EssentialTension

[quote name='phil_the_bassist' post='639241' date='Oct 28 2009, 05:07 PM']The comfy drum throne sounds like a good plan, but can I get away with it at a rock/mod gig..?[/quote] You can more than get away with it, you're going to look positively cool on that stool. Good luck.

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='639215' date='Oct 28 2009, 04:42 PM']That's it, 9min 20sec in. According to Jaco it's harder to play a fretted because of fret noise! But yeah, he says he always played over the fret as it's clearer[/quote] Does he connect it to playing fretless though or do I have false memory syndrome?

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='639367' date='Oct 28 2009, 07:34 PM']McVie is a criminally underrated player and always has the right line for the song[/quote] +1. McVie has always sounded great in all the incarnations of the Mac and the Bluesbreakers before that.

Rock, blues, soul, ska, reggae, country, n'orleans, rock 'n' roll... anything really... all with TI Jazz Flats. As a reviewer says at Stringsdirect: 'Don't be fooled by the name! I use these 'jazz' strings to play hard punk rock - and nothing beats 'em! Worth every penny.'

[quote name='buff' post='639027' date='Oct 28 2009, 01:02 PM']Great briton then [/quote] Great enough to get a sig bass - from Squier.

[quote name='lemmywinks' post='639019' date='Oct 28 2009, 12:57 PM']This is an edited down (i think) version of the interview i remember: [url="http://www.jacopastorius.com/features/interviews/portrait.asp"]http://www.jacopastorius.com/features/inte...ws/portrait.asp[/url] No mention of the fretting technique though It was from an old bass special of Total Guitar i think, it had a big feature oin Jaco IIRC. It's knocking around in the attic somewhere so i'll try to fish it out tonight[/quote] That's interesting but not the one I had in mind. It was video of Jemmott and Pastorius chatting.

[quote name='buff' post='638969' date='Oct 28 2009, 12:17 PM']Too true, an exeption to have an english signiture then.[/quote] If you mean Johnston, then he's Scottish.

I'd say, on average, heavier strings will do what you say but there are so many other variables - e.g. flats versus rounds, hand position, pickup selection - that the gauge of string is not the only thing to consider. If I was playing 70s blues/rock I'd probably be using flats on a P bass with the treble rolled off and playing with fingers over the pickup or even at the end of the fingerboard.

It's in this one I think: [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jaco-Pastorius-Modern-Electric-Bass/dp/B00007D5JQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1256729348&sr=1-3"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jaco-Pastorius-Mod...9348&sr=1-3[/url] Anyone got a copy to check it?

[quote name='Beedster' post='638916' date='Oct 28 2009, 11:18 AM']Well remembered ET, he also said he preferred to practice on the fretted neck in question (a maple board Precision) because it was wider and fatter than his fretless Jazz neck and he knew that if he could play a part on the slower neck he could play it with ease on the faster. I don't remember him saying he played on the frets to improve his fretless intonation but that's an intriguing, if somewhat painful, idea. Is it just me or was that DVD very sad and depressing, especially Jaco's response to the usual "You're the greatest.." comment of "Well give me a gig then" C[/quote] Ah, so you remember it too - well, some of it anyway. Maybe I'm imagining the thing about playing on the frets as practice for fretless but I think you're right: it was a sunburst Jazz with a maple fretted Precision neck. It was an instructional DVD which included the interview with Jemmott.

[quote name='chrisba' post='638310' date='Oct 27 2009, 06:45 PM']This is a little program I wrote to try and teach myself to recognise intervals and play the corresponding note. Written in Visual Basic so it might need some VB runtime libraries to work, but I can't tell for sure. It's not really a txt file, but download it, rename it to a .exe ( which I'm not allowed to upload ), virus-scan it ( not that you have to, but it's good practice ) and then just doubleclick Any feedback welcome... [attachment=35261:intervals.txt][/quote] Thanks

[quote name='Zach' post='638827' date='Oct 28 2009, 09:55 AM']I stuck .exe at the end of the name and it still opened it in notepad. Would you be able to upload it as a zipped .exe?[/quote] Go to Control Panel Folder Options View Unclick 'Hide extensions for known file types' Apply OK Then rename the intervals file Then Click 'Hide extensions for known file types' Apply OK

[quote name='chris_b' post='638652' date='Oct 27 2009, 11:59 PM']Leo Fender strung all his guitars through the body. I don't know why but if it was good enough for him.....![/quote] I wonder why he didn't string them through the headstock as well.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='638625' date='Oct 27 2009, 11:26 PM']Thru-body stringing increases the break angle, thus reducing movement over the bridge witness points. Alex[/quote] So thru-body, on that account, would lower compliance as there would be greater friction. That could be correct but the difference might well be too small to make any noticeable difference. I'd guess a much smaller difference in compliance than from playing, say, near the bridge to playing over the end of the fingerboard. That would surely make the difference in compliance much more noticeable.

[quote name='GreeneKing' post='638620' date='Oct 27 2009, 11:22 PM']Hehe, and we're back to baddass bridges, brass nuts and paint thickness again.[/quote] Correct.

