Let's spread some musical misinformation

[mrjim123]

Ever wonder what happened to all of the old wire that was used to transmit Morse code, i.e., telegraph wire? It has been recycled to make guitar strings!

Some of the wire still contained dots and dashes. The dots were extracted and are used to make guitar fret markers. To date, no use has been found for the dashes, and they remain locked in a dash vault in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

 

[biguglyman]

"Morse Code" is just another way of talking about the lyrics in Spock's Beard and Transatlantic music.

 

[PillO]

Morse code is how drummers communicate with each other. Fills are how they send messages to drummers in the audience during a performance. Peter Criss was famously fired from Kiss after he sent a message during a show complaining of torture and an unequal share of the money. Neil Peart used his fills for puns and dad jokes.

 

[1bassleft]

If you were alive in the 70s you were issued a CB radio with every guitar or drum you bought. Then you could talk to all your good buddies in the band without getting together to practice. You just had to learn to play with one hand on the mic.

PillO mentioned the gaffer-tape workaround but also, with the "talk" button taped down, I found another workaround back in the day. Instead of saying "over" at the end of every sentence, I had a Tandy/Radio Shack curled jack lead plugged into my Hondo bass. I only had to move slightly and the loud "KIRSSCH" noise indicated that I had finished speaking.

Ever wonder what happened to all of the old wire that was used to transmit Morse code, i.e., telegraph wire? It has been recycled to make guitar strings!

Some of the wire still contained dots and dashes. The dots were extracted and are used to make guitar fret markers. To date, no use has been found for the dashes, and they remain locked in a dash vault in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Due to demand, Fender started paying over the odds for those Morse dots. Crafty Gibson and Rickenbacker bought up a stock of dashes for next to nothing and layered them to make block fret markers. This explains why Gibsons and Rickenbackers are so cheap yet Gibson had such large profit margins they could not fail as a business.

 

[Jay2U]

Ever wonder what happened to all of the old wire that was used to transmit Morse code, i.e., telegraph wire? It has been recycled to make guitar strings!

Some of the wire still contained dots and dashes. The dots were extracted and are used to make guitar fret markers. To date, no use has been found for the dashes, and they remain locked in a dash vault in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

It works the other way round as well. Due to the Covid crisis many musicians sell their strings to companies that recycle them as fence wire. Flatwounds are most wanted.

 

[PillO]

 

[Jay2U]

View attachment 4188511

When I was a beginner (even more beginner than I'm now), I dreamed about a bass strung like this.

 

[Jay2U]

This is the Shaolin way of learning to master the bass.

 

[1bassleft]

In the UK, this is also a home remedy for curing neck dive. After a few months of playing 12-bar and plodding rock classics never getting past the 5th fret, a sufficient amount of hefty rosewood has been gouged out to balance the bass nicely.

Dire Straits bassist John Illsley was constantly changing his bass to avoid neck dive (not realizing that he was a distant relative of Richard III and this was the cause of the problem) until he solved it with the barbed wire string method. It was his suggestion to include "maybe get a blister on your little finger, maybe get a blister on your thumb" in the lyrics of Money for Nothing.

 

[Mr_Moo]

Ozzy Osbourne has a beautiful speaking voice and still enters into philosophical discussions. His stuttering talking and demented behaviour is all an act to save him from conversations with fans.

When I was studying philosophy in the late 80s, Ozzy gave a series of guest lectures on the links between the Empiricists and Jungian ideation.

 

[Mr_Moo]

Earth isn't a cube. Time is a cube.

I thought time was a jet plane.

 

[Deeper Texan]

I thought time was a jet plane.

That is correct, in fact, when John Denver wrote "Leaving on a Jet Plane" he was referencing time travel. (so many "times" I let you down, so many "times" I played around) The I'll wear your wedding ring reference, was a nod to the infinite circle time represents.

He carried that theme over into Rocky Mountain High, when he wrote, " He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year"

 

[dougjwray]

Justin Bieber is the Kurt Cobain of the current generation.

Jimi Hendrix was the Pat Boone of his generation

Jimi took guitar lessons from Pat Boone one summer when he attended a Bible camp where Boone was a counselor.
He somewhat enjoyed "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean", "Hot Cross Buns" and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", but when they got to the E7#9 chord, Jimi envisioned his destiny, scaled the 15-foot fence, evaded the guards in their towers and ran away. (He stopped first at the girls' cabin to bring four young ladies with him.)
When the camp found out, Pat was fired. He soon found work as a blackjack dealer in Atlantic City.

 

[Mr_Moo]

In 2021 some band names will expire. If they don't pay the elongation fee in time, they'll cease to exist and their music will be removed from stores and media. It'll even be illegal to listen to their music.

Indeed.

 

[mrjim123]

I thought time was a jet plane.

Yeah, but while you can leave on a plane you can't leave on time. Hey, wait a minute, you CAN leave on time. I guess you're right!

 

[1bassleft]

mrjim, you 'can' leave on time on a jet plane but - with the budget airlines of UK and Ireland - it involves what Douglas Adams called Bistromathics. Sitting on your arse in a plastic seat 8ft above the tarmac for 20 (non-smoking) minutes before taking off on a 2.5hr journey that the airline calls a 3hr 15min flight all results in a 'punctual' flight. It's a subset of time travel. For nicotine addicts, it seems like >7hrs.

By the same token, I've taken to wearing a navy blue blazer and tie at gigs. When the drummer clicks the sticks four times, I start playing when I feel like it, get drinks sorted every few minutes and hit that final note some time after the applause has petered out and the bar has closed.

 

[PillO]

Yeah, but while you can leave on a plane you can't leave on time. Hey, wait a minute, you CAN leave on time. I guess you're right!

Sounds like someone missed their flight today...

 

[PillO]

I listened to a Kirk Hammet guitar solo and he did not use a wah-wah.

 

[1bassleft]

Pushing musical misinformation into bare-faced-lie territory there, PillO

 

[StephenM]

scales on a bass can get stuck between your teeth