Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[lordradish]

Good luck to our LA buddies out there, some scary stuff, for sure.

Not much in the way of block for me, just finished up a longform album (that is not just some 45 minute drone - I think I'm moving away from that stuff pretty fast) that's dropping at the end of the month.

Still working the connections I made in Boston at the New England Synth Fest. I connected with quite a few people who actually may get me on some good shows... planetariums, sound/light things at museums, some underground clubs. It's kind of exciting in a game-changing way. What small synth scene we have in VT is mostly modular meetups and EDM-type stuff - not my wheelhouse by any metric, so if I gotta drive 3 1/2 hours to Boston every other month because people inexplicably want to hear my stuff, I'll do it.

I had someone from down there who saw my performance reach out to me for a gig (that I wasn't available for). So I'm mostly focusing on gettting together more live stuff. I'm going DAWless, so that presents some challenges, as a lot of my stuff is quite composed and I also use a fair amount of soft synths. I'm trying to adapt some of my recorded work (sampling! Yay), but I'm also just trying to come up with some new stuff that's more live-focused. Gotta go down to the hellscape known as Florida for a week to visit family, then I'm gonna hit it pretty hard when I get back.

 

[lordradish]

News here is only about someone wanting Canada to become something something politically banned from this forum

Ugh. We apologize.

 

[monsterthompson]

Got my life packed in 3 bags right now.
You better believe an F Bass is in one of the bags.
Sorry synthesizers.

 

[lordradish]

Got my life packed in 3 bags right now.
You better believe an F Bass is in one of the bags.
Sorry synthesizers.

Good luck and stay safe, dude! Keep us posted when feasible.

 

[Bob_Ross]

btw, I may have mentioned a (long) while ago in this thread that I'm contemplating putting together a solo guitar show, using a lot of the multiple nested looping delays and ambience widgits that have been in and out of my bass rig for years, along with my trusty (and dust-covered) Roland GR-300 guitar-synthesizer...

And I was all set to dive in and start prepping repertoire and practicing and stuff, since I now apparently have abundant spare time.

And then I saw this video of a Bill Frisell solo show from 2019:



That's it, I'm out. Done. Selling all my guitars. Melting down all my guitar picks and using the molten goo to shape a pointy stick that I can stab myself in the eyeballs with any time I get the notion that I have something compartatively worthy to offer on that instrument!

Reminds me of a recent quote I read by the new President of the Berklee College of Music, something to the effect of "I do still own a drumkit, but why would I ever play them when Omar Hakim lives right down the street from me?"

====================

(Okay, I'm just kidding about never playing guitar again. And that Frisell show is at least as much inspiring as it is demoralizing.)

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

btw, I may have mentioned a (long) while ago in this thread that I'm contemplating putting together a solo guitar show, using a lot of the multiple nested looping delays and ambience widgits that have been in and out of my bass rig for years, along with my trusty (and dust-covered) Roland GR-300 guitar-synthesizer...

And I was all set to dive in and start prepping repertoire and practicing and stuff, since I now apparently have abundant spare time.

And then I saw this video of a Bill Frisell solo show from 2019:



That's it, I'm out. Done. Selling all my guitars. Melting down all my guitar picks and using the molten goo to shape a pointy stick that I can stab myself in the eyeballs with any time I get the notion that I have something compartatively worthy to offer on that instrument!

Reminds me of a recent quote I read by the new President of the Berklee College of Music, something to the effect of "I do still own a drumkit, but why would I ever play them when Omar Hakim lives right down the street from me?"

====================

(Okay, I'm just kidding about never playing guitar again. And that Frisell show is at least as much inspiring as it is demoralizing.)

Frisell is a monster.
Saw two guitar players play live solo shows in my life on was John Schofield and the other was Biréli Lagraine

Sco was very very cool but Bireli was from another planet.
Alone with a manouche guitare for 1h20mins not a whisper from the crowd except the wows and ooohss of complete disbelief of what was happening.

One of the many “I quit moments” in my life.
They happen pretty frequently these days. But I keep on working cuz what else am I gonna do read books and be a hermit.

Oops already half way there…

 

[Piper Bob]

Awright... collaboration #2 with @ugly_bassplayer . This one's kinda unexpected, as it's not the usual for either of us (at least I think).

I'm playing the ATMOS ambient piano VST, as well as an Omnisphere patch. Enjoy, whydontcha?

Alright, COVIDcollab # 3. @ugly_bassplayer on the continuous drone, then I'm doing three tracks of 6 string bass over the top. Enjoy.

I'm working my way through this thread. Up to page 271 so far--that's almost five years ago. I really like these. The drone really creates a certain feel, and the added parts take you on a journey.

I happened to be watching an interview on the Kiev Post about the state of the war today and these both really fit.

