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Jaco pastorius bass noise

#25
EddieG said:
Utter nonsense.

Boss introduced the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble in 1976, and the CE-2 in 1979. Clearly, Jaco was still alive.

And if you listen to some of his performances, like his Invalid Link Removed, it is blatantly obvious that Jaco is using chorus on his bass.

Thanks for playing.;)
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Well - it's not me - that was actually what Jaco was saying - so it seems a bit silly to deny the man himself!! :eek:

But you carry on and say what you like - I'll believe Jaco! :p

Read that Interview I linked to...!
 
#27
JohnDavisNYC said:
the chorus on jaco from that era is most likely a very short modulated delay coming from one of the MXR digital delay lines... i would posit that one is for looping, and the other is for chorus/flange type sounds.

john
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Yes we know that Jaco had an MXR delay unit that Pat Metheny gave him - but he never had any small floor pedals.

Jaco' philosophy is quite clear from all his interviews!
 
#28
Bruce Lindfield said:
But you carry on and say what you like - I'll believe Jaco! :p
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So you are going with: believe what someone said rather than what you are seeing and hearing? ; } ...Very well. Jaco said lots of stuff at different periods of his career, and indeed, things change.

Yeah, I've watched the DVD quite a few times and actually used to have that MXR delay as well as their harmonizer in my electric sax rig. You could pull off a lot of neat things with it including of course chorus, flanging, etc. It cost a fortune back then (unless you were comparing to the Lexicon PCM41 I got later) and had less memory fully expanded than the very cheapest ANYTHING you can buy today ; } ...I gave it to a kid who was just starting out years later when I began to outfit a midi studio with newer, higher-spec digital stuff.
 
#29
JimmyM said:
That isn't what I've heard. I've heard that engineers would say Jaco's technique was so dead-on that he didn't need compression.
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I'm a Jaco fan, too. But let's not go overboard :smug:

Do you honestly believe that his bass was recorded without any compression at all? Honestly? If you've ever been in a studio, you know this can't be true.

And no matter how good your technique is, you're never going to have natural harmonics, pinched harmonics, lightly plucked notes, and heavily plucked notes all being exactly the same volume without at least some compression.

None of this detracts from Jaco's skills/chops/inventiveness.
 
#30
EddieG said:
And if you listen to some of his performances, like his Invalid Link Removed, it is blatantly obvious that Jaco is using chorus on his bass.
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bongomania said:
At the beginning of that video it even shows him twiddling the knobs on the MXR to shape the effect.
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Exactly.

Jools4001 said:
The 'chorus' effect you hear on Jaco's studio tracks is chorus in it's truest sense. Namely that Jaco doubled his own lines and consequently had minute differences in timing and intonation.
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That's a good point. The live stuff is different, however.
 
#31
 
#32
Live: MXR Flanger/Doubler, an MXR Digital Delay, the Fuzz in his Acoustic 360.

Studio: Whatever and on the Joni Mitchell Mingus album a Roland JC-120 Chorus Guitar amp. Gave that distorted burp he liked.

These debates can get silly.:) Why argue when there are numerous photos showing it.

If you don't sound like him using exactly his gear that's really understandable. You are a different person with different touch.

If you can sound just like him with a Whammo Water Slide then do it.

If you want to sound just like him you have other questions to ask yourself besides what gear to use.
 
#34
Nobody's mentioned the fact that he also got a certain amount of buzzing from the Rotosounds grinding against the epoxied fingerboard of his fretless (very low action). (He wasn't averse to producing some of that kind of noise.)
 
#35
dougjwray said:
Nobody's mentioned the fact that he also got a certain amount of buzzing from the Rotosounds grinding against the epoxied fingerboard of his fretless (very low action). (He wasn't averse to producing some of that kind of noise.)
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sorry but since thats the second time ive herd this in this thread ive gotta call on this one

jaco diddnt have very low action, rather he had quite high action as illustrated starting at 1:12


theres also an interview floating around somewhere where he says to like higher action because you get more fundamental tone
 
#36
LanEvo said:
I'm a Jaco fan, too. But let's not go overboard :smug:

Do you honestly believe that his bass was recorded without any compression at all? Honestly? If you've ever been in a studio, you know this can't be true.

And no matter how good your technique is, you're never going to have natural harmonics, pinched harmonics, lightly plucked notes, and heavily plucked notes all being exactly the same volume without at least some compression.

None of this detracts from Jaco's skills/chops/inventiveness.
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Didn't say it did. I'm just correcting the thing you said about lots of compression being used. Jaco didn't need lots of compression. The engineer that tracked the "Heavy Weather" album said in BP a year ago that his technique was so flawless and even that all he needed was light limiting for safety's sake, otherwise it was all Jaco. I can't say for sure that he NEVER used compression, but I certainly don't hear a whole bunch of compression in anything he did, and certainly not to the levels that you were implying. And I never heard of him using it in his live rig.
 
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#37
i don't think there is very much, if any compression on most recorded jaco i've heard...

certainly the only thing i hear going on on his debut solo record is a REALLY well maintained and aligned tape machine being hit a little hard... probably a studer a80 at 15ips with dolby A... that record sounds SO clean, but has a nice 'transformer-y' sound to it...

i can't find anywhere what sort of gear was used...

john
 
#38
Bruce Lindfield said:
Well - it's not me - that was actually what Jaco was saying - so it seems a bit silly to deny the man himself!! :eek:

But you carry on and say what you like - I'll believe Jaco! :p

Read that Interview I linked to...!
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Bruce, Jaco was famous for exaggerating and fabricating all kinds of tall tales to aggrandize himself, and the "tone" of his intent is clearly visible (to me at least) in that interview. It was important to him to tell the story of how he was the first to play fretless (which we know isn't true) and the only one to play in tune (debatable), and how he never uses any technology/equipment, it's just his masterful fingers vibrating directly through some wood straight into the mixer, which again is clearly not 100% true all the time. Jaco was a giant and a master, no question there, but he was also a liar and an exaggerator when it suited him.

You said chorus effects didn't exist until after he died, which was wrong. A video was posted showing him using a digital chorus effect, and still you say you believe what Jaco said in that interview is the whole unaltered truth.
 
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#40
markjazzbassist said:
did anyone else find it frightening in that one clip that jaco threw his bass up and balanced it on his hand. :eek:

yikes
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Haha! I was waiting for him to get cracked in the head by it on the way down lol.. My first thought when his face popped on the screen, sweaty and puffy with a sh.t eating grin... was that he was high as a kite. I don't know my Jaco history too well, but the video says '84, which has to be close to his death? Anyway, yeah... high as a kite. The crowd loves it though! heh..:smug::hmm:

*Go to 1:15 in the video and pause*
 

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