Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[monsterthompson]

Use of some Strymon Pedals

Just getting to this. What all is going on in your signal path?

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

There's a magic in the early years for many artists. Perhaps because there is a "new" element that listeners aren't immediately familiar with.
For me, early Misfits stuff is amazing. The production values are lo-fi, and the mixes change on every track, but the energy and vision they captured is incredible. It is a stark contrast to some of the later material which has far better production, which sounds slick but doesn't communicate the same fire.

I'm more a Ramones guy....but exact same thing. First four albums....pure classic raw punk.....after....not so much.....

Same with my other all time favs Bad Brains.....

 

[monsterthompson]

I'm not sure if this is really ambient, but it's close. A friend and I made this a couple of nights ago.

NICE!

 

[dukeorock]

I'm more a Ramones guy....but exact same thing. First four albums....pure classic raw punk.....after....not so much.....

Same with my other all time favs Bad Brains.....

There's a manic nervousness to most early recordings of great bands. That said, The Ramones occasionally made some great stuff throughout their career, just not as consistently as the the first few records. Pere Ubu, on the other hand, formed in the '70's and have made some of their very best records (IMO) in the past 5-10 years.
Heck, I've been in bands where fans get upset because you're now able to charge $10-$15 for tickets to a show. Excuse us for not wanting to starve to death our entire careers! So many fans hate when too many people find out about THEIR band. To be labeled a 'sellout' when you made like $15,000 that year by a person who made $75,000 is pretty frustrating when all you ever wanted to do was make art everyday and not live off a girlfriend or in the van.
I've been a full time musician since the early 90's, so I guess I see both sides of these kind of arguments
Dave Sardy is a good example. He's produced huge commercial bands and commercials, but he was the main dude in Barkmarket and still produces really cool stuff, which gets financed by the big commercial acts.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

There's a manic nervousness to most early recordings of great bands. That said, The Ramones occasionally made some great stuff throughout their career, just not as consistently as the the first few records. Pere Ubu, on the other hand, formed in the '70's and have made some of their very best records (IMO) in the past 5-10 years.
Heck, I've been in bands where fans get upset because you're now able to charge $10-$15 for tickets to a show. Excuse us for not wanting to starve to death our entire careers! So many fans hate when too many people find out about THEIR band. To be labeled a 'sellout' when you made like $15,000 that year by a person who made $75,000 is pretty frustrating when all you ever wanted to do was make art everyday and not live off a girlfriend or in the van.
I've been a full time musician since the early 90's, so I guess I see both sides of these kind of arguments
Dave Sardy is a good example. He's produced huge commercial bands and commercials, but he was the main dude in Barkmarket and still produces really cool stuff, which gets financed by the big commercial acts.

Nothing wrong with success and making a living in my book.

 

[Bob_Ross]

he was the main dude in Barkmarket and still produces really cool stuff

Shameless Name-Dropping: Barkmarket drummer Rock Savage and I played in a band together for 4 or 5 years in the early aughts. Band was called Angora and we did one album titled Infinite Monkey Theory on the Broke Dick label ...which I'm guessing is out of print now, because I just did a search for it and all I could find was this: Check out Angora on TuneIn
Great player, and a really nice humble guy to boot. He's also one of the best drum tuners I've ever met in my life.

To keep this post semi-germane to the thread: That album was recorded back when I still owned an Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro looper, a device which I kick myself every single day for having sold.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Any of y'all ever seen/heard/used the Invalid Link Removed?

A bandmate shows up to a session last night with one of those, says "give me a line level feed". So i patch a spare output from my rig over to him, he plugs his output into the PA
...and holy crap, talk about mayhem!
It took an awful lot of patience, imagination, and sheer force-of-will to be able to relate any of what was coming out of the PA to what I was doing on the bass (especially because a lot of what I was doing was already ridiculously mangled by my mini pedalboard from hell, which I admittedly am still learning the capabilities of) but man, it was an unholy racket even when everyone else in the band stopped playing.
Noise R Us indeed.

 

[monsterthompson]

paging @dukeorock

Any of y'all ever seen/heard/used the Invalid Link Removed?

A bandmate shows up to a session last night with one of those, says "give me a line level feed". So i patch a spare output from my rig over to him, he plugs his output into the PA
...and holy crap, talk about mayhem!
It took an awful lot of patience, imagination, and sheer force-of-will to be able to relate any of what was coming out of the PA to what I was doing on the bass (especially because a lot of what I was doing was already ridiculously mangled by my mini pedalboard from hell, which I admittedly am still learning the capabilities of) but man, it was an unholy racket even when everyone else in the band stopped playing.
Noise R Us indeed.


View attachment 3628233

 

[dukeorock]

Any of y'all ever seen/heard/used the Invalid Link Removed?

A bandmate shows up to a session last night with one of those, says "give me a line level feed". So i patch a spare output from my rig over to him, he plugs his output into the PA
...and holy crap, talk about mayhem!
It took an awful lot of patience, imagination, and sheer force-of-will to be able to relate any of what was coming out of the PA to what I was doing on the bass (especially because a lot of what I was doing was already ridiculously mangled by my mini pedalboard from hell, which I admittedly am still learning the capabilities of) but man, it was an unholy racket even when everyone else in the band stopped playing.
Noise R Us indeed.