I'm sure in an interview of Jaco Pastorius by Jerry Jemmott I heard Pastorius say that he never practiced on fretless. He always practiced on fretted with his left hand fingers dead on the fret so that his muscle memory was perfect - or something to that effect. The idea being that playing fretted, played 'correctly', will help you to play fretless. Anyone else seen that or am I imagining it? For me, playing fretless made me listen differently and more carefully to what I was playing and I would say that now slips over into my fretted playing.

[quote name='GreeneKing' post='638601' date='Oct 27 2009, 11:02 PM']Compliance is what I'm considering here, definitely, if that's what we choose to call it, how tight the string feels when a load is placed on it. I agree that tension imposed by the tuner over the scale length to obtain pitch is another issue that is related but not the same. It's a static vs dynamic situation as I see it.. But as we're talking how the strings 'feel' in the dynamic playing situation then I'd go with overall length effecting compliance. Effecting it in that a longer string is more compliant not less.[/quote] That's what the source I referenced seems to say about compliance or elasticity (if friction free rollers are assumed at the nut and the bridge). Except the source also seems to claim that, while there are very few studies of the extent of increased compliance with longer lengths of string beyond nut and bridge, one study that was done seemed to show that musicians couldn't actually tell the difference. [quote]It may be that people are exquisitely sensitive to differences in compliance, but the only study I know of indicates that they are not very sensitive at all. Master archtop guitar maker Bob Benedetto described a couple of informal experiments he made in this area in an article that appeared in American Lutherie #68. Bob built two simple demonstration “necks”. The first had a number of identical strings but with different scale lengths, the scale lengths varying from 23” to 26”. All strings were tuned to the same pitch, so according to the relationship between tension, pitch, mass per unit length, and speaking length, the strings with the longer scale lengths will be under greater tension than the shorter ones. You can take it as fact that this must be so (they are called laws of physics after all) but no one that had this apparatus in their hands could feel any difference in elasticity between any of the strings. Again, let me make this clear. The issue here is not that the longer strings were under greater tension – that is a physical fact. The issue is that people could not sense any difference in the feel of the strings when attempting to bend them. The second of Bob's test necks had a number of identical strings tuned to the same pitch too, but this time they all had the same scale length. What differed was the amount of extra string length between the bridge saddle and the anchor for each string. With this apparatus we know that the tension has to be the same for each of the strings because the strings are identical and their lengths and pitches are identical as well, and we also know that the strings with the longer extra length behind the bridge saddle should be more compliant. But here again, no one that handled the apparatus could detect any difference in elasticity among the strings. [url="http://liutaiomottola.com/myth/perception.htm"]http://liutaiomottola.com/myth/perception.htm[/url][/quote]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='638572' date='Oct 27 2009, 10:25 PM']Problem with the 'science' way of seeing it, is that your are measuring the tension by pulling on the end of the string like the tuning peg, but thats not how you percieve tension in a string as you play it, where you are bending the string from straight to push it onto a fret. Fairly sure it's the increase in tension from doing that which you are feeling.[/quote] So what you experience would be not what the physicist calls tension but rather is compliance or elasticity.

There was a long and technical discussion of this at the old Dudepit some years ago. In terms of the physics of it, the only things that affect [u]tension[/u] are (1) pitch, (2) vibrating length, and (3) mass of the string per unit length. Neither length of string past the nut or bridge nor break angle at the nut or bridge can affect tension. However, tension needs to be distinguished from [u]compliance[/u] or how tight the string feels to the player. At least that is so according to this source: [url="http://liutaiomottola.com/myth/perception.htm"]Lutherie Myth/Science: Human Perception of String Tension and Compliance in Stringed Musical Instruments://http://liutaiomottola.com/myth/perc...cal Instruments[/url]

Yesterday, I spent the day in London - mainly in clothes shops with Mrs Tension and I have to say she was looking good on the money [s]we[/s] she spent. Anyway, I did drag Mrs T down to Denmark Street where, in Macari's, I played a Squier Classic Vibe Precision in sonic blue. Played acoustically it was excellent and in my opinion beat the olympic white Classic Vibe Jazz that I also tried. I asked to try it amplified and got plugged into some tiny Marshall combo. It sounded awful. I told the guy 'Either the amp is s**t, or the bass is'. He plugged me into a slightly bigger but same range Marshall combo. It was louder but not better. From other reports here on the Classic Vibe basses, I suspect it was the amps. Also, the price was £50 (i.e. 20%) higher than at GAK in Brighton where I'll be checking one out through a proper amp later this week. So my bass of the moment is the Squier Classic Vibe Precision in sonic blue.

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='638092' date='Oct 27 2009, 04:11 PM']I get much more from songs and band performances. I know bass can do a lot of things... I just don't really want to hear 'em.[/quote] [quote name='steve-soar' post='638106' date='Oct 27 2009, 04:18 PM']Welcome back to music.[/quote] Those two statements sum it up completely.

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='637704' date='Oct 27 2009, 10:51 AM']Extraordinary! I've been a major-league Beatles fan since the mid-60's and I've never before seen Macca on a double bass. Ta very muchly Dave.[/quote] Neither had I, I found it accidentally looking for the bass lesson clip which I'd seen before. And not merely any old double bass!! I've heard that McCartney owns this one too:

And without a pick again: