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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread
- Thread starter ttasselm
- Start date
I’m all in favour of ERB instruments. They are freakin awesome in the right hands.
I take it as insult that you think I’m that closed minded (joking......)
Guess why I’ve been tuning my mains lower than EADG for over 12 years....to get them extended notes.
I had many 5 things and one 6 string in my life. They never felt right even when I set my mind to play only 5 string for a while. Did many gigs on a 5er for a while.
I just never felt « at home » on a 5 or a 6. No other complicated explanation, no other reasons.
Maybe my feeling of being a « limited » talent contributed to this also?
Only other one I really liked was upright. For about 2 years I didn’t even play my electrics except on gigs.
@steubig the Fretless enabler!!!!!!
misread your intent.
if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
i think it helped me that i stopped doing anything but a 6; just had to concentrate on that alone.
i am an enabler.
you're welcome.
I played 4 for a year than 5 (low B) for prob 15 yrs and then up to 6. Took a while for 6 to be my main...and went to 4 a bunch of yrs ago which now I prefer. Higher notes lends to more chordal exploration, lower notes to deeper grooves...more strings leads to more complexity (for me).
It changes the way you play for sure because the patterns are different. Vertical vs horizontal. I am a tweaker and love options so when you take away strings I find options in other areas. You can make sound and music with anything...like any job, 20% is the training and 80% is the person. The musician you are will shine through on a 4 string or a 20 string...but it will just be different flavors of your personality but your sensibilities are your sensibilities. I really enjoy how a different instrument shows me those different flavors and reminds me that they are a part of my musical personality.
It changes the way you play for sure because the patterns are different. Vertical vs horizontal. I am a tweaker and love options so when you take away strings I find options in other areas. You can make sound and music with anything...like any job, 20% is the training and 80% is the person. The musician you are will shine through on a 4 string or a 20 string...but it will just be different flavors of your personality but your sensibilities are your sensibilities. I really enjoy how a different instrument shows me those different flavors and reminds me that they are a part of my musical personality.
Okay, so I'm actually quite happy with this one, not my usual thing, by any stretch, another one of my 'decay' pieces that I really had a lot of fun putting together. I can tell ya what I did, if anyone's interested.
I started on a 5 because every band I wanted to do covers on was in drop B or C... had a four string squire fretless for a while which would have been awesome has it been a 5... that was a pretty sweet fretless for the price. Ended up selling that to my bass teacher at the time and then getting a Ibanez gwb35 for the five string. But yeah I’m useless with the six and don’t see the point of eadgc... I tend to hang around low B to the octave above on the a string... if I need to venture higher well C is on the fifth fret of G *shrug* only really play up there with occasional ambient of following my guitarist in bridge parts of songs... my Ibanez K5 has been my main for 11 years (despite its moniker as fieldy being a bad bassist... it’s a nice bass, can get a good bump in low mids and I like the 16.5mm string spacing... can slap and play fast with my short fingers hah!)
(despite its moniker as fieldy being a bad bassist... it’s a nice bass, can get a good bump in low mids and I like the 16.5mm string spacing... can slap and play fast with my short fingers hah!)
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imo, there’s no “point” to any of it—tunings, number of strings, etc. do what you like and die happy.
korn had some good tunes and fieldy was a big part of that, everything else is sour grapes. ymmv, etc.
korn had some good tunes and fieldy was a big part of that, everything else is sour grapes. ymmv, etc.
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yep, I played a show early on in my days of when I joined a thrash band with it and a black metal band was playing with us... they tried to get a rise out of me paying out I played a fieldy bass... I just shrugged and put one a good show
Thanks everyone for the 6 string posts. I think my sweet spot for solo work is probably a 5 string with a high C.
Ordered some Labella white copper tapes to see if my hands will take them better than rounds or EB cobalts. Thomastiks are good too so I might try those. About the only bass I can play without gloves at the moment is my Kala u-bass (except on the occasionally Very Good Day). The Lull 35" scale slight fights against the higher string being the way I want it -- like @steubig I like lower tension. Maybe there's a medium scale 5 in my future. We'll see.
For those of you who use flat wound high Cs -- what do you like? (I saw @emjazz on an old thread but don't know how the story ended).
Ordered some Labella white copper tapes to see if my hands will take them better than rounds or EB cobalts. Thomastiks are good too so I might try those. About the only bass I can play without gloves at the moment is my Kala u-bass (except on the occasionally Very Good Day). The Lull 35" scale slight fights against the higher string being the way I want it -- like @steubig I like lower tension. Maybe there's a medium scale 5 in my future. We'll see.
For those of you who use flat wound high Cs -- what do you like? (I saw @emjazz on an old thread but don't know how the story ended).
I have been infatuated with Bass VI type instruments for a while but I've yet to actually get one. The Squier VI seems pretty cool but it has that non-locking trem bridge on it which I know would be a problem. There are other VI type instruments out there, though, Eastwood Guitars has at least two cool ones. I imagine a VI would be fun to do ambient/electronic stuff with.
I've got a music man silhouette. The main issue is strings are very close together for finger style (yeah, I know, Jack Bruce did it) and string selection. I also am not totally enamoured of the pickups, but the build is amazing. I am looking into the string problem. The Squiers were surprisingly heavy and did not stay in tune.
