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Stub Mandrel

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Everything posted by Stub Mandrel

  1. Stub Mandrel
    The irony is my music teacher said I had the best relative pitch of anyone she;'d ever taught. I could sing a long song unaccompanied and the last note would always be spot on. Last night our guitarist sang a bass riff for me and I played it straight off.
  2. Stub Mandrel
    http://theconversation.com/how-the-brain-reads-music-the-evidence-for-musical-dyslexia-39550
  3. Stub Mandrel
    I take the approach "I've be taught formally in school with generic music and violin lessons for a year, I've spent 40 years having a go at learning on and off may times with various levels of seriousness and taken singing formal lessons for a year as an adult where I pretended to be reading and still couldn't read something as complex as Claire de la Lune, so I'm probably a hopeless case". Interestingly I did an online test from Classic FM, where you had to identify classical music from the score, with multiple choice answers. The typical score was 4/14 and I got 9. I found it quite easy to match a song from its rhythm, and dynamics, but I think there was only one where I made any attempt to match the melody to the score. If I can read rhythm but not pitch after all the effort over the years I'm sure it's not just laziness...
  4. Stub Mandrel
    The whole thing started because he recounted an example of a company using a sham recruitment exercise to avoid paying those fees.
  5. Stub Mandrel
    Right from the beginnings of heavy metal the lyrics have been macho, vacuous and devoid of relevancy or social comment: Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, sorcerer of death's construction. In the fields the bodies burning, as the war machine keeps turning. Death and hatred to mankind, poisoning their brainwashed minds... Oh lord yeah! Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor Time will tell on their power minds Making war just for fun Treating people just like pawns in chess Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah! Now in darkness, world stops turning, ashes where the bodies burning. No more war pigs have the power, hand of god has struck the hour. Day of judgement, god is calling, on their knees the war pigs crawling. Begging mercy for their sins, Satan, laughing, spreads his wings... Oh lord, yeah!
  6. Stub Mandrel
    With respect, that's dog's danglies... For you maybe, but for me it's probably the most difficult mental skill I've ever attempted to acquire. Without willy waving, I'm pretty good at abstract, technical skills - maths, engineering, GIS, computer programming, including assembly language. I make a living as a consultant in an expert field, edit a popular specialist magazine and have written several books. Three things I struggle with - chess, Connect 4 and reading music. The two games I just make stupid mistakes in by looking right through what's in front on me; I'm sure it's a strong analogue to music because I simply cannot decode the positions of the notes except by painstakingly working them out one by one. I can vaguely follow a simple melody by looking and seeing if the notes go up or down by a little bit or a lot. I can relate their values to durations fairly well - I could easily develop this skill with practice. But I can't relate them to pitch. I think the main problem is my main skill set is 'seeing the wood despite the trees' and to read music it's the individual trees that matter.
  7. Stub Mandrel
    Reminds me of 'Great Rap Battles in History':
  8. Stub Mandrel
    Not... brown?
  9. Stub Mandrel
    You have now, that's a score annotated by Bernstein. Assuming what a conductor does is essentially the same thing.
  10. Stub Mandrel
    Examples are grace notes and triplets, but grace notes are fairly crude and not many triplets are three equal subdivisions of a note in real life. Don't get me wrong, musical notation is excellent and efficient and it must be great to be able to read it. Lesser ebings like me make the best they can of tab or other alternatives.
  11. Stub Mandrel
    What's voluntary about it? If anyone here can actually help me learn to sight read, I'll gladly accept their help.
  12. Stub Mandrel
    No, I'm just saying there are things you can't notate, but I would also observe there are various other ways to get what notation passes on; not least well-written tab, although it struggles with the same issues as notation. Any form of written music is like written poetry, it doesn't come to life until spoken, even if it's in your head.
  13. Stub Mandrel
    Rubbish! It's a well-proven fact that stickers add value to Kay guitars.
  14. Stub Mandrel
    As any amputee will tell you there's a big difference between the tools you have to use and what you can achieve with them. Written music is just one perspective on a piece of music. There's far far more to a performance than just a crude indication of note pitches, lengths and dynamics. With my pathetic work-it-out-one-note-at-a-time skills it's not difficult to see how totally inadequate a conventional score is for communicating, say, Led Zeppelin, songs - even supplemented by text annotations by Bonham and Page.
