The Obligitory tell me how much I suck thread.

[Deadworks]

Well I might as well do one of these posts as well. I'd like to get some feedback on my playing in my band's recording's. The link to our myspace is in my sig.

I want to see how my feelings on where I need to improve my playing line up to what other, more experienced bassist, think. I know for playing for a year and some change I'm not doing too bad. At the time of the recording I'd been playing for approximately eight months and the band had had a total of a dozen practices. So it's not as tight as it would be if we recorded it now.

Gear I recorded with:
MIM Jazz Deluxe strung with DR Sunbeams on everything but the song "Worm of the Dust" on that song I used my Sammick P-bass copy with fender flatwounds. I ran DI through my Peavey Nitro bass head.

My issues that I hear from my playing.
-Timing is off in parts of songs. I need more TLC with the metronome.
-Tuning is slightly off in some parts. No excuse.
-In some songs I feel I don't take full advantage of the free space thats left for me. The song "Threeve" for instance I could do a more melodic part to fill up the spaces durring the verse(which I'm working on now).
-Staying too root centric and doubling guitar more than I probably should.
-Not enough consistancy with attack and note length.

Any feedback is much appreciated.

And before it is said...I fully understand the value lessons would bring to me and I'm going to be trying to rectify that situation very shortly.

[Matt Till]

I actually really liked what you were doing on Worm of the Dust... I'm downloading one of them because this jerky streaming 56k bit isn't working. I don't see how you guys sound like Mastadon thus far... but that's ok.

The production is a little, not as full as it could be. It seems like there is some seperation from you and the drummer tonally that I don't know how else to explain. On threeve the drummers flashy work seems to be a bit loosey goosey, needs to tighten the screws a bit. But other than that, I think what your doing fits the concept, you don't want to be too flashy in situations like this, and some times root note rocking is what a song needs.

Plus if you contrast doing root note stuff against your "lead" stuff, it makes you look flashier.

Alright, The Lover and the Liar downloaded. The drummers kick is bothering me. I think there should be a tonal role reversal between you two. He's bass drum needs to be bassier/less midrangey, and you need to be a little bit more "low mids" I think. But this is all production notes. I was listening to the song, and I really don't think there would have been room for anything really flashy in this song. I do agree your attack consistancy needs a little work, but I think that's the only flaw with what you're doing.

Good songs, it's not overly my genre. But it's much better than a lot of the... I guess I'll say "alt rock" I've heard in my day... your much better than the band I tried out for who were alt rock... and that left a bad taste in my mouth for the genre. But this is good. Good stuff.

[Deadworks]

Thanks for the comments Matt. Some of our newer stuff is quite a bit heavier than the stuff on there hence the mastadon reference. I really wish we had recordings of our newer stuff.

The drummer thing will be different after this friday. He's "taking a break" my consensus is the wifey can't stand loosing a whopping 3 hours a week without him. We don't really expect him to return.

His bass drums sounds stupid because it has one of those metal kick plates on there that he refused to get rid of. I went round and round with him about that but he refused to lose it so I cut my losses.

Oh low mids problem on my tone fixed nowadays. Thats were the punchy Kingston sits. That and some inexperience on how to EQ properly which since I've learned thanks to TB.