BottomEndian

I was only joking about the mortal enemies thing...

[quote name='Musky' post='478910' date='May 4 2009, 12:21 PM']Hmm... [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signatures#.22Irrational.22_meters"]this[/url] would seem to suggest that's not the case.[/quote] Wow. I've never, [i]ever[/i] come across those before. They make zero sense to me. For a bit of contrast, if you scroll up a bit to the "Other variants" subsection preceding that one, it mentions Carl Orff's idea of replacing the lower number with the note value itself. Genius. So simple. 6/8 becomes 2 over a dotted crotchet. (Mind you, I've sung Orff's [i]Carmina Burana[/i] a few times, and I've never seen that notation either. I suppose the editors swapped them all out for the traditional approach. )

[quote name='waynepunkdude' post='481653' date='May 7 2009, 09:44 AM']We need something cheap to put into lifts *runs*[/quote] *watches in amazement as OutToPlayJazz uses a Status Graphite as a boomerang, felling the retreating waynepunkdude in one shot*

[quote name='maxrossell' post='481635' date='May 7 2009, 09:24 AM']What exactly is jazz?[/quote] Wikipedia is your friend: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#Definition"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#Definition[/url] As is rslaing: [quote name='rslaing' post='481447' date='May 6 2009, 09:42 PM']...this isn't a bad piece [url="http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15802"]http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15802[/url][/quote] Oh no, hold on. Just remembered the other thread. He's your mortal enemy!

I've been posting here for months and I never said hello. Disgraceful. So... hi! I'm Owain, I'm 29 and I live in Northumberland. Been playing bass for 4 or 5 years, but never with any degree of seriousness until very recently. It's now my mission to learn more about this wondrous low end in which we all wallow. Since the age of 6, I've played (at one time or another, with varying degrees of success) piano, violin, trumpet, euphonium, drums, guitar... there's probably a few more that I've forgotten. Oh, and I've sung. A LOT. Toured the world with the National Youth Choir. Been part of Lesley Garrett's backing choir on a Christmas TV special. (shudder) More recently I've been making some colossally chunky riff-based music with various combinations of people in Newcastle, and listening to lots of Frank Zappa. FACT: BottomEndian put the lime in the coconut.

[quote name='rslaing' post='481447' date='May 6 2009, 09:42 PM']Great post. To answer your first question, this isn't a bad piece [url="http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15802"]http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15802[/url][/quote] Interesting stuff. Thanks. [quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='481451' date='May 6 2009, 09:48 PM']Yes, 'Swing' comes and goes in and out of fashion, but the more technical stuff is now really music for musicians. I love instrumental jazz & I could listen to a lot of this stuff all day long, as it makes my brain analyise it as it goes along, but my partner thinks my music is "lift music." Obviously she has no taste, but you can see that the more technical stuff I'd be listening to is only really interesting to me as a musician.[/quote] I would usually be inclined to agree that technical jazz is music for musicians, but I did [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=47339"]wonder the same recently about Frank Zappa[/url], and it seems there are a fair few non-musician Zappa fans out there. Music that musicians think of as "technical" seems to quite often have an appeal that reaches far further than we might imagine. After all, Meshuggah often headline at metal festivals, and they're [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_tSyJBsRQ"]pretty damn technical[/url]!

But what does everyone mean by the word "jazz"? It seems to be a pretty wide umbrella these days. The whole genre's pretty nebulous, which I think is greatly to its benefit. Take someone like Matthew Herbert. When he works with a big band, is he creating jazz purely by virtue of the ensemble's format? Is he a jazz composer when he's [i]not[/i] using his big band? If not, why not? And take one of the ECM or Rune Grammofon artists like Arve Henriksen or Christian Wallumrød. They use huge amounts of improvisation and "jazz" instrumentation, but they frame the music in more of a non-jazz way, to my ear. It's more like "classical" or "academic" composition. I'm just spouting off the top of my head here. Not really a fully formed thought. I've heard loads of jazz that did nothing for me at all, but then again I've heard loads of pop, rock, blues, folk, funk, punk, crunk, metal, indie, whatever that did nothing for me at all.

[quote name='maxrossell' post='481033' date='May 6 2009, 02:34 PM']Combination of everything really. Basically when I score, I do it with a computer and a notepad. I usually have some sort of midi setup with a selection of instruments, from orchestral to modern, that I can use to try lines, melodies, rhythms, harmonies, all that kind of stuff. Or sometimes I'll just record a load of guitar lines and go from there. I'll cut a rough demo, either of the whole thing, or a series of sketches, and from that I'll make notes of a combination of plain English and letters and so on (or sometimes tab for chords, or sometimes sketches of drum patterns, or what have you), and this is what I'll bring to the orchestra or to the band or to whoever I'm working with. If I'm in a hurry to get a performance together I'll cut the whole demo so they can hear it and I'll give them clear notes explaining their parts in the piece. If it's more about the collaboration with the orchestra I'll try to keep it as open and spontaneous as possible, only bring sketched recordings in and make decisions and changes when we're actually in a rehearsal situation, going from the orchestra's reactions. Ideally I prefer to do it that way so it's a proper collaboration, not just me telling people what to play and how to play it. It's a bit of an esoteric mish-mash, but most of the time I'm not dealing with Rachmaninov-level stuff and I've rarely worked with more than fifteen people at once.[/quote] Cool. Thanks for that. Some stuff to try out in future there. Of course, if I was on the receiving end of your techniques (steady...), I'd probably just scribble everything down on manuscript as we went along. Horses for courses. Meat/poison. Etc.

