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Lady Gaga strange bass

#63
Darkstrike said:
Bass Keytar?! :D
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Exactly, you could probably get Yamaha to make one :P

bx1.jpg


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#70
FromTheBassMent said:
None of the pop divas use real bass players... or real musicians of any kind for the most part. The singers are lip-synching, and the "musicians" are play-synching (or whatever they call it). Because the concerts are actually more about dance and presentation than music, they want zero margin for error in the actual songs. It does beg the question of why they even bother to hire people to jump around and pretend to be playing instruments at all (seems like they could cram more dancers onstage without them).

One exception at a Lady Ga-Ga show is that she'll do songs where she plays piano and sings with no backing, and she's doing this live. She's clearly a competent pianist and can be a very emotive singer. Plus, she actually writes all of her own songs.

Now don't get me wrong... I'd much rather go to a Pink concert. No, wait, I'd really much rather go to an Alison Krauss concert! I think that as a musician Lady Ga-Ga is okay. However, as I've posted here before, I think that as a commodity in our current consumer market she is an absolute genius. She has tapped into the Zeitgeist in a way that no one else is currently managing to do, and everything about her self-presentation is extraordinarily compelling (stream the video to 'Bad Romance' if you don't get what I'm talking about). If she is able to continue raising the bar, don't be surprised if she ends up being considered the Warhol of this generation; she seems to be navigating a similar confluence of music, art, costume, and "scene," all fully immersed in popular culture and unashamedly revelling in rank consumerism. She may not be making great music, but she may very well be on the cusp of making great pop art.

But to get back to the thread topic, that bass is just silly.
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+1

Lady GaGa isn't my cup of tea but I can appreciate her abilities as a performer. And PERFORMER is the operative word here. She's no different than Alice Cooper, KISS, GWAR, Zigue Zigue Sputnik and other performers of this ilk. Music is just one aspect of the whole package they're selling. If some people actually like the music of these performers, then great. But the bread and butter of artists these days isn't necessarily the music via record sales, but the show they can put on and draw an audience for ticket sales. I've witnessed the record retail industry pretty much collapse these past several decades with respect to music material... record sales are pathetic what with BitTorrents, YouTube download and Flash to MP3 conversion software being readily available and crushing the demand for the record market. Performers need to rely on their concerts to generate an income. And the "better" the performance/show, the more money they can draw... and shock, sex, raw-energy have always been high-dollar commodities.

As for the bass... if it generates enough interest then cool... there will be a sibling to the many "how to build a whamola" threads.
 
#71
Simo98 said:
As for the bass, its pretty cool. If it was stripped right down to a steinberger type bass with a midi keyboard on the top, id buy one! A lot of bassists double as keyboarists, I wonder if there is a market...
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I can't find the picture, but former Steve Vai bassist Philip Bynoe had almost exactly what you're describing, a 25-key keyboard attached to the top of a Hohner Steinberger-copy B2A headless bass for quickly switching from Electric Bass to Synth Bass parts. Given that this was in mid-to-late '90s, it was most likely a "real" keyboard and not a modern USB MIDI Keyboard Controller , which I imagine made things infinitely more difficult from a routing/FOH point-of-view.
 
#74
Her music is like a piece of installation artwork.....it has a transient nature that I'm sure she's OK with because it's about >>The Impact<<.... and boy does she deliver.

Watch the official video to Bad Romance. Like it or not...awful hard not to watch.



Her depth of musical knowledge and her understanding of "performance" will take her far and she will make many forget about Madonna.

She is like cabaret, Shock Theater, Annie Lennox and an opera rolled into one.

GaGa is in the room, my friends.
 
#75
Mark Wilson said:
Am i the only one where who likes her stuff?

Either way, it's probably a HEAVILY modded Big Al bass.
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Not at all - I paid an exorbitant sum to see her here in New Orleans recently and it was worth every penny. One of the best shows I've seen in my life, bar none.

That said... like several others, I would love to have a bass built on that concept, especially if it were a simple MIDI controller. Hammer with the left hand, play with the right - sure beats setting up an entire keyboard rig!
 

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