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Digital Jesus posted:Welp, I did a thing. I picked up an Ampeg BA-108. It should be priced right with the Fender Rumble 15. Reviews were all over the place about whether it was better than or inferior to the 110 model, so I figured being in a small room I don't need a monster practice amp. It looks like it's got about the same feature set as the Fender rumble you're looking at, although I'm not sure if the rumble has an effects loop (which I am probably NEVER going to use but who knows). And yes, now that I am playing I want to get all the things. I'm holding it back because I should have my very first bass (Mexican Fretless Jazz!) sent back from my parents house by Christmas or so, and I'm going to see about having it over-hauled with shiny new things if years of neglect haven't ruined it.
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Dec 7, 2012 05:50
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I don't think there's any magic answer to that, just listen to what everyone else is doing and try to get back into the song as quick as you can. I have a percussive sound, so I can do the thing you mentioned about strumming a rhythm until you get your place.
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Dec 7, 2012 05:54
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Just noticed the Behringer amp I was thinking of (BX1800) wasn't mentioned in the OP at all. Wonder where the hell I heard about it? Maybe somewhere else in this thread. Behringer amps don't seem terribly popular on the internet, and I have no way of trying one locally, so I may have to reconsider.
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Dec 7, 2012 06:35
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Kilometers Davis posted:Is anyone else going through a severe case of "poo poo I've got money and have to buy all the gear"? I just dropped a ton of cash on a stealth Bongo 5 and I just ordered a Grey Stache pedal from the awesome Fuzzrocious dude. Now all I need to go is upgrade my Ibanez sound wave 100 and ill have a really great setup. Probably going with a nice Ampeg/Orange combo. Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuudge. are you in the stoner/doom thread on TB? i swear someone there just bought a stealth bongo as well
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Dec 7, 2012 07:01
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Local Resident posted:But I've discovered that the absolute worst thing you can do while playing bass is just to stop. So if my left hand doesn't know where it should be, what should I be doing? Learn the song! Failing that, there's always the tonic.
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Dec 7, 2012 11:25
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cactuscarpet posted:Learn the song! Well, there's always that, I suppose. I'm actually finding adjusting to bass more difficult than I thought, probably because I have sloppy technique and I'm not used to playing the "anchor" that kind of holds a tune together. You really notice when the bass player fucks up. Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures?
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Dec 7, 2012 18:42
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Anyone got any sustain tips without outright replacing the bridge? I just got my fretless back out and the low E sounds completely dead, it's not great played open but the higher I go up the neck the more it chokes. I've tried raising the saddle to make sure, and all the other strings ring out fine, so I'm not sure what's going on - it didn't sound like this before. Any tips? Also does it matter if the silk winding is on the saddle? it's not touching at all on the G and D, there's a little bit on the A and the E is pretty much resting on the silk. Doesn't seem like it would provide the best vibration transfer that way, but I'm sure it sounded ok before
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Dec 7, 2012 19:01
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Local Resident posted:Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures? I wouldn't really call any of them epic... I've had a shoulder-strap break free of my straplock while in mid-groove. But luckily it was right near the start of the set, and the sound-guy was right next to the stage and hopped up real quick to jerry-rig it for me. I was literally playing flamingo-style; one leg up, propping my bass with my knee. I've had my amp die on me several hours BEFORE a show. Freaked me the gently caress out because we were a good 6 hours away from home (where my backup was). So I busted out my leatherman and took it apart. Luckily there was a connection on the board that was obviously loose (probably from bumping around in the trailer during transport), so I just slipped it back on the clip or whatever you call it and it was fine. I'm pretty meticulous when it comes to being prepared for the worst when it comes to gigging. To the point that I'm a little OCD about it. I always make sure I have a back-up bass, an extra 9v battery for my main active bass, extra cables, extra extension cord/power-strip, XLR for my direct out, etc. etc. One time setting up for a show our guitarist was plugging in his amp and we saw a bright flash as he flipped his standby and on-switch on his Fender Deville. We all freaked the gently caress out, but luckily were in town and music stores were still open, so we started to trouble-shoot it. Looked at the tubes, everything was fine, blah blah blah, couldn't figure out what was wrong. Finally for a reason I can't even remember, we flipped it off of standby, and sure enough it was playing just fine... It turns out that the bulb/fuse had blown in the drat power-light... So it was working fine, it just had no red light to tell you it was on.
