Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[Bob_Ross]

I can’t imagine trying to use that word in a spoken sentence without doing a few rehearsals.

heh-heh. I’ve had a lot of practice!

 

[steubig]

Great post, @steubig. I learned all about the spectralists and postspectralists from a student a few years back and would love to bring that into how I work with synths.

for me, i'm more interested in the specteralists' sounds than the method? and not always that either; sometimes this stuff is just grist for the mill, ya know?

The touch guitar lessons have really opened up my understanding of harmonic movement. It seems like “dissonance” or whatever matters less as you move up in pitch.

dissonance less dissonant higher up: i think it's because there are fewer audible overtones on the higher notes, so less opportunity for clashing. if every note has overtones approaching a dom 7, 9, #11 chord spread over a few octaves (and i think they do), it's gonna get pretty crowded. under this theory, E and G# lower down, gets you E-G#-B-D-F#-A# (Bb) PLUS G#-B#(C)-D#-F#-A#-C## (D). that can sound either pretty messy or *juat right*, depending on the situation.

For me the challenge has been extended melody.

seems to me the deal would be to concentrate on playing (improvising?) melodies.

I am toying with switching up my touch guitar lessons at some point for composition lessons, but I would probably benefit from another couple years of basic study before switching up my practice and learning focus. I don’t quite yet know the fingerboard well enough improvise as freely as I would want.

imo, analyzing pieces of music was the best entre into composition *for me*: beethoven string quartets, bach art of the fugue, webern 5 pieces for string quartet were major touchstones for me (you can throw in wagner, mahler, debussy, ravel, too, if you like).

 

[monsterthompson]

music adjacent:

I'm going to play this for my mom, just to see how often she looks at the landline phone.

Lots of sounds that seem like they could be in this software:
Cinematic : Kinetic Metal | Komplete

 

[steubig]

Flatterer.

see? you were the right guy.

I feel like if I offered any more detail it would just come across as pedantic ...which I'm told is true of nearly everything I say, so maybe I should just shut up? Nah...

even your description of your being pedantic was pedantic!

I will say this: I like to differentiate between chord progressions and chord sequences.

chord progressions are the ones that obey -- or at least, exist in a world that is defined by -- functional harmony. Dominant chords want [sic] to resolve, tonic chords sound stable, yadda-yadda-yadda... the movement from one chord to another is designed to either follow or confound expectations, and those expectations are based on long-extant rules about harmonic behavior (and listeners being conditioned to hearing those behaviors).

agreed. it's interesting to note that beethoven's first symphony starts with a V7 of the IV chord (iirc, C7 in a symphony in C). very much against the grain and kind of rebellious for the time period. likewise the opening of tristan and isolde, or afternoon of a faun. those things are not what was going on before.

chord sequences are designed to sound cool. The vertical harmonies may (sometimes) be called "chords" as a convenience or shorthand but they don't function the way their namesakes might in more traditional musics. They are simply simultanaeities, a bunch of notes that sound together and that are made to be heard concurrently. Calling something a V7 in this harmonic environment is often meaningless, or at best a coincidence. The chords "go" from one to the next because the composer has created an environment where that's the sound meant to be heard at that moment, regardless of (or in spite of) listener expectations and intrinsic behaviors from functional harmony.

great point. i do tend toward more vertical constructs (now who's pedantic?) moving from one to the other.

this is sort of what i meant by "the harmony can be the theme."

i will say that there are times i have dom seventh chord in there and it's "right," but bugs me cuase i hear it as a 7th chord.

btw, the famous Stravinsky polychord from The Rite Of Spring was an Eb7 chord over a full E major triad...or rather (puts on his Captain Pedantic hat) an Fb major triad. The Fb is voiced in root position with a doubled octave, and the Eb7 is in 1st inversion. Gorgeous sound.

this is why i'm a crap reader, Fb is foreign to me.

 

[steubig]

I went the other way. Was so sick and tired of composition and harmony that I went backwards. Complete disregard of harmony and form in favour of feel and textures. I can still do it, but atm I choose not to stick to “the norm”/
Too much school and jazz\classical police @$$hats. French impressionist stuff like Debussy is among my all time favs. Well Bach also, but thats a given.

Too much polytonal, polychords, counterpoint and transcription analysis. But once again, learn the rules before you totally annihilate them.

Weird I am.
Who cares anyway.....I just put in the work

backwards or forwards *for you*?

 

[steubig]

I'm going to play this for my mom, just to see how often she looks at the landline phone.

Lots of sounds that seem like they could be in this software:
Cinematic : Kinetic Metal | Komplete

lol.

is your mom a depressive?

this is all multi-tracked, edited, assembled modular synth. i've been having a good time investigating sounds/possibilities. more knob-twiddling, less programming for me right now.