  15. Stub Mandrel
    Certainly true for the originals bands I've been in. The covers bands, we evolve our own treatment. This time round complicated by access to so many versions of the same song. Transcriptions can be wildly different let alone the fact that many songs have multiple versions. The main challenge for ANY song is not how to play it, it's agreeing how to end it!
  16. Stub Mandrel
    Mine are velroed, but batteries mean if I lose 9V I can just pull th power plugs out.
  17. Stub Mandrel
    At the end of '95 I was in an originals band that were pretty proficient, we just played locally but always went down well, and had a good, professional demo and distinctive songs. I changed top a much more demanding job, met my future wife and moved further away over the first few months of '96, and decided I had to put the band to one side, helped by a disastrous last practice where my amp sounded crap. Over a decade later I fixed the amp (just a broken joint on a smoothing capacitor!), but there were years when the only thing I played was an hour bashing on my acoustic. Life brings changes, and I started playing a bit more, and my duaghter started drum lessons, which meant regular sessions sitting in a music shop diddling with the guitars and deciding I ought to get an Epiphone electric. Then one day a courier arrived at the door. Inside the huge package was a guitar case and inside that was an immaculate but nicely worn Tokai SG - my brother had let me know he was sending em something, but not what! From there, my enthusiasm for playing grew slowly and steadily again and with encouragement I started to learn some stuff rather than just diddling the same riffs and runs. I started trying to play along to every song that came on Planet Rock. To my surprise I reliased my bass playing hadn't got worse, if anything my ear had got better and now there were tab sites to help me get the difficult bits. I realised I wanted to be in a band again, did a 'weekend warrior' event aimed at folks just like me. Had the good fortune to be matched with an excellent guitarist and drummer (in four bands, I've been blessed with four good drummers!) and behold it's happening again. And it's great 🙂 My one regret is that I now realise that I was actually a half-decent bass player back in the day, I'd always considered myself 'competent' and assumed people were being polite, what would my playing be like now if I had kept it up? So don't be afraid to take a break, but my advice is that 23 years is a bit too long.
  18. Stub Mandrel
    Fair call, my approach is new batteries that never get used in the critical pedals - compressor and a distortion.
  19. Stub Mandrel
    Yep they are like that. Does it not reduce volume (outside) as well?
  20. Stub Mandrel
    We walk hand in hand with horror, we ride side by side with death, we are the warriors at the end of time Over poisoned crystal deserts, where the ruined towers shout We march towards our dying scarlet sun. Death Death to life! Death! Death to time! We bring sweet destruction now to everything. In our mirrored flashing armour, in our secret, hideous helms, we are the Angels of your ruin. And we climb obsidian mountains, on our final, dreadful quest, Crossing lakes which cry with pain as we pass by. Death to all things living! Holy death will cleanse the world! Death, our standard! Death, our only joy. We are the Warriors at the end of time. Death to air and fire and water Death to light and earth and sound Death to anger, love and sadness Death to death... and time... and apace. On the dead horses our dead riders, Seek the last retreats of life. Life betrayed us and we slew it Corpses locked in battle, dancing at the End of Time Works for me 🤣
  21. Stub Mandrel
    Sneak a look in a Pirate Studio - they need to get good results on a budget. The one I use has foam on the walls, fabric covered, then a layer of plywood or chipboard with holes of many different sizes. Works pretty well.
  22. Stub Mandrel
    I tried using switching jack plugs. But my bass is an old dog, and you can't teach an old dog Neutrix.
  23. Stub Mandrel
    I've had to learn this - only a few minutes ago I had the realisation I've played it enough that I now enjoy it (like broccoli). And (like broccoli) I'm equally sure there's a point where it gets all to much! Ho hum, Use Somebody next...
  24. Stub Mandrel
    One thing about the Hohner design is that if the battery is flat you CAN switch to passive. Many basses don't let you do this. I've never been 100% convinced that a preamp inside the bass can actually do anything you can't do better with one outside it, except, perhaps, drive a VERY long jack lead.
  25. Stub Mandrel
    Get one of these and stop worrying:
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