And if you do want to learn some CSS (and expand your (X)HTML while you're at it), I can't recommend [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/HTML-World-Wide-Web-QuickStart/dp/0321430840/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241622468&sr=8-1"]Castro[/url] highly enough. Really simple, but really powerful. [Caveat: I'm not a web designer! I just found the book really helpful, and it meant I could knock together [url="http://www.phasedarray.co.uk/"]my band's website[/url]... which I now realise I haven't touched for a year. Bah. ]

[quote name='maxrossell' post='481056' date='May 6 2009, 03:04 PM']Also I do like the homestyle simplicity of it (i.e. it doesn't have flash explosions and automatic music players and w***ing dragons popping up all over the place), but I think it could do with some more images, some pro-looking gear porn, basically. Also, since it's a boutique operation, maybe some more stuff about the manufacture process and all that.[/quote] Ah, nuts. I was just about to suggest you add some w***ing dragons. But some pictures and descriptions of you and your carpenters hard at work would add a nice touch. I would also suggest that you learn a little CSS, so you can make cosmetic changes across the board by simply altering one file, rather than wading through all the pages of the ever-expanding site to change one little thing. If I remember correctly, you can also use CSS to create drop-down menus when you hover over something, so you could do Stylon's suggestion of having a "Products" menu that drops down the cabs when you hover over it. It'd streamline things a bit. Also, a big +1 to Stylon's idea of a nifty (or not even very nifty, just plain and simple) graphic that compares the cab sizes, and maybe compares them with some reference standards, like an Ampeg 810 or a Fender Precision.

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='481048' date='May 6 2009, 02:49 PM']Cool. Now, this makes me wonder... is it a problem with newer basses?? Or were they just off a bad run?[/quote] Mine's a December 2008 model. If you can sneak back into your local shop with a notepad and get the serial numbers of the real duffers, you can find out when they were made: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibanez#Serial_Numbers"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibanez#Serial_Numbers[/url] In fact, if they're Indonesian like mine, you can tell at a glance: they go IYYMMXXXXX. So mine's I0812XXXXX. (I'm not geeky enough to know the rest of the s/n off the top of my head!)

[quote name='maxrossell' post='480966' date='May 6 2009, 01:33 PM']Wow. Er. Okay.[/quote] Yeah, sorry. I do that to people. [quote name='maxrossell' post='480966' date='May 6 2009, 01:33 PM']My "skill" skills are mainly technical, as in computer stuff, studio stuff, sound stuff, all that jazz. For instance if you wanted me to produce, mix and master your album, I could, on the majority of industry standard formats.[/quote] Useful skills indeed. Things I've always tried to get my head around (to the extent of doing an HND in Music Production), but I always end up realising it's just not in me. I'm a musician, not a technician. I tend to hear the notes, not the sound. [quote name='maxrossell' post='480966' date='May 6 2009, 01:33 PM']On the other hand, in terms of formal musical skills, I don't have anything that would get me into a conservatory or anything. I have a basic understanding of music theory. What I do have is fifteen years of experience of working in a really broad variety of musical situations, which has given me some of my key "abstract" skills, which are quick adaptability, [b]the ability to effectively teach, the ability to conduct and lead bands[/b], pretty good relative pitch, a basic level of performance on dozens of instruments and a reasonably high level on others, and a whole bunch of other crap that I'd sound even more arsey and arrogant if I tried to put names to them.[/quote] [i]That's[/i] what I'm interested in (in bold). You've mentioned conducting an ensemble in a performance of your own music, without having notated the music in the traditional way. So how did you communicate to the performers exactly what it was you wanted them to do? Graphic score? Sing a line to them and get them to play it back? Mock up the piece in Cubase or something, and give them the recording to figure it out from? I do genuinely find this sort of thing interesting. I learned to read music when I started playing the piano at 6. I used to do a lot of choral singing, and I've sight-sung my way through a good few choral concerts. I can communicate music incredibly effectively with people who can read standard notation, but I always hit a bit of a block when they can't. Anything that can help me with that is a bonus!

It's nice to see there's some love for the BTBs. I thought I was alone...

