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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

#26,121
steubig said:
all that being said, creating a "life-like" sound would be way beyond my capabilities—luckily it's not something i want to do.
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For sure. Once I started to read a tutorial about matching the spectra of an acoustic instrument, and I stopped because (A) it was a lot of work and (B) why?

I do love FM but most of the time, I will run with two operators and keep it simple. For 4-op I do have Akemie's Castle (old-school Yamaha FM chip, but with knobs and CV) and RYK Algo (super clean modern FM, but with knobs and CV) and find those a lot easier to work with... mostly because I can always fall back on the "turn knobs and see how it sounds, OK that one's nice" school of sound design.
 
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#26,122
“King of the Hill” Characters Ranked by their Likelihood of Starting a Dark Ambient YouTube Channel

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#26,124
Speaking of FM. I’ve been doing my weekly live sets mostly with the Syntakt/Octatrack and sometimes add a bass vi, fx and a looper. Lately it’s just the Syntakt/Octatrack, but today I started prepping next weeks set and added my Kodamo EssenceFM into the mix. One of the most intuitive FM’s to make patches on and really does have its own sound. It tends to be a bit glassy at times, but I really love that synth a lot.
 
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#26,128
Robot.G said:
Yes, that's the one. Thank you both for reminding me of it. I'd forgotten about the Soma probably because the samples I had heard from it were about 90% noise and only 10% interesting. The Demon Box sounds much more useful from their little video. I imagine that it will be much more expensive though and at this point its just vaporware.

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From their Insta page...

$600
 
#26,131
Bob_Ross said:
The realization that gave me the courage, conviction, inspiration, and (frankly) sheer hubris to continue pursuing those sorts of performances was that, regardless of what sounds are coming out of my instrument, it's going "my way" ...because that's me making those sounds. Regardless of how many other collaborators are onstage, there's no one else I can blame for the sounds I'm making. And as a creative improvisor, one of the things in my skillset that I need to rely on is the ability to react to my own output, to control what the music sounds like here, now, out there in the room, not just in my imagination or in some idealized environment.

So if I don't like the way it sounds, I need to do something different. And the sound of live music evolving in real-time in order to more closely achieve something I hoped it might sound like...that is "my way"
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i've been mulling this over a bit.

i agree with your points here (which i see as "no hiding from ownership of your part in an improv").

there's a little pebble in my shoe here on a philosophical level that keeps nagging at me—which is that playing in an improv situation maybe i don't want it to be about "me/my way" . . . maybe it's about the gestalt of the music in that moment (be it solo through large ensemble). i'm sort of into the dichotomy of chaos/control in the improv world: there's the thing of being inside it and outside it—observing it and creating it—at the same time (if you know the scene in nolan's inception where dom describes dreaming, that's sort of where i'm coming from).

so there's sort of the "me" and the "not me" in there (not to get too "zen" about it)

it's a tough nut for me to crack and i'm probably not expressing it so well.
 
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#26,132
steubig said:
there's a little pebble in my shoe here on a philosophical level that keeps nagging at me—which is that playing in an improv situation maybe i don't want it to be about "me/my way" . . . maybe it's about the gestalt of the music in that moment (be it solo through large ensemble). i'm sort of into the dichotomy of chaos/control in the improv world: there's the thing of being inside it and outside it—observing it and creating it—at the same time
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Not sure if this is what you're saying, but:

I find myself often at odds with other musicians who insist that in order to be a sensetive Jazz [sic] or improvising musician you need to be able to completely "give in to the moment" or "divorce yourself from your own knowledge/ego" or "become a blank slate, open & receptive to whatever is happening on the bandstand in that exact moment" blah-blah-blah...

The implication is that you're supposed to forget everything you know, and to discard any pre-conceived ideas/muscle memory...and yet somehow still retain your musical imagination and your well-honed craft.

I think that's a crock of poo.

Everything I know, every idea I've ever had, contributes to making me the musician that I am in that moment.
If I jettison my personal history, I'm not a "blank slate", I am just a talentless idiot.

So there will always be some Me in what I'm playing at any given moment. If there weren't, why would the other musicians want me there? Why would I want to be there?
 
