bobbass4k

[quote name='heminder' timestamp='1361588197' post='1988079'] Government would know. All car travel is under surveillance in this country. They call them "speed" cameras. [/quote] I don't even...what?

I was watching Sony's PS4 press conference live. That was a much, much better use of my time.

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1361306031' post='1984364'] I just got interviewed about the book by a US radio station (Miami, Florida). It's going out on 15th March with an extended version on a blog but I will post more details when they are available. I also got a bad review on Amazon (3 stars) . I guess you've got to take the rough with the smooth [/quote] Don't worry about Amazon reviews, you get people who make it their mission to drag down average scores because they think 5 stars is too "unrealistic" or something. I'd also point out that opinions being "unnecessary" is also an opinion, and surely spelling errors are the fault of the publisher, don't they pay people to proof read? Very well done on getting the book published, I submitted a paper to a journal last year and that was a massive headache, I can only imagine how difficult getting a full length book to print is.

I've always thought the lyrics to this read more like a poem, with the rhyming and everything: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYAF_MgV0JA[/media] The section with singing starts at about 5:02, but you should listen to the whole thing because it's one of the best songs ever written.

[quote name='KevB' timestamp='1361194712' post='1982485'] If we are talking from a viewpoint of denial of royalties to the original artist then all second hand music sales should be made illegal. Only the purchase of the original copy fed any money back to the artist so irrespective of whether a 'safety' copy is made or not that particular unit earns no more for the artist no matter how often it subsequently changes hands. Hands up here who has never bought or sold a second hand record/CD/tape? [/quote] It's heading that way. The video games industry has been doing it with PC games for years, most physical games have single use activation codes that bind them to one particular machine or user account, and downloaded games depend on the service used, but they all bind them to one particular user account. The next generation of video game consoles is pretty much confirmed to have "anti-used" game technology, probably a single use activation code that binds them to one user account or console, and requires a constant internet connection for verification. I don't see a similar thing being at all practical with music but to be honest they've already started down that path with DRM on CD's. Fortunately that didn't last long because it cost a lot of money and didn't make a dent in piracy, but they didn't get the message, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see newer more subtle DRM technologies down the line. On the topic of music piracy, I'm off to a Deftones gig tonight. I downloaded their self titled album in 2003 after hearing Minerva on TV, that was dial up days too so it took FOREVER. I bought the CD a few weeks later, and over the next couple of years bought all their albums. This ticket cost £30ish and I'll probably buy a tshirt tonight. All money they wouldn't have had from me had I not downloaded that album.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361135990' post='1981753'] Oh, stop being so pedantic, would you? Of course it's alright, especially when the shop has a sign saying "These guitars were made to be played, so give them a try". Trying them is what leads to a sale, as i agreed with Bob, there's nothing to be gained or lost from trying something out, but the way that it is done for some people, i don't agree with. What if i went in to the shop and said "Hey, i might like that guitar over there, how about it take that home, and play it, and if i decide i like it, i'll come back and buy another guitar." [/quote] But that isn't the same, in your example the shop is losing a physical item that they've bought on credit, and are hence losing money. With downloading an album, nobody is losing anything, the band aren't losing the ability to sell records because the potential for digital copies is infinite.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1361129162' post='1981552'] People wouldn't buy the album anyway- Then why do they want to download it? If they don't want it enough to pay for it, why would you download it for nothing? I don't really care for a lot of things, maybe if somebody bought them as a gift for me, i would be pleased enough, but i feel no desire to own these things on any level, so why would i want to get it for nothing? [/quote] There you're making the assumption that there's no middle ground between being interested in an album/movie/game etc. and being willing to pay for it. Most of the albums I buy are from bands whose previous albums I like or albums that I'm otherwise sure I'm going to like. Most of the albums I download now are albums that I'm kind of interested in but not entirely sure if I'm going to like, because I love discovering and listening to new music, I probably listen to 15 or 20 new (to me) albums a month. If the only way to listen to those albums was to buy them, then I simply wouldn't buy them, because I simply don't have the money to spend on album I may not enjoy, and I lose one of my great passions. Probably 95% of the bands I've spent money on, through buying albums, gig tickets and merch I have discovered through downloading, or more recently streaming, and to be honest the other 5% are probably from borrowing CD's. For the band it's a no-lose situation, If I download an album and don't like it, I usually delete it, and the band have lost absolutely nothing. If I download/stream an album and like it, then I'm likely to buy it or buy their new albums down the line, go to gigs, buy merch, and the band have gained a fan and the money that brings. The reality is that a large percentage of people who download music are like me. [quote]No, it's not really the same as stealing a car, or breaking into somebodies house and running off with their computer, but it's not like it isn't stealing. If i was a bit better versed on the ins and outs of intellectual rights, i'm sure i could probably make a fairly good argument here, but i'm not.[/quote] Who are you stealing it from? You're not stealing anyone else's copy because by downloading it you create your own copy, and as discussed, the idea of "stealing" it from the artist is predicated on the assumption of a potential sale. Intellectual property law and copyright law is an absolute minefield, each country has their own laws but America thinks their laws apply everywhere, and a lot of people are saying that new laws are being made with significant influence from the record/movie industry. [quote]I agree with quite a bit of what you are saying, Bob, except the analogy about Doritos. I would say it was more like your mum having Doritios, then make an exact duplicate and giving it to you, giving both you and her Doritos, one of which were purchased above board, and the other is a copy, which DID deprive Tesco of a sale.[/quote] I agree that my analogy was not excellent but to be honest yours has kind of compounded the error, should home cooking be illegal? I seem to recall you mentioning spotify, somebody calculated that in order to make US minimum wage from Spotify royalties, and artist would need 4 million streams per month, does that seem particularly supportive of artists?

