a fifth higher again. ( eg. Low G, High G, High D are one, two and three times the frequency ). This too sounds "right" The rest of western musical scale can be constructed using fifths, as if you start with C, then go up in fifths, you get G D A E B Gb Db Ab Eb Bb F and back to C , which is all 12 notes of the chromatic scale ( not in order, obviously ). This is called the Circle of Fifths and is fundamental to western music BUT... This model is broken, because the C you get to at the end of the circle is not quite the same as the one at the beginning ( do the maths, you end up with a frequency that's about 1.5% out, enough to sound out of tune ). To fix this, we have to shift the frequencies that define the notes down very slightly so they all fit exactly into one octave, and there are various ways that shifting can be done, and "well tempered" was one of the ways this was done. There are several other ways, and the standard way now is 12 Tone equal temperament. This means that, in any given key, all the notes apart from the root, are very slightly out of tune. I'm told that one of the reasons that instruments that are infinitely variable ( like violins and the human voice ) sound "pure" is that the players/singers automatically adjust the note so that it sounds right for the given moment. ( Obviously, this doesn't apply to fretless basses or trombones ) I'm not a musical theory expert, so if any of the above is incorrect, please correct as necessary. Lots more in [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament"]Wikipedia[/url], of course.

[quote]Also, why is it that all the brass sections have to muck about in Bb tuning while the piano is easiest in C?[/quote] Originally, there was a C trumpet ( you can still buy them ), but somebody made a longer one, and thought it sounded nicer. So that this longer one could use the same fingering as the shorter one, all their music was transposed to Bb. Most brass instruments have ( roughly ) the same fingering, but differ in actual pitch, so play in different keys. My sister has a C clarinet ( and an Eb one ) and it's amazing how much different it sounds from the Bb standard one.

Had a dream last night that I played a gig in a village hall, and there was a bass on the stage when I arrived, so I used that instead. It was a Fender Jazz, sunburst but the neck had been repainted light green. Even stranger, embedded in the upper horn, there was a small keyboard, about the size of a Stylophone. Lovely low action and I liked it more that I thought I would. I've no idea what that means. Any Dream-analysts out there ?

There is a free program called TuxGuitar that plays Guitar Pro and Power Tab. I've got it on my Mac, but I think it's available for Windoze too.

[quote]So what you're saying is that your target demographic is X-factor fans?[/quote] Actually, in this case it was X-factor fan's parents. That's not quite so bad.

Did a private party on Saturday night for a music/drama school, but the audience was reduced because lots of people got tickets to go and see one of their pupils in X-factor. Not sure who, but it isn't the pathetic twins. ( they did tell me, but I don't watch it, so means nothing to me ). The rest of the audience weren't really our target demographic.

[quote]+Seven and Twelvety! ...Ive seen them Theyre a Mustard! 3 piece....If you get the opportunity go!... When i went there was 2 Ampeg 8x10s on stage with Svt Valve heads for the double bass(was told ones a spare!..just in case!)....Guitar/Vocals Brian Setzer was amazing![/quote] Not seen Stray Cats, but did see The Brian Setzer Orchestra at a corporate jolly in Hawaii. Brian is a great performer and front man, and although his backing band were as different as it could get from the Cats, ( full-on big band, about 25 strong, instead of drums and double bass ), the music was remarkably similar.