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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

does it do what you wanted/intended?
More or less. It wasn't created as a singular thing...more like a few disparate things that I wanted to put out. At the end of the day it's just one more thing to put out there for little purpose other than to feel the sting of mediocrity. The only thing worse than being mediocre is knowing it...I wish I could at least be blissfully ignorant.
 
More or less. It wasn't created as a singular thing...more like a few disparate things that I wanted to put out. At the end of the day it's just one more thing to put out there for little purpose other than to feel the sting of mediocrity. The only thing worse than being mediocre is knowing it...I wish I could at least be blissfully ignorant.
At least you put in the work and practice.
That’s more than the vast majority of people.

Congrats on that.

It’s out, on to the next one.
Forward you go
 
More or less. It wasn't created as a singular thing...more like a few disparate things that I wanted to put out. At the end of the day it's just one more thing to put out there for little purpose other than to feel the sting of mediocrity. The only thing worse than being mediocre is knowing it...I wish I could at least be blissfully ignorant.
sometimes things take on a life of their own.

i concur with mssr ugly_bassplayer.

imo, it’s a good thing to finish a project and then move on to the next one with the lesson learned.
 
ok, band practice went awesome with the fretless, way better than my pessimistic prognostic.
still work to do (the never ending quest) but it was cool, double stop passages where painful though……

I haven’t had GAS for a bass since…geez over 15 years but now I definitely NEED, not want….need a fretless precision.

Also need a post freeze pedal to mess with my drones, my delay pedals work but not fast enough since they have to self oscillate.
 
fretless precision
Okay, I have nothing useful to say here, but I always find this to be a contradiction in terms. Somewhere I thought I read that the reason Leo Fender named this bass the "Precision" was because, unlike the upright bass, it has frets, so that your intonation is always "precise". So in my flawed brain, a P-bass without frets should have a different name. "Imprecision" maybe. Not a P bass, an I bass.

Okay, that's enough out of me. I'll slink back under my rock and shut up now.
 
I definitely practice the double/triple stops (which are really fun on the 6), but what is the reasoning for this particular interval exercise? Why sixths?
because that’s something he said he already does. my reasoning was that they’re already under his fingers, so do them as double stops.

ime, it’s the shifts between (especially) double/triple stops that are the humiliation points. :)
 
Okay, I have nothing useful to say here, but I always find this to be a contradiction in terms. Somewhere I thought I read that the reason Leo Fender named this bass the "Precision" was because, unlike the upright bass, it has frets, so that your intonation is always "precise". So in my flawed brain, a P-bass without frets should have a different name. "Imprecision" maybe. Not a P bass, an I bass.

Okay, that's enough out of me. I'll slink back under my rock and shut up now.
Impresicion, I’ll take that
it’s gonna fit with my double stop intonation

:)
 
Got my Ferrous today, and though I only played with it a little while here's my quick review.

It's not a "eBow but better", it's quite a different thing. Where an eBow has a pickup and generates magnetic feedback, this is just magnets on a rotating disc You set the rate of rotation with a dial (and/or a button, inconveniently placed touch plate, or CV input). When you reach a frequency that matches potential modes of vibration, then you get some sound.

Depending on the instrument in question and how you hold things, it might be extremely finnicky about the rate, or it might have a relatively wide range that will excite the string/tine/etc. and bend the pitch if it's not dead on. It might be pretty quiet, or a reasonable volume for a quiet instrument, or it might get pretty noisy.

The magnets are not *super* strong. It can be a little tricky to hold it close enough to work but not scrape the strings or get pulled in by the magnets. There's a little doohickey with a rubber tip you can screw in to one end to help somewhat, without which it'd be much trickier.

The gizmo itself is mostly nice to hold in terms of shape/size, though the edge of the PCB surface isn't a super smooth thing. It came with a 9V rechargeable battery that has a USB micro charging port right on it, which I haven't seen before.

Instrument results:

Miezo: I tried this first before really grasping how the thing works, so I need to try it again later. It can for sure move the strings, but like I said, it's not an improved eBow. So the best bet is to hold it between a couple of open strings and vary the pitch to resonate different strings... not really super exciting. The pickup absolutely grabs the sound of the spinning magnets though so you can "play" that I guess (also not super exciting).

Kalimba: There are lots of tines and they apparently have a lot of vibration modes and the pitches are willing to bend... so it's very eager to sing. In fact if you match the fundamental of a tine too closely it rattles quite loudly -- it takes some finesse to get it to stay clean.

Small cheap steel tongue drum: Pretty meh, I was able to get a very soft major third out of it from two of the tongues but that was about it.

Bowed psaltery: Worked very nicely. The strings were easy to excite but not over-eager and you can get some neat harmonic sweeps etc. by varying the speed.

Dulcimer: since it's tuned D-A-D there wasn't really a lot to work with. I thought about experimenting with other tunings but it's my wife's and I'd better not.

Ibanez Mikro: at this point I was starting to get a better feel for the Ferrous. Not exciting results though to be honest, but I was playing it unplugged.

Acoustic guitar: worked quite well, louder than the psaltery if not quite so rich a tapestry of strings to choose from.

Cheap old electric guitar with bad strings: kind of OK, nothing like the acoustic guitar though.

Mandolin: kind of OK but I'd rate it lower than the guitar and psaltery.

HAPI drum (larger steel tongue/tank drum): I could get one tongue at a time to resonate weakly, just not that exciting.

Remo Ocean Drum: I figured this would either do nothing, or violently rattle the shot inside the drum, with a slight chance of being cool. What it actually did: nothing.