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#26,134
Bob_Ross said:
Not sure if this is what you're saying, but:

I find myself often at odds with other musicians who insist that in order to be a sensetive Jazz [sic] or improvising musician you need to be able to completely "give in to the moment" or "divorce yourself from your own knowledge/ego" or "become a blank slate, open & receptive to whatever is happening on the bandstand in that exact moment" blah-blah-blah...

The implication is that you're supposed to forget everything you know, and to discard any pre-conceived ideas/muscle memory...and yet somehow still retain your musical imagination and your well-honed craft.

I think that's a crock of poo.

Everything I know, every idea I've ever had, contributes to making me the musician that I am in that moment.
If I jettison my personal history, I'm not a "blank slate", I am just a talentless idiot.

So there will always be some Me in what I'm playing at any given moment. If there weren't, why would the other musicians want me there? Why would I want to be there?
Click to expand...

well, i'm a talentless idiot no matter how i slice it.

the other side of the coin you're talking about is folks who have an agenda: "the first improv is going to be this with this instrument; the second improv" . . . i've played with people like that and choose to not do it any longer.

i think i'm trying to approach things with a "blank slate" (no agenda other than to play "well") so my decades of training and learning can lead me (us) into interesting places that might (hopefully) have something new. (truthfully, as you say, you can only be you anyway.)

many times that means i don't play so the other folks are making it *their own* . . . i'm not needed (and, yes, that is an artistic choice and a decision that helps mold the piece of music at hand).

so, if you dig the conversation analogy: i try to be able to adapt to any given conversation and not have to steer it to the two subjects i (think i) know well.

it's more a philosophical quandary for me than anything.
 
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#26,135
I haven't had much to contribute lately - mostly playing "normal" bass - but this discussion about improvising live is really interesting! I have some thoughts: 1. expectations play a big role 2. the lines between "practicing" and "performing" are blurred in improvised music 3. recording is good - capture it, since perception while performing is different than just listening 4. an experience when I was a grad student where I was supposed to translate a physicist speaking in English to a group of Japanese Buddhists in which I was NOT qualified - was one of the most embarrassing things I have ever been involved in - but now there's really not a lot that could be MORE embarrassing, so in recent performances where I was playing under less than ideal conditions - meh! lol of course it wasn't that easy, but I think that the times when our expectations are NOT fulfilled is when we learn the most? 5. I think it's worth considering the "me" that I bring to any activity. I definitely have several "me"'s - even the bassist me is not the same as the electronic me. But isn't there something that only "I" bring to each moment? Maybe music lets us devote some time to something where we can be THAT "me" and create something, a connection to our past, but also part of our future.
 
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#26,137
hieronymous said:
I haven't had much to contribute lately - mostly playing "normal" bass - but this discussion about improvising live is really interesting! I have some thoughts: 1. expectations play a big role 2. the lines between "practicing" and "performing" are blurred in improvised music 3. recording is good - capture it, since perception while performing is different than just listening 4. an experience when I was a grad student where I was supposed to translate a physicist speaking in English to a group of Japanese Buddhists in which I was NOT qualified - was one of the most embarrassing things I have ever been involved in - but now there's really not a lot that could be MORE embarrassing, so in recent performances where I was playing under less than ideal conditions - meh! lol of course it wasn't that easy, but I think that the times when our expectations are NOT fulfilled is when we learn the most? 5. I think it's worth considering the "me" that I bring to any activity. I definitely have several "me"'s - even the bassist me is not the same as the electronic me. But isn't there something that only "I" bring to each moment? Maybe music lets us devote some time to something where we can be THAT "me" and create something, a connection to our past, but also part of our future.
Click to expand...

a whole lot of yes.
 
#26,138
monsterthompson said:
Fairfield Circuitry just introduced some new utility devices including some CV tools.
Utilities
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Saw a few of these in prototype form in August at a local guitar show. Really good stuff.

Extra points for their gratuitous Pauline Oliveros quote.

Enjoying the improv discussion. I'm usually one to wax philosophical, but my head's all in practicalities around this stuff at the moment, so please carry on.
 
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