Amplifier: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udAlxevMqw[/media] They're not a 3 piece anymore and the original bassist has left, but I don't think any band has ever sounded this huge with only 3 people on stage. The Joy Formidable: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l9TwSagK48[/media] I love his style, technically quite simple but he fills out their sound really effectively.

[quote name='Starless' timestamp='1361127638' post='1981512'] I remember a time when album inner sleeves screamed at you, "Home taping is killing music". That was 40+ years ago, so exactly how much better would the last 40 years of popular music have been if us young scrotes hadn't swapped our cassettes around with our mates? Did the music actually die? [/quote] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xoJ3hRcc9M[/media]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1361114339' post='1981192'] Music and professional musicians existed before sound recording. Downloading doesn't infringe copyright, because the copying is done uploader end, so in this country, there isn't 'illegal downloading', its the difference between making a burned cd and being given one, making the copy is a different thing to receiving it. If you see proper articles on the subject its always filesharing and uploading that is the illegal thing, torrents come under this because they upload at the same time as downloading. Vast amounts of music out there is totally rubbish, no-one has an obligation to pay for rubbish work they don't want done, if you want to make money from something, you need to do it in such a way to make money, failing to do so is not something you can blame on anyone else. People will check out something that is free that they'd never pay for, so a free listening isn't a lost sale, its a sale opportunity. Digital media formats that can be copied are inherently limited to sound, physical formats aren't, so you can still produce a music product as a saleable item, and its much easier to do so now that it was before, the recording costs have dropped vastly since the music industry became established, so the space to invest in the product outside of the recorded stuff is there, and all the necessary contacts to make such things are easily available due to the digital communication medium, you don't need a labels worth of accumulated contacts any more, you can just ask on a forum and be sent to all of the necessary people to make a product. But making excuses and blaming technology is easier. [/quote] This. A thousand times this.

Ok, I expect to become a lightning rod of hate and vitriol, but I personally think these points are always worth making, so here goes. The argument of downloading music/films/etc. as theft is predicated on a few assumptions which are not always accurate, for the sake of clarity I will confine examples to music. First is the idea that downloading music is always theft. The anti-piracy campaigns always compare digital media piracy to physical property theft, which is inherently wrong. When you steal a car or an album from a shop, you are physically removing one of a finite number of items that belongs legally to someone else. If you steal a car, you are depriving the person who owns it of their car against their will, if you steal a CD from a shop, you are depriving the shop of a potential sale, as they only have a finite number of CD's to sell. When you download an album however, you are downloading a digital copy of the disc or files that has been willingly copied and shared by the owner of the physical disc, and actually by downloading it you are creating your own copy. So really there's very little similarity, it's not like stealing a CD from a shop, it's more like the shop pressing a new CD and giving it to you. It's not like stealing a car, it's more like someone leaving the blueprints and parts for an identical car next to theirs. Anti-piracy campaigns really heavily on the "illegal downloading is theft" angle because it stigmatizes and vilifies downloading, if you download something for free, you're no better than a car thief or someone who mugs an old lady. This type of emotive manipulation is deceitful and founded on nothing, "illegal downloading" is not covered under any sort of theft law, if you are unlucky enough to be prosecuted for illegally downloading something it will not be in even a remotely similar manner to a car thief or a mugger, yet these are the kind of comparisons constantly made. I don't want to get bogged down in semantics though, far more relevant is the issue of motive. The second assumption made in the view of downloading as theft is that of potential loss. The idea that downloading an album for free is wrong is predicated on the view that downloading is always used as a free alternative to paying for it, and that but downloading it for free you are depriving the artist of the money you would have paid for the album. This for me is the single biggest issue with downloading. Personally if I can afford the album/film/movie and want to support the artist then I purchase it and am happy to do so. But what if you had no intention of purchasing the album whatsoever? If you download an album that you wouldn't have purchased legally, who suffers? The artist doesn't suffer because they wouldn't have gotten any money from you anyway. A shop or downloading service doesn't suffer because they wouldn't have gotten their percentage either. In this scenario, nobody suffers at all, nobody loses any money and nobody's work is impacted. And the reality is that this scenario is a significant percentage of illegal downloads. Record companies/movie studios etc. view all illegal downloads as lost potential sales, and that simply isn't the case, I know from personal experience that a lot of people download things because they're not sure whether they'd want to buy it. If that option wasn't available then most of them simply wouldn't buy it, and the companies wouldn't regain a lot of sales because they weren't losing sales in the first place. After Christmas my mum gave me a lot of leftover food that she hadn't used. I went to Tesco's a few days later and saw they had Dorito's on offer, I was going to buy some but I remembered that there some Dorito's in the stuff she'd given me, so I didn't get them. Would anyone really say that I'd stolen those Dorito's from Tesco's? The argument is essentially the same. The issue has become especially murky recently as services like bandcamp allow you to stream the entire album for free, and now most bands put up full album streams before the official release date. So it's OK to listen to the album whenever you want through a browser for free, but the extra convenience of having the files so you can listen to it offline is a heinous act of theft? There are large parts of the downloading culture that I find unpleasant, the aforementioned Kimdotcom being one of them, and personally I've never supported the "record companies are all big and evil so it's OK" argument, because it's an implicit admission that downloading is wrong but selective targeting can justify it, which personally I don't believe. So, that's a little bit of my 2p, I am very happy to discuss and debate any of this stuff, hopefully we can keep it civil for a while.

[quote name='GarethFlatlands' timestamp='1361026501' post='1979987'] bobbass4k - Great bit of tech metal but the fact it was all midi made it a bit odd to listen to. I'd love to hear it if you ever got it recorded with a live band (easier said than done I realise), maybe with another guitar line, vocals or something a little out of the ordinary. I only say this because I've got a bit of guitar fatigue at the moment. [/quote] Thanks man, I've never really thought of it as tech metal before, that's just how riffs come out of my head, 7/8 seems more natural to me than 4/4, maybe I'm just weird? I know what you mean about the MIDI, the drums are okay but the bass does sound weird, I have been considering redoing it because it's quite removed from my original idea, which had a a lot of whammy pedal abuse and a vocal line that I could probably move to synth, but I've never found the time. I've been trying to get a bass/drums duo, maybe with vocals together for ages to play this sort of stuff, but there seems to be a shortage of drummers into it.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1360967653' post='1979346'] It very good man, but I'm confused, what do you mean you didn't actually record it? What am I listening to? [/quote] Aah, I mean I didn't play it on an actual bass, it's all sample based VSTs. I was going to actually record it but I was happy with the VST sound so it seemed unnecessary, but now it sounds kinda thin to my ears.

Not my proudest achievement, but as a bass/drums thing it seems the most obvious choice: [url="https://soundcloud.com/bobbass4k/a-vague-disclaimer-is-nobodys"]http://soundcloud.com/bobbass4k/a-vague-disclaimer-is-nobodys[/url] I didn't actually record it, as I'd written it all out in Guitar Pro for ease of writing a drum part and I was happy with the tone so it seemed a lot easier to just use that, although now I'm really unhappy with the tone, but oh well. It started, unusually, with the intro, then the outro, then the riffs in between arrived fairly rapidly, and I just threw them together (and it shows). The half time bit in the middle I was unsure about but I think it works, there's actually a vocally melody for this but as I can't sing it went unrecorded.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1360953409' post='1979019'] BION, I have not heard Oceansize before, I have now, and I am digging it big! Excellent mate. Great bass lines and playing too. [/quote] They're the kind of technical I like, it's not 600 notes per minute in 23/16, but if you listen a few times and really think about it there's so many layers and weird tricks going on, like this track: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB0dEjr1tkg[/media] May not sound too complicated, but the keyboard in the intro is playing dotted eights, so rhythmically it's a complete headf**k, but you don't need to know that to appreciate the track. I'll stop now, as I could geek out about Oceansize all day. Back vaguely on topic, this is also one of my favourite basslines: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96O8SM20y7U[/media] The essence of simplicity, but it just works so well.

I may have some money to splash on a bass soon, and a $$ was on my list to check out. Unfortunately that video doesn't give me any idea of if a $$ is for me or not. To be fair, he doesn't claim to be demoing the bass, but then what's the point of the video?

This thread needs more youtube examples! This is one of my favourite basslines: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQnDH9SQ6Sc[/media] He doubles the guitar when that's what's required, and does his own thing when that's what required. Playing something unique with 3 guitars, vocals and a uniquely melodic drummer without it sounding cluttered is an achievement, but he always pulls it off. This another favourite bassline of his for the same reasons: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSrLxpUHUJQ[/media] To me, those two bass lines are better than most of the virtuoso stuff.

Not that I know of, using the volume knob is so simple I doubt there's much demand for it. I assume the idea of the afterburner is to replace an OD pedal, making your setup simpler, reducing cost, and transferring more control to the guitar, an auto-fade in thing would be adding cost and gear to do something you can already do easily on the guitar.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a820Xo4XdB8[/media]

Only been once, I had some time to kill before an early doors gig in Camden so I figured I'd go and look at all the pretty. Have to say I do prefer not being pestered, I find that if an assistant asks me if I need help with anything and I say I'm just browsing, they tend to get a little disgruntled. I can't remember who was there when I went but I was the only one in for the 10 minutes or so I was in there and the guy was behind the counter and didn't say a word to me, which personally I liked. I was just there to look, and had he been actively trying to get me to try or look at things I'd have felt bad, but he left me to my ogling and was there if I had had any questions. Contrast that to one time I was in the Bass Cellar, the guy at the counter was having a loud conversation with his friend and I wanted to ask if they had a specific set of strings, i got a very annoyed "what?" an unhelpful "I don't think so", and a "what a prick" to his friend on the way out.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1360587675' post='1972723'] Oh gyod, yeah I hate that. I hate the class system and class-based us-and-them music usually pisses me off. [/quote] This is definitely worth a read then: [url="http://thequietus.com/articles/08813-the-enemy-streets-in-the-sky-review"]http://thequietus.co...-the-sky-review[/url] And this one probably makes a better point, but is less entertaining: [url="http://drownedinsound.com/releases/17021/reviews/4145008"]http://drownedinsound.com/releases/17021/reviews/4145008[/url]

Not that I'm aware of, there's a lot of young indie bands doing the faux working class schtick, which is at best annoying, and at worst insulting and patronizing.

Surely it's always been the same though, every generation takes inspiration from and builds on what's gone before. Modern bands might be borrowing a lot form Led Zep but didn't Led Zep borrow a lot from American Blues artists? And those American blues artists borrowed a lot from traditional folk songs, and you can probably go on and on until you end up with a monkey hitting a rock with a stick, and even he was probably just copying another monkey.

[quote name='urb' timestamp='1360484964' post='1970957'] OK here's mine - I took inspiration from my trips to Norway in recent years - especially in the middle of winter, when it gets insanely cold - when the beauty of the snow and ice give way to some serious partyng (drinking) as it's the only way to keep warm at -12! Hope you enjoy it - love to hear your comments on it - let me know what you think.... [url="https://soundcloud.com/munkio/trippy-tundra-oslo-nights"]https://soundcloud.c...dra-oslo-nights[/url] [/quote] That's pretty great, nice melding of the crazy synth stuff and the more restrained jazzy stuff. I need some assistance with mine, annoyingly my right ear has decided to get bunged up so everything's a lot quieter in the right ear and high freqs are a lot woolier. This makes mixing a little arduous to say the least, especially as my usual method is just to pan stuff hard left and right then adjust the levels till it sounds good. I think I've found a workaround, but I'd appreciate comments on the balance in this rough mix of the first section: [url="https://soundcloud.com/bobbass4k/feb-comp-intro-test"]https://soundcloud.com/bobbass4k/feb-comp-intro-test[/url]