Marching xylophone: nothing, I suspect the bars are aluminum.

Have not yet tried the lap steel, but I feel like it could have potential. Nor the beat-up taishogoto, which I predict would be similar but inferior to the dulcimer.

An autoharp might be ideal and a piano or a Rhodes could be fun...
 
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Got my Ferrous today, and though I only played with it a little while here's my quick review.

It's not a "eBow but better", it's quite a different thing. Where an eBow has a pickup and generates magnetic feedback, this is just magnets on a rotating disc You set the rate of rotation with a dial (and/or a button, inconveniently placed touch plate, or CV input). When you reach a frequency that matches potential modes of vibration, then you get some sound.

Depending on the instrument in question and how you hold things, it might be extremely finnicky about the rate, or it might have a relatively wide range that will excite the string/tine/etc. and bend the pitch if it's not dead on. It might be pretty quiet, or a reasonable volume for a quiet instrument, or it might get pretty noisy.

The magnets are not *super* strong. It can be a little tricky to hold it close enough to work but not scrape the strings or get pulled in by the magnets. There's a little doohickey with a rubber tip you can screw in to one end to help somewhat, without which it'd be much trickier.

The gizmo itself is mostly nice to hold in terms of shape/size, though the edge of the PCB surface isn't a super smooth thing. It came with a 9V rechargeable battery that has a USB micro charging port right on it, which I haven't seen before.

Instrument results:

Miezo: I tried this first before really grasping how the thing works, so I need to try it again later. It can for sure move the strings, but like I said, it's not an improved eBow. So the best bet is to hold it between a couple of open strings and vary the pitch to resonate different strings... not really super exciting. The pickup absolutely grabs the sound of the spinning magnets though so you can "play" that I guess (also not super exciting).

Kalimba: There are lots of tines and they apparently have a lot of vibration modes and the pitches are willing to bend... so it's very eager to sing. In fact if you match the fundamental of a tine too closely it rattles quite loudly -- it takes some finesse to get it to stay clean.

Small cheap steel tongue drum: Pretty meh, I was able to get a very soft major third out of it from two of the tongues but that was about it.

Bowed psaltery: Worked very nicely. The strings were easy to excite but not over-eager and you can get some neat harmonic sweeps etc. by varying the speed.

Dulcimer: since it's tuned D-A-D there wasn't really a lot to work with. I thought about experimenting with other tunings but it's my wife's and I'd better not.

Ibanez Mikro: at this point I was starting to get a better feel for the Ferrous. Not exciting results though to be honest, but I was playing it unplugged.

Acoustic guitar: worked quite well, louder than the psaltery if not quite so rich a tapestry of strings to choose from.

Cheap old electric guitar with bad strings: kind of OK, nothing like the acoustic guitar though.

Mandolin: kind of OK but I'd rate it lower than the guitar and psaltery.

HAPI drum (larger steel tongue/tank drum): I could get one tongue at a time to resonate weakly, just not that exciting.

Remo Ocean Drum: I figured this would either do nothing, or violently rattle the shot inside the drum, with a slight chance of being cool. What it actually did: nothing.

Marching xylophone: nothing, I suspect the bars are aluminum.

Have not yet tried the lap steel, but I feel like it could have potential. Nor the beat-up taishogoto, which I predict would be similar but inferior to the dulcimer.

An autoharp might be ideal and a piano or a Rhodes could be fun...
I have one of these on the way whenever my time in production comes up. I had got on the list a long time ago, but actually putting down the money was a bit of an early-morning impulse decision when I got that email- not sure I'd have actually followed through if I'd had my coffee yet that day. I hope it does fun things on my Godin MultiAc guitars (one steel string with piezo and magnetic pickups, one nylon string with only piezo pickups but strung with some unique Thomastik low-tension steel strings), which are my main guitars these days. I suspected it wouldn't be the most interesting with a bass but will give it a shot for sure (would be cool if it could do something with my Godin fretless).

I do have a Rhodes 54 that I'll have to try it with as well- that is a great idea for possibly getting sustained drones to play over!
 
I tried it with the lap steel that I never recorded and haven't touched in years, and found the Ferrous was a little awkward to hold (since there's no actual fretboard to rest the little spacer pin on, just the nut or the bridge guard where it interacts too much with the pickup) but worked better than the bass, if not as well as the acoustic guitar or psaltery.

But that got me messing with the lap steel more generally, and I found that it works really well with the setup that I have now for ambient/drone or a shoegazey sort of thing. I'll definitely start putting it to use.
 
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MORE Reverb
I hope this pedal delivers.
Good to know it models BBD or Tape reverb effects.
Morphing presets at a predetermined time is cool. 6:48
Magic/Random patch creation (like the Black Sequencer's Magic button). 8:35
The Glowing at 2:36 is something I like on the eurorack delay and reverb units, so this is interesting.
 
Busted up my left hand/wrist last week raising our shed that got flooded every time heavy rain fell.
Carryig around 75 pound concrete blocks apparently isnt good for my flismy weakling fragile "artist pinky out" hands
Now I have to play around that and Simmandl everything with same shifts like on upright, 4 fret stretches fukn hurt.
At least I have a work around, Simmandl background in the tool box FTW.
It gets better as we get olderr right??
/end me

Microfreak question:
Any of you guys try unsing samples in the microfreak, minifreak?
If so, how good/bad was it.
Looking to sample some classic Mini Moog D tones and others from records.

Didnt find the max sample time either......RTFM I guess.
 
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