musicbassman

So, this afternoon I've been running through the setlist of a band I'm depping with tonight, and came across this gem, which I can't remember ever playing before. A reminder of what a great song this is, and what a brilliant bassline ! 🙂 Wikipedia tells me the bass player was Paul Arnold at this time. Enjoy.

This. A seasoned old pro drummer I worked with always had the motto "You should always go on stage feeling horny and hungry" These days I'll settle for just feeling slightly peckish. 🙂

I confess that I've realised, now, having played bass since the dawn of time, that when I was a 'professional' bass player in London in the 1970's I really wasn't actually very good at it ...... The worrying part of this is that other band members in various bands I played with at the time told me how good I was........... Were they just being polite ??? 😳

Yes, I've used these quite recently - they're perfectly fine - you'll play your bass and notes will come out. Where they fall a bit short is, like many brands of flat, they don't respond tonally to differences in playing techniques - I use Ernie Ball Cobalt flats and when you use these and dig in on a P they have a lovely crunch to them. Conversely, if you play with the side of your thumb and palm mute they produce a great DB -ish tone. Other strongly held opinions on various brands of flats are available...................!!!

Well that shows he was either 'making an artistic statement', or that maybe he just wasn't the sharpest tool in the box................

Sorry about the multiple postings - don't know what happened there 🙁

Well, here's an interesting little piece - Thundercat's appearance will confuse your Mum, but here he talks eloquently about the role of bass within a band and chooses some favourite influential bass lines. Enjoy.

Flats on a P and a pick? Whats not to like ! That's great, @BassAdder27 - I would suggest you keep plenty of top on your amp and then throttle back your tone control on the P to get just the required amount of click. Also, look into palm muting if you're not already using this technique. Not something to use all the time, but can be great on certain types of song. 🙂

Will Lee is such a consummate player - much respect to him. I certainly wouldn't be as relaxed as he is here if I was playing Teen Town ! 😲

Oh my God - I had a similar. The (married) KB player in the band I was in at the time was having a fling with a very young and very attractive woman, whom he would meet up with at our gigs on occasions. His wife, who was no dummy, obviously suspected something and turned up unannouced at a gig one night. Unfortunately, bad fortune meant it was a night where his girlfriend had already turned up as well. We were in the middle of playing, and our KB player suddenly started fumbling his chords and singing in a strange voice. I then saw his wife waving at us from the back of the room and realised what was going on, and I think the colour drained from my face as well. We stopped for a break, and the KB player immediately dragged me into the dressing room and confessed that his girlfriend had no idea he was married, and could I pretend that she was MY girlfriend, please? 🥺 Long story short, I introduced the girlfriend to his wife as my 'new girlfriend'. The 'girlfriend', of course, knew nothing about me, and the KB players wife, whom I'm sure knew exactly what was going on, then suggested that the girlfriend came and sat next to her 'so they could have a nice chat' At the end of the night I had to pretend to leave the gig with her, and once we were driving away from the venue she just said "I've been to hell and back", and wouldn't say anything else. The band continued on, but that affair was certainly over and she never appeared at a gig again. And the KB player, to the best of my knowledge, never strayed again. 😳

This was apparently, one of his final jokes. What an absolute genius !!

A repeat of an old post of mine - but worth it, I think. My toes still curl when I remember this.

My post on the 'Finding a Lost Love' thread earlier this month.........

I would say "why bother ?" but you have to admit that must be really really difficult to perform ! By the way, if you haven't heard of The Shaggs before there's plenty of recordings and analysis - from the dismissive to the devotional - around, including a video of the 'band' playing at a festival in 2017 on YT. Naive folk art, or gullible girls manipulated by a despotic father? You can decide.

So here's a local band from somewhere in the US doing an incredible cover of 'Elephant Talk' - bass player on a fretless fiver has to put himself into contortions to reproduce Tony Levin's Chapman Stick lines, but it's all good. Anyone else like to suggest other amazing covers they've found of nigh on impossible to play numbers ?

Errrr - sorry, why not? If your music is set on shuffle or random then that's what it should be, mathematically speaking ? Otherwise, it's just like having a weighted roulette wheel.

I'd be interested to know what program you're using, @ubit. I use Groove Music on my PC to play a supposed random selection of covers I've loaded to play along to on bass, and the same 40 or 50 songs keep coming up over and over when it's set on random, when there's hundreds to choose from. 😟

Thanks @fretmeister I'm not planning on doing video editing or anything fancy, I just want a typical Home PC for regular use (I'm not a gamer) but I want to make sure that it's not going to have future problems running a DAW. Some people on here are saying they're running Reaper on 10 yr old machines, but I do appreciate that plugins can start weighing things down a bit. Total budget is around £1K inc 28" monitor. And I'm glad to say my son will happily build it for free as a present for his dear old Dad

Thanks, @chyc, I'm primarily planning on using it to record multitrack MIDI and samples, using the 'piano roll' for notation. ( Not sure if I'm using the right terms here) Apart from a bit of guitar and bass not a whole lot else going on in terms of live instrument recording. No one seems to say too many bad things about Reaper, which is why I'm drawn to it, but there is an occasional reference to latency if you're running many different VI's or effects. But I guess that's going to apply to any DAW.

Thanks for this, @BigRedX. I don't know why there's two drives, I simply did a screenshot of the info my son sent me, but that would seem to make sense. I'll ask him about this. And I can now understand that an audio interface is essential. - however, deciding what to choose will have me searching for ideas and suggestions through the numerous other threads on here which cover this. 🙂

Not a week goes by without lamenting the loss of my '63 P, which travelled everywhere with me through numerous bands in the 70's and early 80's Sold it through Andys in Denmark St around 1983 - it went for £500, and I understood the bass player from The Bangles bought it. 😢

That's wonderful! I especially like 'remove cattle from stage' and 'release the penguins' 😄 Source ???

Hi guys, My old PC (11 yrs old) is slowly dying and my son, who is a skilled engineer, has offered to build me a new one rather than have me run along to Currys. He has previous experience of building PC's, so I have no worries there. But I'd like to start using a DAW (maybe Reaper) and I'm still not really clear as to what PC spec is required for running a DAW, apart from the fact that you need a decent amount of RAM. Back in the day, you used to need a dedicated soundcard to run a DAW, but this doesn't seem to be mentioned now - is this because you can rely on the built in sound processing on a motherboard these days? Or have I misunderstood something? Any advice welcome - here's a screenprint of what he's proposing to use: