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Do You Play a Fender Because It's Expected?

#81
Misterwogan said:
Clearly, you have the presence and charisma to do just that. A lot don't - and have to make do with what gifts they do have. If any, of course.
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Really doesn't have anything to do with charisma (although charisma is a good thing for a musician playing live to have); it has more with the general public just doesn't care as much as some musicians think about the image being portrayed by their instrument choices.
 
#83
LiquidMidnight said:
Really doesn't have anything to do with charisma (although charisma is a good thing for a musician playing live to have); it has more with the general public just doesn't care as much as some musicians think about the image being portrayed by their instrument choices.
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You're right. I would go further and say that Joe Public does not give a flying f**k about instrument choices.

But to convince the manager or whoever holds the purse strings of that fact, you need - yes, presence and charisma - and not necessarily musically.

But, if you win that argument - then you have control.
 
#85
Scott in Dallas said:
When you're Paul McCartney, you can tell the engineer what to do because you're the product
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The point being, no, not in 1962/63 - the producer doubtless told the engineer what to do, and the then Mr McCartney clearly played the lines on his Hofner bass.

I have always wondered about this - in the UK in the 60s people were using all sorts of basses in pop music of the time such as EB2s, for instance. Some bands used Fender Precisions, and notably The Shadows - it is possible that there was a desire to create a unique band sound which differentiated the band from the rest. Fenders seemed more common in US music of the time.

I take your point on jingles and commercials - however many of the ones I hear have 'modern' sounding bass...........even to the point of crazy effects etc - would you neccessarily use a Fender for that?

The vintage Fender sound seems to me to pervade modern pop music, which seems to be trying regularly to emulate 60s sounds (and in the case of British ones is somewhat inaccurate for the reasons mentioned above).
 
#86
drTSTingray said:
The point being, no, not in 1962/63 - the producer doubtless told the engineer what to do, and the then Mr McCartney clearly played the lines on his Hofner bass
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Well according to George Martin (the producer) in his later memoirs - he was clueless technically, and so they developed process and technique through trial and error - mainly error. Many of the recording and mixing techniques that we know today resulted from frustration and failure - not the producer's ability to drive the process - because there was little process.
 
#88
I showed up once for a recording session and the producer told me that i had to use a P bass if i wanted to be on his record...so I played the fender...when the producer left the booth...the engineer and I re-recorded the track using my original bass...they never knew the difference...

I was told that if i wanted to work in Nashville i better own a P bass! lol
 
#90
Misterwogan said:
I was watching Stu Hamm on a video recently where he told the story of him turning up at a studio to do a recording. He brought his Alembic along. The producer saw the Alembic and said "Great looking bass, I'm sure it sounds great too - but can you go home and bring a P-Bass because that will at least look the part".
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I got a lot of frowns back in the gigging days when all I had was my Rick 4001. C&W gigs paid well where I was (Austin TX) but I had trouble attracting interest partly because of the Rick. There were many times I was outright asked to play a Fender only because, well, they just wanted a Fender.

If I were still gigging for money, I'd always be dragging a fretted Jazz bass with me regardless of whatever else I brought. They write the checks, so if they wanted a Fender, well, I'd play a Fender.

If it were a long-term band situation, I'd only ever drag my Bunny and the L2K along. Both sound so much better than a Precision or Jazz by a couple orders of magnitude. I could pretty quickly convince them a P or J wasn't required and, wow I can actually hear you!...

So it depends on who's got the money, how much, and what kind of a gig it is. But if I were a professional, I'd lean towards being easy to work with and doing what my bosses want. And that'd include playing a Fender if I had to....

LS
 
#91
Scott in Dallas said:
For a studio musician, time is of the essence. The engineer is being paid to get a track down as quickly as possible, and telling a bass player to bring a standard bass is a courtesy that he doesn't have to extend. It has nothing to do with lazy, it has to do with time. One of the first pieces of advice a pro gives to a young session player is to always bring a couple of Fender basses to a session in case you're asked to use it, one with flats, one with rounds, etc.

I know you're speaking hypothetically, and we're just throwing things around, but if a session player decides to give the engineer crap, there are a thousand guys who will show up with the right gear, and he's going to work with those guys instead. It's less time for them to bring in someone else than to set up the board for that Wal bass on that orange juice commercial track.

All of this information I'm relaying is based on a commercial music education over 20 years ago. A smart session player will always have a Fender bass with him, but it's probably not as necessary as it may have been back in the day.
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In that case, i'm glad i'm not a session player because that seem to suck hard.

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Something just occured to me, if those session engineers can't be bothered to touch those EQ, what do they do if the bassist does not have the right kind of fender type bass?

I mean, with all the difference between what year it was made, where it was made, what kind of string is on it, how is it played, if all the part are original or not; I mean, not all fender Precision sound exactly the same.

Personally, I think the obligation to see the Fender logo in the bassist hand exist only to reassure some people. Like saying the red car is faster than the blue car, because its red.
 
#92
No, when I started playing in 1974 it was pretty much Gibson or Fender and I went with a 69 Jazz bass.

A few years later I got a 73 P Bass and have used it as my only bass.. well until I joined Talkbass. Now I own 10 basses and only two of them are Fenders including the old P Bass..

The Fenders are still my main gigging basses for how they sound and play.

To each his/her own.
 
#93
MrPierre said:
In that case, i'm glad i'm not a session player because that seem to suck hard.

Something just occured to me, if those session engineers can't be bothered to touch those EQ, what do they do if the bassist does not have the right kind of fender type bass?
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It's not that they can't be bothered - it's to do with time and money.

A studio production plan will budget for a fixed amount of time for recording and mixing. The time allocated to these activities will be based upon what they've done before - standards.

If - the client wants to pay for additional time to optimise the recording of non-standard instruments, then fine. If not, then then engineer will have to make a judgement as to whether he can use the performer or not.
 
#94
Yeah, I understand the time/money concept.

What I was trying to say (english isn't my native language sorry) is that the engineer will have to adjust the EQ anyway because with all the possibilities, each Fender bass will sound a little (and maybe a lot) different than the next.

I understand that some brand will sound nothing like a fender P but rejecting a player just because of a logo on the neck of his bass is plainly stupid.

We are not in the seventies anymore, we don't have to live by some 40 years old studio-rule just because "that the way it was always done".
 
#98
drTSTingray said:
Are you suggesting there are studio engineers who are unable to record adequately, say a Musicman, a Warwick, an Alembic, a Lakland, a Sadowsky etc etc? All of these are capable of achieving a 'generic' sound as well as any Fender bass in skilled hands. They generally can, of course do a lot more. The implication is:-

The engineer is limited in skill
They employ bass players who are not skilled
The engineer is lazy

Or are we saying people have preconceived ideas of what a bass track should sound like AND the instrument to achieve it? In response to this, I think we can all name at least 10 famous players, including the most famous, who have moulded and influenced much of the sound of pop music (eg McCartney, Wymann) who have rarely been near a Fender bass or are certainly not known extensively for it.
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When someone talks about a particular scenario, taking it to its most illogical extreme is very ill-advised. Also, you and I ain't McCartney or Wyman, and this isn't 1963.
 
#99
I play a Fender because it is what I WANT to play. Yeah, I hear about the "modern" tones. And you know what? In fifty years, you're still going to be listening to music made with Fender basses.
 

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