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Dec 7, 2012 19:07
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Local Resident posted:Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures? The first time we played a new song live, I made it about ten seconds in before I realized I had turned my amp off accidentally. So picture about ten seconds of me dramatically headbanging, slowly noticing I can't hear myself and then scrambling to turn my amp back on.
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Dec 7, 2012 19:47
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Local Resident posted:Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures? Back before I learned how to be prepared for shows my band played live on some college radio show when my D string broke on our 2nd song. Didn't pack and extra bass or spare set of strings. I had to rethink my hand positioning on the fly which did not go nearly as well as I wanted it to. I've had the strap pegs on my MIA P-bass come flying out on more then one occasion. I started packing a pack of toothpicks and a screwdriver in my supply bag after the 3rd time.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:55
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Local Resident posted:Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures? I was at a party and I make it a point not to drink when I know I'm going to play because I lose all sense of time when I have had even a little bit to drink even if I am not drunk. But I had not realized that I was expected to play... I hadn't brought any of my gear (I was playing guitar for this band by the way) thankfully the host had a guitar and amp so I used that. But I was so drunk that I forgot most everything in the set and ended up improving jazz over most of it and getting cues from my pianist for the rest... Needless to say it was horrible and I felt terrible the next day.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:13
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why oh WHY posted:I was ... not drunk. But I ... ended up improving jazz Yeah, well, see the thing is, I know enough to know that I suck as a musician, and even I know that "going jazz" = "pick a note, any note". Jazz is kinda like the MBA of the music world Just have absolute conviction in your talent and people will flock to you.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:26
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Yeah, it's like Victor Wooten says, never sacrifice the groove for a note. I think that was probably the only part of that book I liked...
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Dec 7, 2012 22:46
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Seventh Arrow posted:Yeah, it's like Victor Wooten says, never sacrifice the groove for a note. That's funny because in my opinion he's a huge culprit of doing that...
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Dec 7, 2012 22:49
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Scarf posted:That's funny because in my opinion he's a huge culprit of doing that... Well yes, part of what I didn't like about the book is how phoney it all is. I also figured that it's kind of arrogant, too. Throughout the book, Wooten is amazed at all these "revelations" that Michael lays on him, but it's obvious that Michael just represents music philosophy stuff that Wooten came up with on his own. So really he's saying that he's got this stunning, mind-blowing musical intellect capable of BLOWING YOUR MIND 
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Dec 8, 2012 00:46
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Local Resident posted:Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures? The worst thing for me was probably a show when our drummer set up sideways, so although we were in a row I was essentially playing by his backside. At one point he broke a stick and chucked it behind him, right into my face. It hit about 1cm below my right eye- it probably could've blinded me very easily. My eyesocket got swollen almost instantly. Friends in the audience (of course) said it was the funniest thing ever, because I stopped playing, glared downward, and then angrily threw the stick to the other side of the room, then continued playing.
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Dec 8, 2012 02:15
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My amp blew about 10m before the end of a gig once. Flicked the rhythm guitarist's bass control to 10 and just mimed along for the remainder; don't think anyone even noticed.
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Dec 8, 2012 10:57
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Started at least 1 set with my amp still muted. Kicked AC adapters for pedals out on multiple occasions. Kicked the lead out of my pedalboard more than once too. It happens, but people never remember it for longer than about 10 minutes after your set's finished, and you generally learn from it. Stuff like looping cables, using batteries or an AC brick when you can.
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Dec 8, 2012 11:18
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All I have are many, many instances of my straplock falling out while playing - gently caress Dunlop straplocks. Happened all the time on my Warwicks with the inset Dunlops, but my Stambaughs are all Schallers and it's never happened on those.
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Dec 8, 2012 19:43
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niff posted:are you in the stoner/doom thread on TB? i swear someone there just bought a stealth bongo as well I think i've posted a few times, I don't think I mentioned the bass though. Crazy. I'll be lurking that thread a lot in the future.
