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Why do I even bother?

#62
Strict Alternation, index-middle-index-middle, etc

Raking, raking either finger down the strings, like playing rest strokes basically, so if you play a major arpeggio from the 5th down to root you play just two finger strokes, rather than three. two strokes on the top string to play the 5th and 3rd, then you 'rake' the finger through the string to play the root on the string below.
 
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#63
Howard K said:
How can you honestly say that 'a technique' is bad? Tools for the tool box surely? We are talking about making music here aren't we? If people didnt do things differently it'd be pretty damned boring, would it not?

As for 'not wanting to brag' you did a pretty good job!

You starting this thread is a joke right?
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A technique is bad if the result is your playing is the poorer for it. Hey, if you think you can rake and play as well as anyone out there, then go for it. But from what I've seen, the people who can play well raking when they should be SA'ing are few and far between.

As for the bragging, everyone who brags about themselves adds in "not wanting to brag" as a way of trying not to make themselves look like a blowhard, which I may very well be. But as the old saying goes, it ain't bragging if you can back it up. I don't ever brag about myself as being the greatest bassist who ever lived, but I do brag about myself as knowing my stuff, and I can back it up in spades.

And no, this thread wasn't started as a joke. It was started because of all the nimrods who, when trying to discuss something seriously, chime in with the most inane crap they can think of, or the people who ask for advice, get the advice, then reject it because it's too much like work. Well if you didn't want to know the answer, why did you ask? However, I will agree that it's kind of turned into a joke now, and a darn funny one at that, and the sillier it gets, the more I enjoy it. If that makes me a bad person, then I'm a bad person.
 
#64
Actually, and for the record, I try to use SA as much as possible. I find it yields better results for me once I put in the effort to actually learn something properly. However, dissmissing raking as a 'bad technique' just seems pointless and bloody minded to me. It's a tool, it has a different sound to SA, surely it's just as valid on that basis?

As for the bragging, everyone who brags about themselves adds in "not wanting to brag" as a way of trying not to make themselves look like a blowhard, which I may very well be. But as the old saying goes, it ain't bragging if you can back it up. I don't ever brag about myself as being the greatest bassist who ever lived, but I do brag about myself as knowing my stuff, and I can back it up in spades.
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Whether you can back it up or not, it's still crass. Why bother? Do you need to back up your point of view with your achievements? I just dont think it's neccessary, or helps in any way.

..and that old saying is crap, it's still bragging whether you can back it up or not.

If I learn something from someone, on TB or otherwise, the fact that they happen to play with 'someone great' doesnt make the lesson any more valid.
Perhaps I'll sit up and listen a bit closer if I know someone is very experienced, but equally I'll turn right off if they harp on at me about how great they are. Put it this way, of the all fantastic musicians I've had the fortune to meet, most of which have been in a learning capacity, none have ever boasted about any aspect of their playing.

TB is great because of the amazing pros that use it and their, very often, invaliable advice, but I'd rather go without any advice if it comes wrapped up in a whole load of ego. I'm definitely NOT saying that's you btw, I'm just saying :)
 
#66
JimmyM said:
However, Brad, I do have to apologize to you. You have shown in the past that you do have a good sense of humor, and I shouldn't have said you didn't.
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No problem, Jimmy. Everyone has buttons (including me) and apparently I inadvertently pushed one.

On the SA vs. raking, I do both indiscriminately, which ever one gets me from point A to B with the desired results. Sometimes I rake descending, sometimes I don't. It's all about the desired results and how I feel I can get them. Bottom line, IMO it's about touch. I'm all about that.


And I've been playing over 30 years so I must really be right;)
Score 15 points for me.
:hyper:


But I don't do this for a living so how serious could I be about my instrument? Deduct 4 points.
:(

This is hard. No it isn't.
:hmm:

On the touch tip, I did a rehearsal last week, took a little rig and a bass. During the rehearsal the drummer and keyboardist asked how I was getting my bass to sound like a fretless.

"That's the way I'm playing it". Might've sounded like a smartassed answer so I expanded on it.

Trust me , I understand the frustration you're talking about but I don't let it get me down. Occassionally I'll offer advice when people are asking which compressor they need to buy to even up their sound when they go back and forth between slap and fingerstyle. Invariably someone will get upset when I suggest that none is needed, that they can control it with their hands, with practice. That then invariably turns into me making a blanket condemnation of compressions (it isn't), then when they find out that I don't use effects either, a blanket condemnation of any device that comes between the bass and the amp (it isn't). People read what they want to read and see what they want to see sometimes. Oh well, just trying to help.

Just remember, the next time you're trying to help, if it's met with resistance or whatever, just shrug it off and remember, you tried... and that's all you can do. The cool thing is that I get pms all the time from folks who didn't balk in those threads, tried what I mentioned and were pleased with the results.


