Carol Kaye's string changing method !

[lifeoffroadbass]

I don't know if yourhearing what I am but sounds like carol is holding down that jam

 

[MonkeyBass]

I don't know if yourhearing what I am but sounds like carol is holding down that jam

Yeah she is. That still doesn't change the fact that buying a new bass when you need a string change is ridiculous.

 

[gfen]

Yeah she is. That still doesn't change the fact that buying a new bass when you need a string change is ridiculous.

To quote Ferris Bueller, "if you have the means I highly recommend [it]."

None of us understand because none of us operate on her level. I don't mean her talent, her hits, or her income.. Simply her level of operations. She had a job, and the bass was simply a tool. When it was used up, she got another one.

Does it seem utterly ridiculous to us to buy a new insturment when the strings are used up? Sure, but obviously it didn't to her or her finances. She made her choice, and so be it.

The lesson we should take out of this is that you don't need an expensive, exotic monster of a bass to make music, you simply need competent tools.

 

[Slevage]

Ha! Nope. I was in construction. When my meter was stolen I bought a new one.

My apologies for getting way off topic everyone. I'll bow out and let the flock of Kaye followers have their way with the rest of it.

Carry on.

You can change the batteries in a multi meter? Now you tell me--- I'm on my 7th Fluke.

 

[SasquatchDude]

I ran out of trimmer line while mowing the lawn the other day... Didn't have time to grab another spool from the garage, so I had to drive to Home Depot to get a new weed wacker.

 

[Zoot H Rollo]

i ran out of satori - gonna check out and start over.

next universe!

hopefully pre-cbs.

 

[Fat Steve]

I think the reason people rip on Carol is because she's made outrageous claims (I've read somewhere that the artists and engineers that were on certain recordings she claims to have been on have no recollection of her being there), she says outrageous things (the whole people-don't-teach-musicality thing), she gets defensive when questioned, etc. The point is, she's a controversial figure so she sort of invites criticism. I personally find it absolutely ridiculous that someone who claims to be this amazing bass player can't be bothered with changing her strings. So, yeah, she deserves to be ridiculed for that. If I didn't know how to change strings, could only play with a pick and ripped on people who could play different ways, claimed I played on a bunch of famous songs that no one remembers me playing on, flew off the handle at the slightest criticism etc... I would be inviting a backlash and criticism too.
Just my 2 cents.

The bolded part is hard for me to wrap my head around. Why should she be ridiculed about not wanting to change her bass strings? Do you ridicule people that take their bass to a tech to get a string change and tune up? Do you ridicule drivers that take their cars to the shop to get the oil changed? Do you ridicule people that eat at restaurants instead of making their own food? What about people that hire painters to paint their homes? Clearly anyone should be able to paint their own homes.

My point is this: convenience has value, as does time. Ridiculing people for maximizing that value comes off as petty, and really does nothing to elevate the level of discourse within the discussion.

I wonder if Les Claypool changes his own strings.

 

[Doctor Hugocat]

I don't know if yourhearing what I am but sounds like carol is holding down that jam

I agree: and there's something mind-blowing for me about watching an elderly lady do it. Even though I know who she is, the effect is still just SO damn cool

 

[I am Soma]

May I offer up this tasty jam....

eek...i liked nothing about this...at all. personal preference of course.

 

[Inertialsky]

The funniest part of that video is at the very end...

The guy in the Zon booth looking down at the ground thinking "S**t, how the hell am I supposed to follow that??"

 

[two fingers]

You can change the batteries in a multi meter? Now you tell me--- I'm on my 7th Fluke.

I've usually had Fluke 87 meters. But I have never had one long enough for anything to go wrong with it. Luckily I have worked for companies with tool replacement policies if you leave your stuff in their gang box. Mine always got stolen within a year or so. As long as they kept replacing them I kept buying them.

 

[two fingers]

No one implying that she was a "god". But you're ignoring a key component in your Good Electrician analogy. Which is this....CK (along with some others) was an innovator, at a time when the sounds of electric bass, as applied in the recording industry, were still in development. She was there, she did it, and we weren't. She did more than just "a job". She lent a hand in creating a genre.

