Sampling in Maschine today. Working on drum loops and realizing I’ve misjudged the beat in a few songs I’ve loved for years.
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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread
- Thread starter ttasselm
- Start date
Learning that I was fooled about where the 1 is. I thought I knew where it was but as I’m chopping and slicing, I’m figuring out that my ears have been pulled to pick-up phrases leading up to the 1. I’ve always had a tendency to rush the beat and I’m seeing that play out. I cut a sample or two at a ghost note transient before the actual 1. Learning.
Chop them samples!!!!
You learn so much by digging and chopping samples IMO. Way more than most would think.
(That’s why I never use sample packs)
Treasures to be found, chopped and tweaked are literally endless.
Totally. I'm rethinking how I've treated samples in the past. My brain is finally figuring out why you treat some samples as loops vs one-shots and how to think of a sample vs. a slice vs. sample-based instrument (like a drum-rack or Kontakt instrument).
Had one of them thar whatchamacallits last night the gerg, gag, geg gid glib... whatever it's called — where musicians gather and play instruments in front of an audience ...
PICKS is why I'm here, though...
One of my more relatively-recent experimentations was with these blue picks used to open up electronics:
They're BIG, blue and with a ridge that adds an ... interesting ... dynamic to using them. So I wound up shaving down the ridge on at least one of the tips, that way you can have a smoother "normal" pick or the bump, just rotate to preference.
The nice thing about the ridge is it helps with the grip... Even Ugly_B might be able to hang on to these, especially if you drill some holes through the middle.
Drilling holes in any pick is helpful with grip, I find.
A guitawr friend is obsessed with attaching pics to his guitars, currently stuffing neodymium magnets into the aforementioned holes drilled into pics, then the pic will stick to the metal control plate... BUT, prior to that he gave me one of his VELCRO modded picks (he used the hook on
the pick and the loop on the guitar) — that pick I never dropped, but it's TOO bristly, to the point of being mildly painful when playing with it for long periods.
THE ABSOLUTE BEST PICK-TONE I'VE HEARD is with the TUSQ picks (I used the one on the far left):
Bone, Wood, Plastic, Various Metals etc ... nothing sounds as good to my ears.
The cool thing about the Tusq is that they are more rigid than most other picks of the same thickness, but it's the sound that got me.
Just compare by dropping them onto a table or on the floor and listen to how different they sound to Tortex or whatever. The Tusq has a chime other picks don't, and you can hear it when playing.
Tusq slides over the strings smoothly, too, nee "glide" — 'cause they're made from Graphtech's proprietary material.
THE CONS to Tusq...
- They WEAR OUT, FAST! That pointy thing will be a round coin-like plectrum in no time.
- THEY'RE SLIPPERY! Like, Ugly_B-wouldn't-even-make-it-to-the-string-with-one, slippery. Even drilling holes didn't help — well, it did help, but not enough...
My favourite pick-player is without a doubt Bobby Vega.
He uses the side of the pick, not the pointy tip.
PS (unrelated): @ Ugli_B — Contact mics are the shizzle.
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Had one of them thar whatchamacallits last night the gerg, gag, geg gid glib... whatever it's called — where musicians gather and play instruments in front of an audience ...
PICKS is why I'm here, though...
One of my more relatively-recent experimentations was with these blue picks used to open up electronics:
View attachment 4193834
They're BIG, blue and with a ridge that adds an ... interesting ... dynamic to using them. So I wound up shaving down the ridge on at least one of the tips, that way you can have a smoother "normal" pick or the bump, just rotate to preference.
The nice thing about the ridge is it helps with the grip... Even Ugly_B might be able to hang on to these, especially if you drill some holes through the middle.
Drilling holes in any pick is helpful with grip, I find.
A guitawr friend is obsessed with attaching pics to his guitars, currently stuffing neodymium magnets into the aforementioned holes drilled into pics, then the pic will stick to the metal control plate... BUT, prior to that he gave me one of his VELCRO modded picks (he used the hook on
the pick and the loop on the guitar) — that pick I never dropped, but it's TOO bristly, to the point of being mildly painful when playing with it for long periods.
THE ABSOLUTE BEST PICK-TONE I'VE HEARD is with the TUSQ picks (I used the one on the far left):
View attachment 4193835
Bone, Wood, Plastic, Various Metals etc ... nothing sounds as good to my ears.
The cool thing about the Tusq is that they are more rigid than most other picks of the same thickness, but it's the sound that got me.
Just compare by dropping them onto a table or on the floor and listen to how different they sound to Tortex or whatever. The Tusq has a chime other picks don't, and you can hear it when playing.
Tusq slides over the strings smoothly, too, nee "glide" — 'cause they're made from Graphtech's proprietary material.
THE CONS to Tusq...
- They WEAR OUT, FAST! That pointy thing will be a round coin-like plectrum in no time.
- THEY'RE SLIPPERY! Like, Ugly_B-wouldn't-even-make-it-to-the-string-with-one, slippery. Even drilling holes didn't help — well, it did help, but not enough...
My favourite pick-player is without a doubt Bobby Vega.
He uses the side of the pick, not the pointy tip.
PS (unrelated): @ Ugli_B — Contact mics are the shizzle.
Will definitely try the drilling tiny holes trick.
Thanks for the tip.
