Russ

OK, here's a few suggestions: Lessons. Good to get an experienced teacher's take on your playing. Open mic nights. Playing with other people makes you a better player and you might just meet suitable people to collaborate with. Playing along with the TV - just play something that feels like it goes with the show you're watching. Internet radio - it's amazing some of the stuff you'll hear that you'll never hear anywhere else. Other instruments - get a guitar, keyboard or something other than the bass and stick with that for a while, then take that new experience back to the bass. Home recording - you have a computer, put it to use and write and record your own stuff.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='319234' date='Oct 31 2008, 05:47 PM']Alembic Epic I believe. Wal on all of BSSM bar StingRay 5 on Funky Monks and the title track. Not sure about Mother's Milk - could be a Ray, could be a Spector. Very few of Flea's studio recordings are on a StingRay! Alex[/quote] Yep. All of One Hot Minute, with the exception of Aeroplane (Stingray) and Pea (acoustic) was the Alembic Epic. And you're correct about BSSM too. It's amazing the amount of Stingrays that album sold, even though its sound is only featured on two tracks!

My old Rumour took 14 months... Then again, it was *very* custom, and Bernie has someone around to kick his arse these days... he made mine back when it was just him in an industrial estate in Croydon. Thinking of going to see Bernie next time I'm back in the UK to discuss a possible Spitfire-related project...

The whole New Romantic movement, apart from the dodgy outfits, was pretty much the last gasp for real creativity and experimentation in pop music. Many of the bands involved are still influential over 20 years later, and for all the right reasons - they could sing, they could play, they could write catchy, quirky and intelligent songs and they looked good. I would have loved to have been in a band back then, especially as a bass player... I could have had a brand new Trace Elliot stack, a Wal and a mullet, and funked things up like crazy! It can't really be denied that Duran Duran were basically a boy band - but a boy band who wrote and performed their own music. Hasn't really happened since. The era where pop music came to be dominated by producers came along shortly afterwards, with the Stock, Aitken and Watermans of this world basically reducing pop music to a formula and milking it for all it's worth. Time for New Romantic to make a comeback, methinks...

[quote name='LukeFRC' post='313457' date='Oct 23 2008, 10:52 PM']and conversely no evidence of God's non existence. If you are presupposed to disbelieve there is a God any 'evidence' found can be explained away somehow. Conversely if you believe in God you will find much evidence of his existence. Logicaly you are unable to disprove the existence of a God, and equally you are unable to prove it. In questioning God's existence to default to Atheism is illogical, really following scientific logic, through objective eyes one would be an agnostic. anyway, anyone for some bass playing, i enjoyed that video of John entwistle, although i think his bass would look daft on a little guy like me.[/quote] In science, the onus is on the scientist to prove a theory, not disprove one. Things are disproved as a result of new evidence. Many of the things and events people used to attribute to divine intervention have since been proved otherwise, so, personally, I think it's only a matter of time. In the classic theological debate, one must follow the scientific method - the onus is on the believer to prove God's existence, and so begins the vicious cycle... proof denies faith, and without faith, religion is meaningless.

[quote name='ARGH' post='313148' date='Oct 23 2008, 05:42 PM']WOAH..didnt know THAT one..thought he might not be straight (my Gaydar flickered a few years back..but I put it down to video styling) Didnt he change his name to 'Dug' as well?[/quote] He's been out for years now... late '90s I think. And yep, he calls himself "dUg" these days, for some reason. Tell you what though... did you know he's 58?

[quote name='ARGH' post='312470' date='Oct 22 2008, 08:26 PM']King X,VERY VERY VERY Good Rock Band,kinda the flagship for 12 string Hamer Bass users everywhere....very very musical trio,without walking into the Prog Genre[/quote] Doug Pinnick from King's X has renounced Christianity - apparently his Christian peers were less than understanding when he came out as gay. So I guess that puts paid to that one. The way I see it, as an ex-Catholic (now with beliefs somewhere in-between agnosticism, humanism, Buddhism and pure physics), is, if God is out there somewhere, then apparently he gave us the capacity for creativity, so, on that basis, all music is a celebration of God.