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Dec 9, 2012 10:22
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 glamour shot of my one true love
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Dec 9, 2012 22:38
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Local Resident posted:Speaking of which - hey Scarf, Bacon, and all the other performing musicians in here. Got any funny stories of epic live gently caress ups or gear failures? Not exactly catastrophic but I filled in on this gig when I hadn't been playing that long and of course there's always that one song that wasn't on any of the setlists they sent you, but does end up on the one at the gig. In this case it was "Knock on Wood" and when we discovered it between sets, they asked if I knew it. I thought to myself "I've heard that before, I-IV kind of thing with a little pentatonic hook, should be okay" and asked them for the key. The key was F and my memory was correct: it was a I-IV kind of thing. However, it starts on Bb. So it was more of a IV-I thing and I was playing the pattern in reverse. But of course when you don't have a lot of live experience, your ears (and brain) are useless on stage, so I spent the entire song trying to figure out who was playing those awful dissonant chords. cactuscarpet fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Dec 9, 2012 23:43
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I spun around and yanked the head off an Ampeg amp once.
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Dec 10, 2012 03:36
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LordPants posted:I spun around and yanked the head off an Ampeg amp once. That's pretty terrible... I've had a person throw up on my amp, it still worked/works but it was never the same again.
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Dec 10, 2012 04:12
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If you're playing live with any regularity and a rock genre, you should always have a back-up bass, extra strings, strap locks (just get several of the plastic ones), extra strap, couple of cables, extra batteries (for your pickups, wireless, etc.), tools... I used to have a lot of problems with my wireless until I switched to the Line6 digital wireless, and once the battery for the active pickups on my 5-string went out and made that embarrassing helicopter noise...I've broken strings and just had the bass crap out on me a couple of times, but that's why I bring the extra bass (and an attentive roadie just off-stage to hand it off to me seamlessly; the other guys didn't even know it had happened until they saw the tape later). To be honest, most of the bigger screw-ups live have been with guitarists or drums or the multi-track we'd bring along to playback extra vocal/keyboard parts crapping out because of the stage shaking too much, so I've been pretty lucky. I live in Japan and I have ended up really not liking Ampeg amps (though that's usually the only thing available/easiest to get). It's extremely impractical to have a bass amp in homes, and bassists in rehearsal studios/live houses tend to overdo the bass amp and they always end up peaking too easily. I don't know. I used to be worried that it was just because I sucked at getting levels right, but if a live house had any other kind of amp I never had any problems. Ideally I would buy my own head and take that on the road, but for the shows I do these days there's a production company on hand who will have good stuff available (and I'll use an Ampeg then). Been meaning to ask this for awhile; does anyone have anything to say about the Schecter 5-string Rickenbacker look-alike? I like Ricks and I like 5-strings. Saw one a couple of years ago in Osaka and haven't seen one around since. Elec fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Dec 10, 2012 |
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Dec 10, 2012 05:36
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I never broke a string in like 5 years so I just ended up leaving the spare behind. 
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Dec 10, 2012 09:10
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First show with the new band was this past Friday. I haven't had that much fun playing in a long time, and the crowd was amazing. Pro-tip: Playing music vs. playing music you WANT to play makes a huge difference.
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Dec 10, 2012 18:40
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I have come to learn that pretty hard in the last few years! It is always 10x better to play music you WANT to play.
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Dec 11, 2012 04:28
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But better to be playing any kind of music than none. I miss being in a band 
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Dec 11, 2012 14:25
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Our front man has been taking the band way too seriously, which I've just found out. To make matters worse, he's always taken it way too seriously. Video taping all of our shows, acting like a nervous jerk on stage, freaking out about technical problems during shows, bringing four loving guitars with him to a punk rock show at a bar (two of which are Les Paul customs that each cost more than my car). And now that he's "old" (35) he's getting even more serious about stuff because he never bothered to get an education so he has nothing besides his dad's bar to fall back on if the band doesn't rocket him to stardom. So yeah, I guess it's okay to be playing any kind of music, but it's starting to border on being a chore.
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Dec 11, 2012 16:19
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scuz posted:So yeah, I guess it's okay to be playing any kind of music, but it's starting to border on being a chore. When music becomes a chore you should probably leave or kick the dude out... For me personally I don't care what I'm playing as long as I'm actually playing, I do enjoy playing my music more than say some country or punk but for the most part I'll play anything.
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Dec 11, 2012 16:25
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Don't misunderstand me, I love playing music, period. But now that I'm in a project where we are all on the same page in terms of the stuff we want to play and write... it makes a WORLD of difference.