RE: contact mic
I use the "classic" contact mic made by crank sturgeon. One the best 30$ ever spent.
Added bonus is that the connector is 1/4 so I can go directly into my SP404SX.
And Mr Vega is the shizzle!!!!
Even have his signature pickup in 2 of my instruments.
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Right now my contact mic is a bargain-bin "ukulele pickup", so it has the 1/4", too, but... I'll check out Crank Sturgeon.
AND I'll check out BV pups, didn't even know he had a sig model.
Cheers
AND I'll check out BV pups, didn't even know he had a sig model.
Cheers
The Bobby Vega pup is the emg GZR.
They copied one of his 60s pbass pickup to make the Geezer.
was eyeing one of these for awhile. Currently happy with how my RJM devices do this, but it’s super useful.
That style is gonna be a hard pill for me to swallow. I think I’d be more likely to appreciate it live, but it’s not going to get into my regular rotation. Still, it’s good to hear his playing in context. He’s clearly a talented guy, but I’ve never understood the attraction based on hearing him solo for gear demos (not that gear demos are the yardstick for playing).
Ooh, so we're talking about picks now? Er, um, I mean yesterday?
I played with a pick when I started playing bass in 1974. By the time I went off to college 4 years later I was a 99% fingers player. Then the 1980s and Sting got big, so I started doing a crap-ton of Police-influenced stuff with a pick. Then that became passé and I went back to being a 99% fingers guy. Somewhere between the early 90s and now I realized that whatever tool you use to excite the strings is just as important as what note you play, what signal processing you use to tweak your tone, and what bass you happen to be using -- also, what you ate for breakfast -- so now I'm probably 75-80% fingers, ~10% pick, and the rest evenly divided between cardboard mailing tubes, drumsticks, machined solid aluminum rods, eBows, electro-magnetic gizmos (e.g., pagers, cell phones, TV remote controls, cordless drills), kitchen implements, and multiple combinations thereof.
But I honestly don't care what type of pick I use. For the last 10 or 20 years it's been whatever the standard shaped medium pick that the folks at Just Strings.com include with every shipment.
I played with a pick when I started playing bass in 1974. By the time I went off to college 4 years later I was a 99% fingers player. Then the 1980s and Sting got big, so I started doing a crap-ton of Police-influenced stuff with a pick. Then that became passé and I went back to being a 99% fingers guy. Somewhere between the early 90s and now I realized that whatever tool you use to excite the strings is just as important as what note you play, what signal processing you use to tweak your tone, and what bass you happen to be using -- also, what you ate for breakfast -- so now I'm probably 75-80% fingers, ~10% pick, and the rest evenly divided between cardboard mailing tubes, drumsticks, machined solid aluminum rods, eBows, electro-magnetic gizmos (e.g., pagers, cell phones, TV remote controls, cordless drills), kitchen implements, and multiple combinations thereof.
But I honestly don't care what type of pick I use. For the last 10 or 20 years it's been whatever the standard shaped medium pick that the folks at Just Strings.com include with every shipment.
No bloody flippin' wonder I wasn't aware of it.
I suppose EMG have a Terence Michael Joseph Butler model pup named the "Vega"?
And I've even watched all the EMG clips with BV in them; admittedly/obviously I listened to the playing and not what he was saying or I might've caught the sig-pup mentioned, maybe.
Interesting titbit: I just learned today that BV played with Bo Diddley at age 15!
I'm a huge Bo Diddley fan, how could I not know this sooner than today?
Bob_Ross
I use my Flanger's picks a lot lately... the stapler looking thing on the right.
See!
It really IS a Flanger!
The soft underbelly of the Flanger Beast...
Mileage?
It does about 5 picks to the credit-card. YMMV.
For anyone using the sy1 - how do you use it? I’ve only been playing with it through headphones and set it up with all my drives in the loop... thought sounded decent using some of the lead tones. ( main thing to do was intro under my guitarists finger picked chords with just ambient sweeps) and when it came to band practice through my cab, it sounded horrible 
maybe it’s too dry with just the sy1 and loop drives?? When I listen to electronic music I realise I usually like the aggressive overdriven distorted stuff, maybe I should be running sy1 into drives instead?
Seemed like a waste of real estate when sy1 with expression pedal and drive in loop was being beat by drive plus bass clone plus wah to get filter sweeps
maybe it’s too dry with just the sy1 and loop drives?? When I listen to electronic music I realise I usually like the aggressive overdriven distorted stuff, maybe I should be running sy1 into drives instead? Seemed like a waste of real estate when sy1 with expression pedal and drive in loop was being beat by drive plus bass clone plus wah to get filter sweeps
Never tried the SY-1, but IME tone that sounds awesome by itself might not fit in a band mix.For anyone using the sy1 - how do you use it? I’ve only been playing with it through headphones and set it up with all my drives in the loop... thought sounded decent using some of the lead tones. ( main thing to do was intro under my guitarists finger picked chords with just ambient sweeps) and when it came to band practice through my cab, it sounded horrible
Seemed like a waste of real estate when sy1 with expression pedal and drive in loop was being beat by drive plus bass clone plus wah to get filter sweeps
(That goes for any pedal, even a simple EQ or preamp).
As for adding pedals with the SY-1, try the drives before, after and in the FX loop. They’ll all sound different.
Use whatever works best. I usually try simple things first before adding anything.
My 2 cents.