I'm sure you are a solid electrician. When you apply your skills to revolutionize the industry, you will deserve the commensurate accolades for your endeavors. Just like Carol does.

You missed the point. I am not an innovator in electrical work. I am just a schmuck with enough skills to follow the print and bring it to life. Kaye is just a person with enough skills to play a bass line given a "blue print". She wasn't an innovator in my view. Nothing she did was outside the box of what anyone else who was a pro bass player was doing at the time. She didn't "take bass to the next level" like Stanley, Jaco or any of those guys. But, then again, I'm a bigger fan of her work than theirs. I just like a good meat and potatoes bass line. That's what she played. But she didn't turn the bass world on its collective ear. Guys in the 70s weren't clamoring to get her autograph or anything. She just played the bass like a bass player (or like guitar player plays the bass ). Again, I understand the history. She's part of it. But her playing, in and of itself, was nothing ground breaking. It was just good solid melodic bass lines.

 

[crucislancer]

I have always admired Carol Kaye as a musician, but never liked her "my way or the highway" attitude to playing the bass. I find the anecdote about buying a new bass when the strings died to be pretty funny, though. Maybe it was a joke.

There was a similar anecdote about John Entwistle, he's said in the past that (and bear with me here as I don't recall the exact quote) he went through a number of Danelectro basses because he kept breaking the strings and they didn't have replacements, so he would have to buy a new bass each time. I think when they were recording "My Generation", but like I said I don't recall the exact quote.

 

[trothwell]

Another consideration is how long it takes for the strings to break in. Carol has said (somewhere) that her strings at that time were Fender medium-gauge flatwounds. If the Fender flats of the 1960s were at all similar to the Fender flats of today, it might take a day, and several hours of playing, before they sound good enough to record with. For someone who was working pretty much constantly when she wasn't asleep (her stories talk about being effectively unable to turn down sessions, when asked to play), saving a day of downtime would have been essential.

And for all I know, maybe saving 10 minutes of downtime was actually important to her too. As much as I might dream about how cool it would have been to have played on those sessions, it actually sounds quite demanding.

 

[SirMjac28]

She's a hoot. Honestly, I think she was just in the right place at the right time. Sure, she was good, but not amazing. Her lines were fine. I like them. But most players could have sat in that chair and produced something equally as good. Her personality is one I would like to have beer with though. I think she's more bark than bite but I'm one of the few people on Earth who actually likes a good blowhard windbag as long as he/she doesn't get angry.


As for changing basses mid session, gimme a break. People act as though studio conditions are a fragile little flower than can be destroyed if the slightest little tiny thing changes. Never mind that they usually have enough equipment in there, and the world's best trained operators, so that you can play tuba on any recording and make it sound exactly like Geddy. Lots of engineers from back then talk about having trunks full of mics and just grabbing whatever they saw first for vocals, guitar, whatever. Fragile little flowers they were not. They used whatever regular gear was laying around. It took a few decades before we got to the point where we "needed" to spend a million+ dollars stocking a studio with things that nobody will ever be able to tell the difference in using or not. These days you "can't" use THAT mic for BASS and you CAN't use THAT compressor for vocals. Oy. (sigh) Back then they made amazing recordings and stuck a 57 in front of a singer and ran it to a reverb unit that most engineers would look down their noses at today.

Sorry. End of off-topic rant.

+10000 Amen

 

[spaz21387]

I like that method it gives me an excuse to buy a new musicman every 3-4 months haha

 

[petrus61]

I solved this problem by putting Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Flats on all my basses. The oldest set is 8 years and counting.

As to Carol, she's an amazing bass player. I don't know her personally, so I can't comment on anything else...and in fact, if I did know her, I wouldn't comment.

Apparently, she solved the problem by putting TI's on her Ibanez's.

 

[BeardedFrog]

I once knew someone who claimed he moved into a new house to avoid doing the dishes.

 

[Mastermold]

Just sped through this thread. CK's story is pretty funny. Also funny how TB'er find so many ways to argue.

 

[Inertialsky]

It was a little before my time so I don't feel completely stupid asking this..

Did Fender basses come stock with flatwounds back then?

The very first thing I've always done after getting a new bass was to throw out the factory strings!