 

[monsterthompson]

lol.

is your mom a depressive?

this is all multi-tracked, edited, assembled modular synth. i've been having a good time investigating sounds/possibilities. more knob-twiddling, less programming for me right now.

I just think some of those sounds are reminiscent of an old phone ringer and she might have a conditioned reflex trigger

I figured you pulled those all together with non-computer techniques. I'm in the same boat. I haven't cracked my DAW and VST collection in a while. The Black Sequencer and Euro Zoia have kept me busy.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

backwards or forwards *for you*?

Good point. Forwards, for me I guess. I don't regret my traditional studies at all, extremely formative.

I still do the "normal" stuff, I just need the chaos and annihilation of the norms also.

Maybe I should put in more work on my hip hop beats.....they lay somewhere in between imo.

 

[monsterthompson]

Playing around with the Black sequencer and using it to modulate filter and reverb parameters. I step sequencer the reverb blend on a long pad-like patch and it was cool to hear it fade the blend.

I’ve got it all linked up to my laptop so I can run the drum machine from there and stay in sync. I’ve got a small latency issue there to sort out.

Still. This was a good night of mischief.

 

[Phe]

... Snip....

"sonority" to me is about how something sounds, as opposed to its *function*. a long tradition of this in classical music.

Ah, I see. Yeah, I'm usually somewhere on between functional harmony and non-functional. I can stray away, but sometimes my pop oriented ears really want to resolve stuff.
It's funny, almost nothing sounds dissonant anymore. It also makes recognizing intervals difficult since my fingers want play pentatonics and my ears don't care if something is out of order.
Or maybe I'm just tonedeaf.

 

[lordradish]

I went the other way. Was so sick and tired of composition and harmony that I went backwards. Complete disregard of harmony and form in favour of feel and textures. I can still do it, but atm I choose not to stick to “the norm”/
Too much school and jazz\classical police @$$hats. French impressionist stuff like Debussy is among my all time favs. Well Bach also, but thats a given.

Too much polytonal, polychords, counterpoint and transcription analysis. But once again, learn the rules before you totally annihilate them.

Weird I am.
Who cares anyway.....I just put in the work

See, I'm still trying to master the 'conventions', as it's only recently that I've begun to be able to make serious sense out of them. My jazz solos, as an example, are starting to sound coherent for the first time, ever. But that goes all out the window with my ambient stuff. I generally don't put too much emphasis on a melody, although there will be some subtle harmonic concepts. It's all about the feel and texture with ambient for me, and I still find the big struggle is fighting the urge to put too much stuff into it.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

See, I'm still trying to master the 'conventions', as it's only recently that I've begun to be able to make serious sense out of them. My jazz solos, as an example, are starting to sound coherent for the first time, ever. But that goes all out the window with my ambient stuff. I generally don't put too much emphasis on a melody, although there will be some subtle harmonic concepts. It's all about the feel and texture with ambient for me, and I still find the big struggle is fighting the urge to put too much stuff into it.

I wasn't implying that I had mastered those concepts by any means. I still work on stuff to this day. Always learning.

I just need an outlet that has fewer or even no “rules”.

RE; jazz soloing, that an entire long story for me. I intentionally stopped practicing those when I was a student in university. ( not 100% stopped, but almost)
to each there own path I guess.

 

[lordradish]

I wasn't implying that I had mastered those concepts by any means. I still work on stuff to this day. Always learning.

I just need an outlet that has fewer or even no “rules”.

RE; jazz soloing, that an entire long story for me. I intentionally stopped practicing those when I was a student in university. ( not 100% stopped, but almost)
to each there own path I guess.

I think there are 'rules' in some ways to the kind of ambient I like, but they're certainly not set in stone.
As to the jazz soloing, with me, it's been a lifelong goal, as, for the earlier part of my playing life, I just considered myself a rock guy who was a frustrated jazzer. I'm definitely not a rock guy anymore by any means - more an ambient frustrated jazzer if that makes any sense, which it probably doesn't.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

My band dropped this today.

 

[steubig]

My band dropped this today.

quite liking this. cool band.

but where's the ambient?

 

[monsterthompson]

 

[JES]

but where's the ambient?

Textural. It’s textural.

 

[ugly_bassplayer]

Textural. It’s textural.

He gets it.

 

[dukeorock]

My band dropped this today.

Very cool! Love the guitar intro on the 3rd tune. Has a Six Finger Satellite/ Jesus Lizard feel. Great work!

 

[JES]

this is the shortest YT demo I have ever seen. Congratulations.