View attachment 3628233

I've been boring everyone to death around here for 18 months going on about my Octatrack They really are incredibly unique, but a bit tough to wrap your head around at first

paging @dukeorock

Haha! Sorry, I know I've beat the Octatrack horse to death

 

[monsterthompson]

I've been boring everyone to death around here for 18 months going on about my Octatrack They really are incredibly unique, but a bit tough to wrap your head around at first


Haha! Sorry, I know I've beat the Octatrack horse to death

You mean tempting me to sink some cash into one. My biggest hesitation is that as soon as I drop the cash, some updated version is going to pop on the market.

 

[Alfonso Alba]

Any of y'all ever seen/heard/used the Invalid Link Removed?

A bandmate shows up to a session last night with one of those, says "give me a line level feed". So i patch a spare output from my rig over to him, he plugs his output into the PA
...and holy crap, talk about mayhem!
It took an awful lot of patience, imagination, and sheer force-of-will to be able to relate any of what was coming out of the PA to what I was doing on the bass (especially because a lot of what I was doing was already ridiculously mangled by my mini pedalboard from hell, which I admittedly am still learning the capabilities of) but man, it was an unholy racket even when everyone else in the band stopped playing.
Noise R Us indeed.


View attachment 3628233

I have a Machinedrum UW which can so similar stuff, to some extent. I love Elektron's digital gear. I also have a severely underused Monomachine and I've wanted an Octa for years, but I know it's a complex machine and between family, job and my band, my time for messing up with such machines has been reduced to zero.

 

[dukeorock]

You mean tempting me to sink some cash into one. My biggest hesitation is that as soon as I drop the cash, some updated version is going to pop on the market.

And NAMM 2020 is just around the corner, so there's that. There's several things I'd wish for on a 'Octatrack Mk3,' but I seriously doubt Elektron will ever do one and there will only be the most minor OS tweaks as they said the Octatrack is pretty much 'maxed out.' Either way, I'd wait until after NAAM, just to be on the safe side.

I have a Machinedrum UW which can so similar stuff, to some extent. I love Elektron's digital gear. I also have a severely underused Monomachine and I've wanted an Octa for years, but I know it's a complex machine and between family, job and my band, my time for messing up with such machines has been reduced to zero.

I LOVE the monomachine and machinedrum so much! Total classic and innovative machines

 

[steubig]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]


knocked out a few quick clips.

these are just preliminary patches i made to experiment with some of the modulation possibilities on the new asm hydrasynth.


PAT (polyaftertouch), MW (modulation wheel), RC (ribbon controller)



1. Quirky little patch messing with key tracking. Changing chords into arpeggiator with ratcheting.

2. Edited factory preset. Messing with PAT.

3. Vocalish thing. PAT and theremin style on RC.

4. Pad thing with more PAT. (I like detuning.)

5. All sorts of mayhem going on. PAT for some stuff MW (vibrato defeated) controlling other stuff. Also RC for theremin style.

6. "Bass sound." Driving different chords with different amount of notes into the arpeggiator with ratcheting.

7. Faux tines sound. All sorts of mayhem going on. PAT for some stuff. MW (vibrato defeated) controlling other stuff.

8. Faux stringish sound (?). Plus more of the same.

 

[steubig]

i should mention that's all live playing with no effects besides the hydrasynth's

 

[dukeorock]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]


knocked out a few quick clips.

these are just preliminary patches i made to experiment with some of the modulation possibilities on the new asm hydrasynth.


PAT (polyaftertouch), MW (modulation wheel), RC (ribbon controller)



1. Quirky little patch messing with key tracking. Changing chords into arpeggiator with ratcheting.

2. Edited factory preset. Messing with PAT.

3. Vocalish thing. PAT and theremin style on RC.

4. Pad thing with more PAT. (I like detuning.)

5. All sorts of mayhem going on. PAT for some stuff MW (vibrato defeated) controlling other stuff. Also RC for theremin style.

6. "Bass sound." Driving different chords with different amount of notes into the arpeggiator with ratcheting.

7. Faux tines sound. All sorts of mayhem going on. PAT for some stuff. MW (vibrato defeated) controlling other stuff.

8. Faux stringish sound (?). Plus more of the same.

that thing sounds terrific! I like the way you detune and distress sounds. Gives it personality. Otherwise it's just all John Tesh and stuff

 

[dukeorock]

Spent more time making percussion on the Cwejman...kinda industrial/cinematic nonsense

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Finally got my stuff from perfect circuit. Two JMT synths.....

 

[monsterthompson]

Finally got my stuff from perfect circuit. Two JMT synths.....


View attachment 3629641

Kick the tires and light the fires!

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Kick the tires and light the fires!

Just spent a few hours with both. And imo they are awesome little machines. Plug and tweak. Simple to operate..... complexe to predict the outcome...to me that's a huge positive. Random and unpredictable outcomes. True noise machines.

They are the unvo-1 and the other NOSC-12. One is a 6 oscillator drone synth and the other is well....a "noise" synth with :

• Dual oscillator noise synth
• Two different filter types
• Noise Generator
• Range Switches for VCOs.

Many more tests and practice to come. I can't wait to add some pedals to the signal chain of either of these. Will report back asap......gonna need a SoundCloud to share I believe.

I'll wait to get a hang of these new synths before adding a loop pedal and my sampler.

Time for me to practice my gut vocals/ yells to add on top......ouch....

 

[monsterthompson]

Spending time today on Massive and Battery. Why is it all just starting to make sense now?! Been using these for years. Ugh. My brain feels smarter and dumber at the same time.

Wondering how Battery as a sampler might relate to an Octotrack. I'm sure the workflow is different, but they are samplers with built-in effects. There must be similarities.

Anyway. It's so weird when ah-ha moments unfold and you wonder why it wasn't this clear sooner.