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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#25,701
monsterthompson said:
Went to see Gary Numan with Front Line Assembly opening tonight. Lots of electronic bleeps and bloops to be heard. I enjoyed FLA way more than I expected, and I already had pretty high expectations. Numan was a little disappointing. The light show was great, and the songs should’ve translated better but the volume was cranked up and everything went to mud. He actually sounded better as I was leaving the venue :roflmao:
I was surprised he had a bassist with a P on stage. It almost seemed too conventional.

I find it odd to go to these shows and see guitarists and bassists on stage and not hear guitar or bass sounds for large parts of the set. I’m not sure if they’re using tons of effects to change the sound or if they are using dynamic mixing to bring instruments in/out. Maybe I’m just used to guitars and basses sounding certain ways and I don’t recognize them when they sound different.
Click to expand...
I feel totally offended as a Pbass main player that uses his instrument in all sorts of weird f&&@& up ways.

:D
 
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#25,702
I recorded something with the Chase Bliss Tonal Recall:



No expression pedal - not sure if the regen (# of repeats) is affected by how hard I pick. The extreme feedback from cranking the regen sounds ugly to me, and way louder than the original signal - similar to the RE-20 Space Echo pedal that I have. Need to experiment with using an expression pedal to control regen - the video is the same setting throughout - but don't have the right cable to hook it up to the expression pedal I have handy (plus the jack is on the side, and the exp. pedals I have I think have a built-in straight jack - gonna look for a stereo patch cable with an L plug so that I can try and use my Dunlop mini volume pedal.

I have some ideas on how to kind of rearrange this piece - it might be over-ambitious but I want to use bass pedals and Moog Sirin for the first go thru, then the more aggressive way with me playing the roots on the bass like in the video. Also experimenting with the sound of the bass - this is going thru my Geddy Lee MP40 SansAmp with the boost on for more treble, but I need to try a clean bright sound - I've been rearranging my pedalboard and am going to try using my old BOSS PQ-3B parametric eq pedal - I don't really have a good clean preamp pedal. Hopefully the CAE/CAJ V-Comp tube compressor I'm using is adding just the right touch of tube color...
 
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#25,703
lordradish said:
For those of you who go to synth meetups (there's finally a scene in Vermont, at least in Burlington, about 50 miles away and everyone there seems young enough to be my kid), does it almost always tend to be like 95 percent modular? I feel like a dinosaur with all of my hardware synths and keys, it's a lot of setup/weight, and musically, I couldn't be further from most of what people do on em. Y'all who know me know where my vibe is. I want to connect/collab with more people, but I feel like some people think I'm gonna whip out some Jean-Michel Jarre or Tomita or something.

Most of you are heavy into the modular... anyone show up with the other stuff, and how does it go when they're the odd person out?

To make matters worse, it seems like more of the digital/hard synth people I come across seem to be into the cringey new-age stuff.
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Preface: my experience is limited to Colorado, and specifically the Denver metro area. Here there are basically two groups that overlap to some extent: the Colorado Modular Synth Society and the Rocky Mountain Synthesizer Meet. Both have people that use some mix of modular and non-modular, and people who use only one or the other seem to be outliers (though there seem to be more non-modular purists than the other way around). CMSS puts on a monthly night of performances, like an open mic sort of thing, and because it's CMSS the idea is that everyone uses modular gear to some extent. In practice there are occasionally people who don't use any modular, but most often it's a mix of modular and non-modular synths. In my experience I've never seen a negative reaction when people don't show up with any modular to perform. Again, however, that experience is obviously limited.

As for the type of music people are into, it's all over the map. Everything from dance type of stuff (techno, etc.) to drone to ambient to noise to some blend of all that and more. Here's the most recent monthly event in case that may be of any interest or help:


And here's a cool recent thing put on by RMSM:

ETA: I think that the tastes of the people at the center of the scene will have a big impact. For example, the folks up in Fort Collins tend to have events that are more noise-oriented (though not exclusively of course). They've done no-input mixer nights and that sort of thing.

Bob_Ross said:
I have yet to play a fanned-fret bass so would definitely want to check one out before seriously considering the purchase. I have four basses w/ 35" scale length and I play whole steps down at that end of the neck with fingers 1 and 3 all the time...but I believe the low B on a Dingwall is closer to 37"? I suspect that could get molto painfulo.

[edit: Whoops, I only have three basses w/ 35" scale length now; I just sold one yesterday. Slowly chipping away...to make room for a Dingwall!!!]
Click to expand...

I had a Dingwall NG2 for a while until literally yesterday when I sold it. I've played a variety of multiscales and one of the best things about the Dingwalls is they do not at all feel like a 37" reach. The design is really smart and even playing up at the first fret feels totally fine. In fact, the Ibanez EHB multiscales felt like a longer reach even though the longest scale length is less than the Dingwall's, because of the overall design. I would wager that a Dingwall would not feel like a longer reach to you than your 35" scale basses (for reference, I currently play a 35" scale parallel fret bass).
 
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#25,709
We drove about an hour and 20 minutes to get to Perryville, MO for the eclipse. Absolutely stunning and awe-inspiring, even more so than the 2017 eclipse was.

All the photos I took were crap -- I feel like smartphone cameras are trying too hard to be smart now, compensating for weird lighting conditions. It probably didn't help that the soccer complex where we were turned on its lights automatically when things got dark. But photography was never the point anyway.

I'd absolutely live in that dim light you get within a few minutes of totality. Bring on the shadows and the darkness :cool:

With traffic (and an accident messing up one of the detours that was supposed to save time) it took a bit more than 5 hours to get back home, and we've both got a bit of sunburn. Totally worth it though.
 
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#25,714
lucas303 said:
no small feat.
Click to expand...

good thing I wear a size 13.
91cvs.jpg
 
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#25,715
I tried to watch the eclipse the other day, but it was only 30% or something - here's my best shot lol:

53646328423_7d7212dbab.jpg


I was hoping for a change in the ambient light (hence this thread?) but nothing noticeable. I remember a solar eclipse in the early '90s - went outside and was blown away by the weird lighting on the street in Allston, Massachusetts (I was "working" at Allston Cassette at the time as a delivery guy) - this time - nothing! lol - I'm glad I had the experience back in the day...

Finally got the right cable to hook up my Dunlop mini-volume as an expression pedal for the feedback/regen - Roland TRS patch cable with L plug on one end - fortunately my local store, Bananas At Large, carries them!

Also - my first time messing with the dip switches! Set the expression to regen, then realized it was backwards to how I wanted it - but there's a dip switch for that too! Regen-at-10 on the Tonal Recall is ugly to me - I'm spoiled by the smooth mellow self-oscillation of my vintage tape RE-201 Space Echo - but I think I found a/the sweet spot where it's doing enough of what I want without messing it up. Easy to set the control at the peak, then back off from there with the pedal.
 
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#25,716
Okay. I realize this is a pop song application but I’m posting it here to inspire one/some/all of you weirdos to consider more experimental applications with the things in your produce section. Build a tuber sample instrument in Kontakt and cover some Kraftwerk or something.

There’s actually a bass in the video but TW for bare feet plucking the strings.

 
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