Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[Starthief]

How about a cheesy “Best Gear Purchases of 2022?”

Make Noise Strega gets the top spot. True to its name, it makes noise and it's witchy. I should have bought one in the first production run so I could have had another year with it.

The Miezo 18, for sure.

Xaoc Koszalin and Cosmotronic Peradam are my modules of the year.

Bitwig Spectral Suite, Moogerfooger plugins, and probably Dawesome Kult (once I have a chance to actually use it) are my software picks for the year.

 

[bassbrad]

How about a cheesy “Best Gear Purchases of 2022?”

All my stuff was cheesy but I am just getting back into it and have budget & space constrictions.

Donner B1 bass synth sequencer ~ actually pretty fun for a single oscillator
Arturia Keystep 37 seemed like a good choice
Behringer 2600 I have always wanted my own after playing one on college in the seventies and several in various bands over the years. Since I won't ever go fully modular this seemed like a great choice and luckily my wife is learning to play it too.
Akai Professional EWI Solo this was for my wife to have some fun with.

2023 plan is to sell off much of my amassed bass and some studio gear as I don't expect to tour or even gig that much anymore or record bands. The studio will be for our Hutton Lane Sounz productions only.

 

[monsterthompson]

Spent some time with the F Bass BN5 Fretless. One of the annoying things about it is that it generates a very high frequency hum/noise that’s noticeable with long delays and reverbs. I know the bass has active/passive and humbucking modes.

Bridge and/or neck in active humbucking mode still passes a thin high hum. The tone knob can filter this out at around 1/2 way.

Bridge and neck together in single coil mode are wired to humbuck and they do so without the same hum. It’s really dead silent.

Setting the bass to passive mode can reduce the hum in various other settings. Passive with both pickups in single coil mode fully on gets the cleanest sound.

It seems a bit of a waste but I do like running the bass into the Nordy Starlifter preamp to optimize the sound for use with delay and reverb.

Now that I’ve got a feel for this I’m back to thinking about a fretted BN5. I like the Fretless and the high fret access. I don’t seem to mind the 19mm spacing, though I generally prefer 17mm on fivers (but maybe not enough to pay for the 17mm option). My biggest reservation was the slight noise I was getting which built up in long tails meaning the bass wasn’t totally useable for some of my ambient noodling.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Easily the 2 best additions to my basement lab in 2022.

 

[steubig]

Spent some time with the F Bass BN5 Fretless. One of the annoying things about it is that it generates a very high frequency hum/noise that’s noticeable with long delays and reverbs. I know the bass has active/passive and humbucking modes.

Bridge and/or neck in active humbucking mode still passes a thin high hum. The tone knob can filter this out at around 1/2 way.

Bridge and neck together in single coil mode are wired to humbuck and they do so without the same hum. It’s really dead silent.

Setting the bass to passive mode can reduce the hum in various other settings. Passive with both pickups in single coil mode fully on gets the cleanest sound.

It seems a bit of a waste but I do like running the bass into the Nordy Starlifter preamp to optimize the sound for use with delay and reverb.

Now that I’ve got a feel for this I’m back to thinking about a fretted BN5. I like the Fretless and the high fret access. I don’t seem to mind the 19mm spacing, though I generally prefer 17mm on fivers (but maybe not enough to pay for the 17mm option). My biggest reservation was the slight noise I was getting which built up in long tails meaning the bass wasn’t totally useable for some of my ambient noodling.

sounds like preamp is screwy? (it might still be adding in passive mod.)

what are the pickups? are they possibly microphonic?

have you asked furlanetto about this? seems like a problem.

that being said, i’m always in favor having fretted/fretless pairs that are as close to identical as possible so i can switch on the fly and not have to rethink things. (so go for the 19)

 

[JES]

Venom always has a nice smile.

I bought a lot of gear this year.

Top purchase of 2022 has to be my Martin Keith touch guitar, though it was ordered in ‘21.

After that, Micromonsta, because it actually solved a problem AND sounds good.

Implexus, Super 6 and Perfourmer are also all fantastic.

Let us also not forget the sweet joy that is deleting ProTools from my computer. Oh happy day.

 

[JES]

pretty setup. too neat.

congrats on the (draft?) mixes. hope they bring you closer to the finals>

We already found some unwanted pumping on the drum compression, so yes, getting there. I think we are going down the road you do—lots of critical listening.

you've got some output to show for the last year. plus you have a serious and useful job. i've designed my life so the job is a means to the "art life" and is not something i care too much about.

True, that is a difference. I will one day retire and then will be crappily prolific.

i'm been committed to creating output the last few years. seemed like a good survival strategy. (but i've always been what a friend called "quietly prolific" . . . not to say "good").

That is a good survival strategy. This will sound hokey but music is basically my spiritual life. Maybe some of the writing too. Their value is intrinsic, the process is the point, etc.

