Leonard Smalls

We're thinking of doing an open air rehearsal in my garden... Luckily we don't have any near neighbours - though when we used to rehearse in my (uninsulated) garage a bloke from the other side of the valley (400m away) complained to the council. However, this same bloke complained about his next door neighbours unnecessarily burning rubbish and making excess noise, on November 5th. So we're not at all worried about offending Captain Miserable...

Pic sent to Mr Lurks... And I'd like to apologise now if anyone feels either nauseous or deeply upset by it. 😎

Cheers chaps! As Mr Lowdown alleges a fix I am forced to issue a strenuous denial and point out that I have an alibi, and that the fingerprints found on the envelopes stuffed full of cash in the possession of those who voted for my ditty only bear a superficial resemblance to my own... 😁 Now before the rozzers turn up, who should I send my pic to?

Slightly odd Bradfordians:

😂 Great art should evoke a feeling of "please please please make it stop!", followed by enormous joy when it actually does... 😁😎 At least that's how I justify making such a terrible racket every month (*) *Though the real reason is to annoy Doug 😄

Not often I hear that - ta! (note to self; must up the dissonance next month - real art is about uniting the viewers/listeners in appalled abhorrence, not in pandering to bourgeois notions of beauty 😆😉)

Bit of jazz fusion with Hiromi, and the Fuze on guitar.

Just done that and it's working fine now...

I have! It's actually only worked once, and that was with glitches so it's possible the free download was a bit upgefuktgemache, as they would say in Germany if they didn't actually speak the language 😁

That's not a virtual guitar... It's amp/cab/fx modelling. I've got Bias FX but weirdly, Ableton has just decided it doesn't recognise it as a compatible VST so mebbe I'll try the free version of Amplitube if I can't fix it!

Love that GoGo beat!

I've never had any windows/PC type issues while making music on my laptop using Ableton... Funnily enough it just works! Saying that, I got an i7 processor with SSD and 16gB RAM - cost me about £650 5 years ago. However, I've since realised that 16gB gets maxed out if you use 20 analogue, 4 hungry midi instruments, plus Izotope Neutron and sound balancer on each track plus Bias FX on the guitars... I'm thinking of following Big Red's route - sort of; haven't used Macs since I was at the BBC (that was when Avid/ProTools was only just starting to be able to be used on a PC) so may go for a refurb 16 core Xeon processor business server or graphics machine with at least 64gB RAM running windows.

When someone mentions "New York Sound" I always think of either Studio 54 disco, or the late 70s early 80s No Wave scene like Pre-Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Bush Tetras or James Chance/James White:

If you want to chase me out of a room all you've got to play is some saccharine country, or generic boy/girl band pop... However, when I used to DJ back in the 80s, after a night of predominately PFunk and electro type grooves I'd play this (everybody usually jumped about crazily) Followed by this to get 'em out...

Some folks might find Schoenberg's attempt at a little song quite annoying: And many won't find much to dance to here:

Ornette's easy listening, relatively speaking - at least there's usually a repeating melody line of sorts. Try this for clearing a room, Or this:

There's only one beat you need to be on...

Some Wal slap...

To be fair, that's true of any playing style on any instrument! With slap there's far less room for error than doing the one note derderderderderder so beloved of many bassists... With derderderderderder you're safely hiding in the background - nowt to worry about, you're just providing the rhythmic and root underpinning. With slap you're putting yourself in the foreground a lot more so if you do it averagely or badly it's far more noticeable - just like those guitar players who do the same old tired completely safe solos all the time (or those bands who collectively do the same old tired completely safe songs 😆). However, for some bass players the very idea of playing more than just the root and fifth is anathema, heresy even, and must be derided, finger-pointed, denounced as show-off behaviour. After all, the next stop is (gulps) …. jazz!!!!!

I was going to go for a whole-tone piece, as key-based music is non-egalitarian to all other notes, until I realised that the whole-tone system discriminated against frequencies not present in-between the notes... So I thought I'd do this slightly over-driven bit of jazzy stuff instead, using 3 brass VSTs, plus Music Labs and AmpleSound Les Paul VSTs - when I saw the pic I thought of Miles Davis' "Agharta" for some reason, hence "Hollow Earth": https://soundcloud.com/leonard-smalls/hollow-earth NB; minor remix done - for some reason wouldn't embed hence url...

I can give y'all lessons if you like... However, this month I've steered clear of crowd-pleasing singing, because in common with melody and time signatures it's just a bourgeois concept designed to oppress The Workers while at the same time profiting from Their Labour. 😎😄

As inspiration for this month's song challenge 😁

I've tried the demo version of the Les Paul one... The sound was OK but I didn't like the interface or lack of explanation - wasn't wiling to spend $149 especially as it has virtually no effects or amp modelling either. I'm currently demoing AmpleSound's Les Paul - it's similar sounding to the Music Labs (i.e. varies from completely believable to completely fake, depending on how you play it!), but it has the advantage of telling you what each button does (to some extent at least!), and has some amp/cab options and limited fx. Shame Orange Tree and Shreddage don't do demo versions as they both seem to have more versatility - though I suspect that all have a steep learning curve...

May I refer the honourable gentleman to Juna Serita doing a proper slap version of What is Hip... Funky as!

Mine's got guitar, 3 saxes and a trumpet... All it needs now is some rhythm noseflute and a tumble-drier solo. And the obligatory dusting of glitter combined with 3 coats of varnish.