 

[theunknowndude]

Well I was on my way to start recording riffs from my godflesh / LLNN / doom industrial bass stuff
Finally got out my focusrite interface, loaded up reaper, found enough cables, literally go to press record and I get a blue screen of death…
Gahhh thinking I get this occasionally on my work laptop, a reset and will all be good…
Now my 6 year old laptop seams deader than dead. I can get into the bios, and it attempted to load “something” but can’t even get into safe mode on booting up gah

Had a whole heap of financial problems crop up so looks like going to be a long way before I record again
On the plus side, my Warwick fretless 5 in Drop A through a mosky black rat and the tc dreamscapes chorus sounds like the best noise ever

Only thing left I can think of is try and get the files from my mp3 recorder somehow… or pay someone to do a demo but that’s big bucks

 

[Piper Bob]

Well I was on my way to start recording riffs from my godflesh / LLNN / doom industrial bass stuff
Finally got out my focusrite interface, loaded up reaper, found enough cables, literally go to press record and I get a blue screen of death…

Now my 6 year old laptop seams deader than dead. I can get into the bios, and it attempted to load “something” but can’t even get into safe mode on booting up gah

About 2 years ago that happened to my partner’s laptop. It was caused by a windows update. If it turns on there’s a way to fix it if you have another computer that can make a usb stick.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Found workaround for issue with the Microfreak myself.
Arturia customer support isn’t that supportive, they just gave links to the FAQ and that said I can’t do what I’ve done many times before.

 

[monsterthompson]

This guy's YT is gonna sell me on a bass vi sooner than later.

 

[monsterthompson]

Bouncing my effects sends to audio so I can mix like an adult.

I’m routing to hardware so there’s some nudging to be done, but the round trip latency doesn’t seem to be a significant issue with the full wet time based effects like ping pong delay and reverb. What might be tricky is parallel blending of compressed and EQ’d kicks and snares.

Those keeping score will notice there’s new box on the desktop. The addition is subtle and you might need to squint to see it
Don’t worry. This is still going to sound like my usual cyber garbage disposal nonsense mixed my a deaf cat pawing at the knobs.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Bouncing my effects sends to audio so I can mix like an adult.

I’m routing to hardware so there’s some nudging to be done, but the round trip latency doesn’t seem to be a significant issue with the full wet time based effects like ping pong delay and reverb. What might be tricky is parallel blending of compressed and EQ’d kicks and snares.

Those keeping score will notice there’s new box on the desktop. The addition is subtle and you might need to squint to see it
Don’t worry. This is still going to sound like my usual cyber garbage disposal nonsense mixed my a deaf cat pawing at the knobs.
View attachment 7121776

I assume the fires didn’t ravage your home

 

[monsterthompson]

I assume the fires didn’t ravage your home

The did not. The Hollywood fire warnings were definitely close. I had three bags packed. One with clothes and toiletries. One with tech like personal and work laptops. One with a bass.

Eerily enough, the cover track I’m working on has a line about fires.

The view from my yard from the worst of it. It’s pretty clear today.

 

[steubig]

in case you’re wondering about l.a.

this is a map that shows fire and evac zones.

i’m the blue dot, so fairly far away from the real chaos—unless another day or two of 100-mph winds happen, then who knows. if that were to happen, a good 1/4 of l.a. would be gone.

if i’m not mistaken, monster is near the boxed i and the boxed plus sign to its upper right. the hollywood hills fire the other night was vaguely due north of him. (monster correct me if i’m wrong.)

 

[steubig]

the view from my house on wednesday morning, when the air just smelled like burning brush and wood; not like burning plastic and chemicals like it did on thursday. (again, i was 10-12 miles from the fire at that point.)

 

[monsterthompson]

if i’m not mistaken, monster is near the boxed i and the boxed plus sign to its upper right. the hollywood hills fire the other night was vaguely due north of him. (monster correct me if i’m wrong.)

I’m closer to the boxed + but that’s close enough for jazz.

 

[steubig]

I’m closer to the boxed + but that’s close enough for jazz.

heard to tell on the map, so i spitballed.

 

[lordradish]

I'm working my way through this thread. Up to page 271 so far--that's almost five years ago. I really like these. The drone really creates a certain feel, and the added parts take you on a journey.

I happened to be watching an interview on the Kiev Post about the state of the war today and these both really fit.

Thanks! I recently was going through my old stuff and heard these, too.

 

[Starthief]

Stupid forum lost its notification stuff again so I assumed nobody was posting here for several days. I should just go right to this thread since it's the only one I bother with anyway.

Picked up some kind of respiratory bug just in time for the new year, and then ice and snow hit St. Louis and shaged the roads real good. All kinds of mail and shipping are delayed. I've kind of felt like we've been in limbo.

Haven't done much musically but I'm working on a study of Make Noise Spectraphon. It's a super complex module and it's been slow going. The funny thing is the way I use it most of the time is honestly pretty intuitive, it's mostly the process of writing stuff down that is slow so far. Once I get to the array creation stuff -- the mode I haven't been using very much -- that's where I actually need to dig in and relearn it.