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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#25,082
This followed me home today:

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Well ok, I went and got it, dragged it out of the store around the block to my car. It's not one of the most recent (final?) shipment like I thought, but it's a Grandmother Dark that the store owner was holding on to, hoping it might jump in value. But instead, Moog lowered prices and got sold! Happy to report that most of the stuff looks untouched (power supply, etc.), so it seems like it's new-in-box - plus he let me have it for the reduced price - yay! I already had a go at it (forgetting to let it warm up) - feels very comfortable. I'm excited to learn the sequencer and arpeggiator - Moog has a great video showing how to program the sequencer, I'm not trying to do anything fancy, just want to make stuff to play my bass to - and maybe jam with a certain koto player - and use it with my DFAM - the next few days I don't have a lot going on, time to experiment...

EDITed to add: I registered it online, got an email from Moog, then got another email with the following line: "On behalf of all the employee-owners at Moog Music, thank you for your support." Kinda cool, kinda sad...
 
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#25,085
Starthief said:
As far as looks go I think I prefer the colorful one... but either way it's hard to beat for sound and feel. Congrats on the good deal :)
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Yeah, I realized the regular one might match my Sirin better, but OTOH the Dark version matches the DFAM & Subharmonicon...

steubig said:
none more black
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And that is definitely an aesthetic I am comfortable with!

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#25,090
JES said:
Congrats on the good deal. Is that a Ric 4004 on the right or just a very black 4003?
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It's a 2004 4003 made for the Japanese market - black trim, black hardware, and a 4004 silver lettered truss rod cover. It's pretty cool, with the black binding, and the tailpiece has the extra 2 screws - I think they were using up black hardware leftover from the 8-strings that had been cancelled around that time?

steubig said:
no spinal tap fans?
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It's funny, I've been associating "none more black" with Rickenbackers ever since the Dude Pit days - I'm more than happy to go back to Spinal Tap! "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever"
 
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#25,093
Several years ago I met Christopher Guest's mom in line at a UPS store in East Hampton NY. I was shipping a guitar I sold. She asked what was in the box and apologized for having nothing she was shipping boxed up. She was in front of me. When I told her it was a guitar she said "oh my son plays guitar, maybe you've heard of him, his name's Christopher Guest." I said, "You're Nigel Tufnell's mother?!!!" She said "Yes I am and we're quite proud of him". During our conversation she also let on that Nigel was an old family name and Tufnell was an area of London they had lived in.
 
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#25,094
saltymonkey said:
Several years ago I met Christopher Guest's mom in line at a UPS store in East Hampton NY. I was shipping a guitar I sold. She asked what was in the box and apologized for having nothing she was shipping boxed up. She was in front of me. When I told her it was a guitar she said "oh my son plays guitar, maybe you've heard of him, his name's Christopher Guest." I said, "You're Nigel Tufnell's mother?!!!" She said "Yes I am and we're quite proud of him". During our conversation she also let on that Nigel was an old family name and Tufnell was an area of London they had lived in.
Click to expand...
Wow, you win the internet today.
 
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#25,095
I know not many regulars on here use Koala, bit they added a mixer in the app , adding basically a full 4 track recorder/mixer with FX via 4 bus routing.
Developer said he would add even more FX.
THE MIXER » Koala Sampler
Where was this stuff 25 years ago when I was flat broke not having enough money for food and owned one bass in University.
This is like a huge red «EASY BUTTON » for anyone wanting to record and track stuff.
I’m truly jealous of what’s available now. Jeez I tracked bass lines on a cheap no name cassette tape recorder with a 1/4 inch adapter with a metronome so it could go get bounced in real time at the school’s studio.

Feel like a caveman yet?
 
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#25,096
Somehow I managed to install Madrona Labs Virta back in March and then never actually tried it until recently. It went into some weird folder that Bitwig wasn't scanning so it didn't show up, and I guess I just didn't bother to track that down at the time and then forgot about it.

I tried it a few days ago on modular synth stuff and it was pretty fun. Tracking wasn't perfect but for most purposes it was good enough. Really flexible since you can patch it anyway you want -- just pass the input (with compressor and filtering) through, or run it through the delay/pitch shifter, or vocode it with oscillators that either track the input pitch or MIDI input, or just use the oscillators without the audio input... or if your DAW can do it, patch its own output as feedback into its audio input, and vocode its own oscillators with that feedback :D

Tried it on bass this morning and it's pretty great. Again, pitch tracking isn't perfect but it works pretty well for most purposes IF you play monophonically. Not a problem since I usually do that anyway. The combination of vocoder with oscillators seems to work really nicely for kind of a spectral rebalance of the bass -- something I wanted to do with Spectraphon but couldn't get reliable enough pitch tracking to really do it right. I could also wish for a slower max attack time for the really ambient stuff, and a built-in slew limiter to slow down its envelope follower or pressure inputs. But a volume pedal or some other patching could take care of that.

MPE pitch bend doesn't seem to work right with Virta. Not a deal-breaker since I will probably be using it with pitch tracking the input anyhow.

So I'm definitely buying Virta, but will wait for the expected "early access" release of Sumu that's still supposed to be in 2023. That one looks like crazy fun for a tinkerer like me and I've been looking forward to it forever.
 

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