Sorry I missed the first question a couple of days ago...I'll have to go back to it. I will see after some browsing that, for me, a 35" scale doesn't work with a high C string. If you listen to any Anthony Jackson or John Patittucci, they have longer scale basses. For me they have always had a more piano like sound, and that's just not personally what I prefer. I especially want the C string to be looser and vibrate more, with less harmonic content. That's why I have 33" scale basses (34" works well as well, but I prefer shorter). I want that high C string to feel and sound warm, like a hollow body jazz guitar. You can't get that with longer scale lengths.
I tried earlier on the LaBella tapewound strings. I like them quite a bit (will try them on an upcoming fretless..but still assume I'll land back with flatwounds). I've been using LaBella Low Tension Flats on my 6 string basses. Lately I've been curious about trying other strings, but these are pretty amazing. I'm fairly certain you can order the high C as a single string. These strings have a lot of low end, much more than pretty much any other string. I happen to like that. Something like the TI flats will be clearer sounding all around with less low end, and a bit of a midrange emphasis. Great strings. I'm planning on getting a set soon to compare with my LaBellas since I haven't played them in a few years. Other than that I'm not sure what's available with a high C string. Looks like Steuart mentioned the Pyramids, but I know nothing about those what so ever.
Ive got a short scale 6 that I’ve been thinking of stringing up like a bass vi. Also interesting are baritone guitars.
Okay, so some backstory here. Back when I first discovered Basinski's Disintegration Tapes, it sent me down a rabbit hole for the decay music. I came across this album:
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World - Wikipedia
"An Empty Bliss Beyond This World follows the mind of a person who tries and struggles to remember even small parts of their life using broken sounds.
The record was based on a 2010 study about the ability of people with Alzheimer's disease to remember music they listened to when they were younger, as well as where they were and how they felt when they listened to it. The Caretaker project was inspired by the use of ballroom music in films such as Carnival of Souls (1962), The Shining (1980), and the television series Pennies from Heaven (1978), which drew James Kirby to themes of memory loss that appear on An Empty Bliss Beyond This World: "Famously, people as they got older have started seeing dead people, people from the past, and that's their reality because the brain's misfiring. I'm very interested in these kinds of stories. Music's probably the last thing to go for a lot of people with advanced Alzheimer's. There are a lot of people who suffer from Alzheimer's who just hum the same songs over and over again."
The record was based on a 2010 study about the ability of people with Alzheimer's disease to remember music they listened to when they were younger, as well as where they were and how they felt when they listened to it. The Caretaker project was inspired by the use of ballroom music in films such as Carnival of Souls (1962), The Shining (1980), and the television series Pennies from Heaven (1978), which drew James Kirby to themes of memory loss that appear on An Empty Bliss Beyond This World: "Famously, people as they got older have started seeing dead people, people from the past, and that's their reality because the brain's misfiring. I'm very interested in these kinds of stories. Music's probably the last thing to go for a lot of people with advanced Alzheimer's. There are a lot of people who suffer from Alzheimer's who just hum the same songs over and over again."
I was absolutely obsessed with this concept... the passage of time, the loss of memory, the disorientation when one tries to piece things back together when they only have the fragments. That could be me, someday. So that's what's had me working on these 'decay' pieces.
So for this one, I took a 1928 recording of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier (The Rose King). I found the key passage I wanted to repeat, and then several others that I'd bring in and out. I then experimented as to where to put the other ones, so they would somehow fit and not fit, rhythmically, conveying the sense of some familiarity returning, only to still be disorienting once they fade in, like one struggling to remember something, but when they do, it's still not quite right. I also used various vocal samples in there - about once a month, I hit up the Internet Archive, grab the audio from old newsreels or documentaries, and make some sample banks. Some I just used for atmosphere (where you can't really hear what they're saying). But others are very specific... "grim, isolated, lonely"..."the hallucinations and delusions", and a few other ones that are in line with the theme.
I ran the vocal samples through Izotope RX to give them the old record player treatment. There was plenty of actual deterioration on the original recordings, as one can see with the high noise floor, but that's part of the charm, I think. I then ran the whole thing through Denise Bad Tape, but only really subtly, to give it a little saturation and wow/flutter.
I'm actually quite surprised I did something like this, as it's not my usual process or mindset.
Caretaker album is genius.
A bit long, took me a while to get from start to finish.
I definitely think you are on to something very interesting imo.
I really like the track. One of my favs you've posted.
Very good selection of samples and textures.
I definitely want to hear more of this "project"
Boring tech talk,
Whats the plugin used to dirty the samples?
I freakin love listening to documentaries with my sampler and grabbing pieces everywhere. Vocals, sound fx, textures, little bits of melodies.
Haven't done this in a while, this kind of process for me is very time consuming.
And time is something I have in short supply.
Again, good job @lordradish
I think this will end up being a 5-piece project. Thanks.
I didn't have to 'dirty' them up much, as they were already 92 years old, but just a touch of Izotope Vinyl on the vocal samples, and a bit of Denise Bad Tape on the whole mix, for some saturation and flutter. That really is an amazing plugin, can't recommend enough.
My problem is, I’ve never had one fail. I own about 40-50 EBS flat cables, all lengths, in service for years, on multiple boards in states of continual change, and zero failures.