Considering he's got a signature Zon, you never see him use it. 95% of the time you see him with the blue flamed Fernandes. He's also apparently been seen recently with a Yamaha TRB. Maybe he's shopping for a new endorsement deal?

[quote name='BassManKev' post='280088' date='Sep 9 2008, 12:00 AM']its either a stingray 5 or the Wal i think, thats what it was narrowed down to in another thread[/quote] Probably the Wal, as that song was recorded during the BSSM sessions. Sounds like a Wal to me too.

The DBS gear was, and is, awesome stuff. Ridiculously loud, great thick tone and virtually bulletproof. The cabs were utterly back-breaking, though. Even the 2x10" weighed more than most 4x10"s... If Marshall want to come out with something new for bassists out there, a newer, millennial version of the DBS range, with neodymium speakers, etc, would go down awfully well - certainly better than the MB stuff is doing. And, other than the seminal Mr. Kilminster and Chris Wolstenholme, they don't really have any name players using their gear... in fact, I think you'll find that many players out there don't even know that Marshall make bass gear. If they got a few high-profile endorsers, they'd find themselves selling significantly more. Put out a new DBS range, get Chris Wolstenholme to play them and appear in their ads, and watch them fly out the door...

[quote name='drgrew' post='273013' date='Aug 30 2008, 09:26 AM']I started on Dreamweaver on one (hence the inserts) but got fed up too quickly as I have always preferred Frontpage. The second one was a rehash of the first as was www.littletardis.com Thanks for looking though and I'm glad you liked them!! A[/quote] As a web development pro, Frontpage is the tool of the devil. No self-respecting webbie who considers themselves professional in any way will have anything whatsoever to do with it. Not to have a go or anything, but nothing screams "unprofessional" like seeing something that was blatantly done in FP, and you can spot them a mile off. Firstly, FP inserts non-standards-compliant CSS and Javascript into the HTML document, which is also optimised for Internet Explorer, and hence is extremely dodgy from a cross-browser perspective. The extensions are, for the most part, IIS-only (ie, only work properly on Windows-based servers), the feature set is extremely limited, the general support for Web standards is atrocious and the resulting HTML code is extremely hard to read due to over-use of inline styles, bad formatting and no provision for the separation of design and content. Do yourself a favour. Ditch FP. Even Notepad is better. Dreamweaver is in a different league and actually qualifies as "professional" software (although, as a former Homesite user, I use it primarily for the excellent code editor). If you want a piece of M$ software that will do the job far, far better, download [url="http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/"]Visual Web Developer[/url] - it's free too.

There's another piece that plays over the Sky menu that features some quite nice chordal bass playing... at least, that's what it sounds like. Quite like that one.

The Korean-made Jazz Bass 24s are awesome - spent some time playing one at GAK in Brighton the other day and was well impressed. Good B string, decent preamp, Basslines pickups, nice quilt maple top and a great neck... seriously recommended.

[quote name='Ant' post='259552' date='Aug 10 2008, 08:24 PM']i've heard a few pronunciations of this flying about, what is the correct way to say it?[/quote] From the horse's mouth (ie, Patrice Vigier) - "vee-ghee-ay".

Mansons? They're in Exeter and are best known for making basses for John Paul Jones and guitars for Matt Bellamy from Muse... [url="http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/"]http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/[/url]

I'm in NJ... what do you need to know?

Personally I hate the profile of Warwick's current necks (the bolt-ons are the worst), but, after flogging an otherwise lovely Streamer Jazzman because of this, I was told by Alex at The Gallery that they could have reprofiled the neck for me... bah. So, if you're not getting on with the neck, take it to a good luthier and ask them to reprofile it for you. Obviously The Gallery guys can do it, but I'd imagine any other decent luthier worth his salt could do it too.