[quote name='maxrossell' post='480851' date='May 6 2009, 12:15 PM']Which I guess actually puts [i]him[/i] at a disadvantage, because whereas I'd happily learn to read music if I needed to, based on a lot of the stuff he says he probably wouldn't touch many of the skills I have with a bargepole because he thinks they're pointless and beneath him.[/quote] OK, I'm genuinely intrigued. What are your skills, exactly? I don't mean that to come across as confrontational or patronising (that's the problem with forums -- you don't have any indication of tone of voice). It's just that I'm always interested in people's different ways of expressing and creating musical ideas, and how they communicate those ideas to other people. And I try to absorb as many methods as I can, so I can try to find ways to communicate musically with many different people. (The only things I've never seen the point of are the sol-fa/solfège systems. Why use the syllables -- why not just sing numbers relating to the degrees of the scale? ) EDIT: Just figured it out. If you use sol-fa, you can have a choir of singers from all over the world, all using the same system without translation. So simple. D'oh!

Yeah, there's no excuse for Ibanez to be using such a dreadful Friday afternoon job as their promo picture. They're lucky I only ever looked at 5-string BTBs. If I'd seen that wonkfest, I'd have had second thoughts about their QC.

[quote name='BottomEndian' post='479944' date='May 5 2009, 02:26 PM']I'll have to check on the real thing when I get home tonight. I've never noticed anything on mine, so I'm pretty sure the bridges will be straight. But now I'm all paranoid. [/quote] Checked. All good. Indeed, they fan out to match the spread of the strings, but each bridge unit's parallel to its string. It might be that the orientation of the bridge units is one of the few things that's done by hand, rather than CNC, so some dodgy ones squeak through. I'm still pretty shocked by that 776. It looks shoddy, but chances are it wouldn't make a shred of difference to the sound or intonation of the instrument. I back up that statement with no evidence whatsoever.

[quote name='dlloyd' post='480112' date='May 5 2009, 05:17 PM']You need a bit more than that.[/quote] You need a beret and a pack of Gauloises.

I agree with Bilbo: there's been some really interesting stuff in this megathread, if you pick through the sniping . One little thing I want to pick up on is the distinction between [i]learning to read music[/i] and [i]learning music theory[/i]. Granted, there's some overlap, but they're quite different things that people have been mixing up a bit. To go back to the parallel that OutToPlayJazz used (back on page 3406 or something...), if you think of musical notation as like English or any other written language, then learning music theory could be compared to studying linguistics. So, sorry BBC -- learning to read music doesn't propel you down the whitewater rapids of the river to jazz-w**k noodlery and appreciating how "clever" things are. It's music theory that does that!

[quote name='JPJ' post='479981' date='May 5 2009, 03:21 PM']Dont they have to be on the piss in comparison to the thru neck? For the string spacing to be wider at the bridge than at the nut, the strings naturally splay out towards the bridge. With a conventional bridge, you hardly notice but on a five string, the B and the G are not at exactly ninety degrees to the saddle. However, the relative size of the string verses the saddle and the short'ish length of string after the saddle, mask the effect. With the single bridge pieces, Ibanez have probably aligned the bridge to the string hence the outer ones looking slightly off in relation to the edge of the through neck.[/quote] BTW, absolutely agree with this. It's kind of what I was driving at a few posts back, but you've expressed it way more clearly and concisely than I could ever manage. ^_^

[quote name='JPJ' post='479986' date='May 5 2009, 03:26 PM']Hmmm, just had a look at the picture of the six stringer and these just look generally on the piss. Could it be an access thing, when you have to fit six of them side by side?[/quote] Well, the BTB576 on the Ibanez website looks OK: (Having said that, the A and D look a bit squashed together compared to the others.) The 776 in the OP was just a colossal duffer.

Incidentally, if anyone's still interested in the BTBs after this exposé, guitarguitar.co.uk have the BTB775PB for £425. Others have it around the £600 mark, so it could be worth a punt before they get wise and stick the price up! (I took the punt a couple of months back and got a beauty -- sounds kind of like a massive Jazz with everything on flat, but the EQ's not shy at all. Lots of tone-shaping available. Down-side: it's big and heavy.)

I've got the BTB775: On this picture, they look just about right -- the outer bridges seem to angle out [i]slightly[/i], following the line of the strings. Maybe a little squiffy on the B. I'll have to check on the real thing when I get home tonight. I've never noticed anything on mine, so I'm pretty sure the bridges will be straight. But now I'm all paranoid. That 776 looks [b]so[/b] wrong. Friday afternoon for sure.

[quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='478935' date='May 4 2009, 12:52 PM']...incredibly narrow string spacing. Something silly like 15mm.[/quote] Yowsa. That's tight. Still, it'd stop you digging in too hard -- can't even fit your fingers between the strings!

[quote name='steve-soar' post='477590' date='May 2 2009, 10:47 AM']Awwww. :wub:[/quote] I'd just never considered that there was a "Guitars > Accessories > Parts" category that I could then trim down to "Bass Guitar" and then "Bridge/Saddle". I'd been searching for things like "bass bridge through body". Maybe someone should write a post (for pinning somewhere) that lists all the different ways to attack eBay when you're looking for something.