Recent content by cannedsardines

I think ash is more attractive than alder, but I'm not going to claim I can hear a difference. Sadly, isn't emerald ash borer going to cause the extinction of American ash? It's critically endangered.

Thanks for all the comments. The PDF versions of Berlin's books are on sale right now. I'm working through volume 2 and it's pretty good stuff.

"Sea of Tranquility" by Kool and the Gang

I looked around for this and couldn't find it. It seems unlikely because it might depend on the wood used in the neck. Do you have a source?

If you plug one of these in and learn that the circuit is wired incorrectly, what would you do? E.g. hot and neutral reversed, floating ground?

I'm looking for études in the style of Bass Aerobics. Are Jeff Berlin's "Bass Mastery" books useful?

On one of my 5-strings, the Chromes B didn't fit in the bridge!

Depending on the J pickup, PJ basses can have a lot of hum. The main advantage in my mind is the more comfortable (for me!) J neck. I prefer the P sound probably because my first bass (Yamaha RBX260) was a P-style instrument. This kind of thread comes up frequently. I have a Sire P7 and it has...

Before streaming, CDs were about $16. Now you can listen to almost anything anyone ever recorded for a paltry monthly fee. Excessive? If you bought more than 12 albums a year you probably spent more than you spend on streaming. And now music is dying.

I recently bought an audio interface and Reaper. Mostly I've used Reaper in the past to slow down tracks to aid transcription. How do you incorporate recording (i.e., recording yourself playing) in your practice? I've never done this in a systematic way and am looking for ways to improve...

Charles Berthoud has some videos on YouTube with exercises for speed. Instead of the "play slowly and speed it up" it's more "play with short bursts of speed and make those bursts longer." The Bass Aerobics book mentioned above is really good.

I had an MM-84A SB. It had a large gap on the treble side of the neck pocket, the electronics were flaky, the 24 frets and neck pickup (not an issue here) were not ergonomic, and it was uncomfortably heavy.

There are lots of good suggestions in this thread. I want to add: practice singing! Sing the parts you want to play. If you're trying to learn theory, sing it (e.g. if you want to work on recognizing extended chords, practice singing arpeggios). Along with reading and piano stuff this will...

It seems like there's a law of music that some genres have a tendency to become inward-looking and esoteric. If you're not a metalhead, a lot of contemporary metal is unlistenable technical music and it's hard to understand the link from Black Sabbath to, say, Krallice. Hip-hop is another...

Everybody raves about this brand but it is sickly-sweet. Their rye bread is atrocious.