[quote name='thinman' post='197668' date='May 13 2008, 07:54 AM']Yet another John Barrowman! John Barrowman! John Barrowman! vehicle. They've only got to bring him back into Dr Who and he'd be in three programmes in a row. That Jessie seems a lovely girl but born 40 years too late.[/quote] He will be back on DW at the end of the series for the last couple of episodes (bring on Davros!). If I'd Do Anything and that game show he's on with the kids were still on by then, he would be on three shows in a row... luckily, I think both the other shows finish before the DW finale. I like John Barrowman, but that's just over-exposure...

I'm all for each part of a song having its own identity, ie, if you soloed a single instrument from the band (ie, just the bass, or just the guitar, etc), you'd be able to easily identify the song, because each musical part is an equal contributor to the overall sound. That's just down to good songwriting. I'm a big believer in the notion that a good song, although often sounding better when played by a whole band, can be played solo with just an acoustic guitar or a bass and not lose its identity. A band who do this brilliantly are The Cure - Simon Gallup's bass parts are so well crafted to the song, and the song could happily stand alone with just his bass and Robert Smith singing over it. They're not technically amazing, they're just melodic, they outline the chords well, and are very well written. This is the direction I'm going in... I've done the whole slapped-32nd-notes flashy thing before, so now I'm trying to be a bit more intelligent about it.

[quote name='Muppet' post='197533' date='May 12 2008, 09:32 PM']Kevin Spacey's got a point though! Weeks of licence payers money spent on advertising Lloyd Webber's latest rehash, whilst serious productions get nothing...[/quote] It's not ALW's musical this time - Oliver is Cameron Mackintosh's show. I must admit to being a little disappointed with the choice of Oliver as the musical for this year though, as the role of Nancy isn't hugely demanding from a vocal perspective. It would have been far more interesting to keep the ALW theme and cast a new Christine for Phantom, or Eva Peron for Evita - both far more demanding vocal and acting roles. I take Kevin Spacey's point - it's giving a load of extra free publicity for ALW/Cameron Mackintosh's shows, but, to be fair, having TV auditions for roles in the plays that Spacey puts on wouldn't make for very good telly.

[quote name='The Funk' post='197532' date='May 12 2008, 09:31 PM']Is Jessie the Irish 18-year old one? Do you think Lord Lloyd Webber is hoping she literally would do anything?[/quote] That's her... the redhead with the wonky mouth. Although somehow I don't see her becoming the next Sarah Brightman...

I should hate this stuff on principle, but I've been sucked in. Was the same last year with the Joseph one. Jessie's going to win, that's as obvious as it was that Lee was going to win last year - she's in a different league to all the others. But I like Jodie. Then again, I have a thing for loud Northern lasses!

I like the groove of funk and can turn my hand to it as a playing style, but I do find a lot of the so-called funk classics difficult to listen to (eg, old Stevie, Parliament/Funkadelic, Brothers Johnson, etc) - the production is very, very dated and sounds quite cheesy nowadays. It does sound either like bad porn music or the soundtrack to a blaxploitation film. It just hasn't aged well. Can't fault the playing or musicianship though.

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='194707' date='May 8 2008, 02:36 PM']So why did you choose to have the modifications to the headstock and body? Nice piece of facia wood there...[/quote] I designed the body shape myself, based on a body design that I designed previously for an older custom bass. I worked with Bernie to refine the design a bit, and it ended up working really well - the longer top horn made the bass have better balance, especially considering the very light ash in the body, and the additional weight on the headstock... which brings me to... The headstock is shaped like that to accommodate two (!) Hipshots on the B and E strings - at the time, I was using various different tunings in the band I was in, and I wanted to be able to use one bass for everything. It actually worked too, although the headstock went through a couple of redesigns.