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Dec 11, 2012 16:32
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Scarf posted:Don't misunderstand me, I love playing music, period. But now that I'm in a project where we are all on the same page in terms of the stuff we want to play and write... it makes a WORLD of difference. I definitely understand. The band I'm with now is three people including myself and it's better than any other band I've ever been apart of and it's really only because we are all in tune with what the other people want. Edit because auto correct. why oh WHY fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 11, 2012 |
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Dec 11, 2012 23:05
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Scarf posted:Don't misunderstand me, I love playing music, period. But now that I'm in a project where we are all on the same page in terms of the stuff we want to play and write... it makes a WORLD of difference. same buzz here. instrumental three piece stoner band that works so well together, predominantly because we're all writing the songs and we don't suffer from 'front man syndrome'.
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Dec 11, 2012 23:25
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Scarf posted:Don't misunderstand me, I love playing music, period. But now that I'm in a project where we are all on the same page in terms of the stuff we want to play and write... it makes a WORLD of difference. Yeah, I'm just leaving a project I've been lukewarm about. Once you've been involved with something that clicks, it's hard to settle. And it's not like being in a band you don't love is any less of a commitment time or effort wise.
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Dec 12, 2012 01:19
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Finally recorded something with the bacello. This was a project I was asked to do for a short film about a couple of quarry workers who find a leprechaun and brutally torture him for his gold. Originally, I started the theme with a Gretsch Tenor Banjo, but couldn't get the right sound out of it. It just wouldn't stay in tune.. it's a 1958 model with friction tuners. I'm in the process of putting geared tuners on it. I know, I know. But those tuners are shot. I doped them, and even the slightest bit of tweaking couldn't zero them in. So I scored a Mitchell Concert Uke with a piezo pickup and ran it through a Cutec Analog Delay, with repeats at close to zero. The amp is an Epiphone Valve Jr. I also miked it up with an SM57 beta and I know it's really high in the mix. I plan to add some ambient guitar stuff. The guitar is an Epiphone SG Custom Black beauty. I loving love that guitar. I hit hard and it stays in tune like a champ. The bass amp is a little Hartke 30 watt combo. The bass runs where you get the background fuzz is in Em and Ebm and back and forth. http://tindeck.com/listen/kibq
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Dec 13, 2012 11:32
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quote:band chat There's a BBC documentary series called "I'm in a Rock'n'Roll Band" which I can highly recommend, especially if you have experience with being in a band. There's an hour-long episode about each of the main characters in a traditional rock band (singer, guitarist, drummer, "the other one") featuring interview snippets with people from famous bands in rock music. The interviews are really well done, and very funny. Basically, everybody bitches about everybody else and points out their irritating habits. http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=161321&lid=7 And, yeah, bassists get lumped in with keyboard players, Bez, and "other miscellaneous" under the tag of the other one. /derail
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Dec 13, 2012 17:11
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I want to learn how to do proper walking bass lines, but I'm not sure if I've got all the requisite skills - I've been playing for years and I'm a pretty decent player, but my theoretical knowledge is a little bit of a mixed bag. The main thing is I can't really read music, I know a little bit, but not enough to do any real sight reading, but maybe enough to go through the chord changes on lead sheets - and most of the books about playing real jazz bass seem to be in standard notation. But - I do know and can comfortably play a good selection of arpeggios and scales, I've got a year of college level music theory to go with a decade+ of odds and ends. So I'm not completely clueless, I just don't know where to begin learning real jazz bass. Should I just pick up a fakebook and start trying to work through some tunes? Any good standards to start with? Or should I just suck it up and actually learn how to sight read?
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Dec 14, 2012 17:15
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This might help you get going http://scottsbasslessons.com/walking-bass-lines/walking-bass-beginner-1.html I'm not sure if you need to learn to sight read (although I think most people will recommend it), but you'll at least need an understanding of music theory and progressions so you can walk up and down the chord tones and between chords. So you can understand exactly what it is you're doing and why, basically! Someone who actually plays can give you some non-generic advice, but Scott's walking bass stuff was a good intro for me. Actually I haven't seen that one before, this was the set of lessons I meant http://scottsbasslessons.com/walking-bass-lines/walking-bass-lines-lessons-overview.html He bases it on Autumn Leaves which sure is a standard, so you might want to take a look at that too baka kaba fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 17:35
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Having not actually played bass (no space for more instruments, just really want to try the instrument) those videos are really really neat and are piquing my interest further.
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Dec 14, 2012 18:10
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