 

[monsterthompson]

sounds like preamp is screwy? (it might still be adding in passive mod.)

what are the pickups? are they possibly microphonic?

have you asked furlanetto about this? seems like a problem.

that being said, i’m always in favor having fretted/fretless pairs that are as close to identical as possible so i can switch on the fly and not have to rethink things. (so go for the 19)

I don't think it is unreasonably "screwy." I haven't contacted F Bass about it, though I might. I think it is a level of noise that few other players would identify when operating the bass as a bass. It has more to do with the long tails on the delay and dense reverb that accentuate it when I try to make pad sounds and drones. Adding gain certainly highlights it as well, and in addition to the onboard pre, I have two other pres (one for eq and one for grit) in the path along with a compressor.

The preamp and pickups are the stock/standard F Bass brand. I doubt they are microphonic.

I think this is more of an edge case issue. The cleanest sound in my collection comes from my passive Dingwall D Bird. I'm considering selling it soon and possibly replacing it with a NG3 in hopes the pickups will be similar, and it will gain me some higher fret access.

 

[monsterthompson]

Watching Blade Runner. I’m pretty disappointed in the expectations for 2019 Los Angeles versus where we are just a few hours from 2023.

 

[Starthief]

Watching Blade Runner. I’m pretty disappointed in the expectations for 2019 Los Angeles versus where we are just a few hours from 2023.

I watched Johnny Mnemonic for the first time in January 2021, on the internet.

 

[lucas303]

I watched Johnny Mnemonic for the first time in January 2021, on the internet.

View attachment 4920427

Is that the "I've got to get online, I need a computer" movie?

 

[Spectrum]

Is that the "I've got to get online, I need a computer" movie?

No, the title character has data stored in his brain which the bad guys want, IIRC.

Johnny Mnemonic is a short story written by William Gibson set in same universe as his Sprawl (Neuromancer) Trilogy. It's a great story, but the movie fell a bit short, at least if you were expecting it to be as good as the print version. As a standalone cyberpunk action film, though, it's a fun flick.

 

[Spectrum]

Watching Blade Runner. I’m pretty disappointed in the expectations for 2019 Los Angeles versus where we are just a few hours from 2023.

No flying cars, no interstellar travel to off world colonies, and no 3D Polaroid photos. Instead we got smart phones and social media. Yay us.

At least we haven't figured out how to create artificial humans to use as slaves yet, so there's that. I always wondered why they didn't just use plain old robots to eliminate the moral quandaries associated with Replicants, but we could have an entire thread for discussing Blade Runner.

 

[monsterthompson]

but we could have an entire thread for discussing the Deckard/Pris fight scene.

FTFY

 

[steubig]

No, the title character has data stored in his brain which the bad guys want, IIRC.

Johnny Mnemonic is a short story written by William Gibson set in same universe as his Sprawl (Neuromancer) Trilogy. It's a great story, but the movie fell a bit short, at least if you were expecting it to be as good as the print version. As a standalone cyberpunk action film, though, it's a fun flick.

imo, both gibson films have been awful (johnny and new rose hotel).

the best adaptation has been the peripheral, which is funny cause i think it’s based in his worst series. (fwiw, i’ve everything he’s done at least twice.)

 

[JES]

I watched Johnny Mnemonic for the first time in January 2021, on the internet.

View attachment 4920427

OMG. I watched it in a theatre in 1995. I'm sure I was good and high too. All I remember is the scene where there's a dolphin being used as a control system and my friends and I bursting out laughing.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

27104587[/URL], member: 131803"]Watching Blade Runner. I’m pretty disappointed in the expectations for 2019 Los Angeles versus where we are just a few hours from 2023.

I think 2043 Robocop is way more accurate.

 

[Spectrum]

imo, both gibson films have been awful (johnny and new rose hotel).

the best adaptation has been the peripheral, which is funny cause i think it’s based in his worst series. (fwiw, i’ve everything he’s done at least twice.)

I didn't know there was a New Rose Hotel film, but I trust your report on it. I think Gibson is really hard to translate to film, compared to Philip K. Dick, whose stories have been made into something like a dozen or more films, some of them blockbusters (Total Recall), some sleeper classics (the Blade Runner franchise), and even the cornier ones (Screamers) are watchable.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

27105535[/URL], member: 190717"]I didn't know there was a New Rose Hotel film, but I trust your report on it. I think Gibson is really hard to translate to film, compared to Philip K. Dick, whose stories have been made into something like a dozen or more films, some of them blockbusters (Total Recall), some sleeper classics (the Blade Runner franchise), and even the cornier ones (Screamers) are watchable.

Total Recall is a classic, I have the deluxe dvd edition inside a tin shaped like the planet Mars.

“Start the reactor Quaid!!!”

 

[lucas303]

I didn't know there was a New Rose Hotel film, but I trust your report on it. I think Gibson is really hard to translate to film, compared to Philip K. Dick, whose stories have been made into something like a dozen or more films, some of them blockbusters (Total Recall), some sleeper classics (the Blade Runner franchise), and even the cornier ones (Screamers) are watchable.

The Man in the High Castle started out really promising but boy oh boy did Amazon screw that up (it's a series not a movie, I know).

I was pleasantly surprised by A Scanner Darkly. Not a classic on the levels of Total Recall or Blade Runner, but pretty darn good.