Sometimes raking is just an easier way to descend and if you really work on it, sonically it's the same... at least for me. Along with really getting your muting together, if it works, it works. Now someone may disagree with that for THEMSELVES, which of course is cool. For ME, this is what works.

Back on the chicks thing... if picking them up really was an issue, I think it's a heck of a lot easier to just get a good enough job so you can buy or lease an extremely nice car, nice enough that it might somehow overcome whatever physical or emotional defects one has. I've seen a lot of older Ferraris on eBay for well under $50k.
 
#67
There was an interview with Marcus Miller in the last issue of UK Bass Guitar magazine that is relevant to this debate, talking about how there are two types of people, those who see music as a sport and those who se it as saying something - here's the relevant part :

"...it's really about using the technique to say something and a lot of guys never really make it up to that level. Everything they do, you can feel it's about the physicality of playing an instrument.

If you were a carpenter, you could bring in your toolbox and empty it out and say :"Look at my tools man,nice huh??"

You might think that's cool, but you would see the other guy say "Look at the house I built" and you don't even care about his tools!!

You might enjoy seeing him build the house up, but there has to be a house at the end."

:)
 
#70
JimmyM said:
I sit here today completely frustrated and bewildered. When I was a kid starting out 30 years ago, I would have killed for a resource like this. There was no way you could communicate with great players worldwide and ask questions and get answers back instantaneously. I thought this would be a place where top-flight players and working pros could pass a little of that knowledge along to others and maybe learn a little something new in the process, as even great players still have lots to learn.

I was wrong. Yeah, there are some people on here who really have a desire to learn and they ask good questions and take the answers they get to heart. But there are a ton of people on here who seem to want everyone to reinforce their bad habits, extoll the virtues of their poor technique, and tell them that they can be great musicians without putting any real work into it.

Every single day on here I see things that just boggle my mind. I see great players making suggestions and offering advice in the spirit of helping others, and I see people saying how this advice really helped them, and that's cool. And then I see inexperienced players arguing with them and telling them they're wrong. And when you try to explain why certain things are the way they are, or give them real world examples that proves the point you're making, you get replies like "If you're so good, where's all your hit records?" or "The bassist from so-and-so doesn't do that and he's a big star." And it's not high school kids either. It's often adults in their 20's and 30's who should know better.

I cannot understand this for the life of me. If all you want is reinforcement of your bad habits, then why do you even ask? I am a working pro bassist with a lot of credentials working with many top-shelf acts. There are quite a few others as well. I am also a beginning double bassist with a lot to learn about it. But when I ask a question to someone like Ken Smith or Paul Warburton on the DB side of Talkbass, I ask it and then I shut my mouth and listen to the answers. If I don't understand something I will ask for clarification, but I would never dream of questioning what they tell me, because I know they've been at it for a lot of years and they know their stuff and I don't. Yet on this side, beginners are always questioning the experienced players like they don't know what they're talking about and stating ignorance as fact, even when there is overwhelming evidence against it.

It completely amazes me. But on the bright side, they ARE clearing a path for players like me to take gigs they might have gotten had they not been so hard-headed, so I and the other working pros on here would like to thank you for not getting any better.
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Yes, I know, necro-thread and all that. But after a some recent exchanges I was about to start a new thread on the same subject but thought I would do a search first. Search worked and this came up.
So thank you @JimmyM , I couldn't have put it better myself. You said everything I wanted to say but, as I'm still a bit pi$$ed about it, my opening post might not have been so eloquently put.
 
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#71
SteveCS said:
Yes, I know, necro-thread and all that. But after a some recent exchanges I was about to start a new thread on the same subject but thought I would do a search first. Search worked and this came up.
So thank you @JimmyM , I couldn't have put it better myself. You said everything I wanted to say but, as I'm still a bit pi$$ed about it, my opening post might not have been so eloquently put.
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LOL...well thanks for bringing up this little stroll down memory lane, Steve! And I still share your frustration 14 years later because I still see a lot of the same stuff I've always seen on here. It's a little better, though...at least I've figured out how to discern the serious ones from the ones who aren't and just want to be disruptive.

I still say if most of us are being honest, though, we got into it for the girls :D
 
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#72
JimmyM said:
LOL...well thanks for bringing up this little stroll down memory lane, Steve! And I still share your frustration 14 years later because I still see a lot of the same stuff I've always seen on here. It's a little better, though...at least I've figured out how to discern the serious ones from the ones who aren't and just want to be disruptive.

I still say if most of us are being honest, though, we got into it for the girls :D
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May well be true!! My realisation, after 35 years playing bass, is that there are more bountiful strategies available...

What's funny is my exchanges ended up with the same discussion on raking vs alternate fingering. Then a slew of excuses why every piece of objective advice was not the solution to the problem. At every turn it was "thanks, but...". It was string spacing, neck radius, setup, string type, pickup position, you name it. Anything but the facts, which were pointed out by many other contributors to the discussion. Arrgghh!
 
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#75
In 1969 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book that became famous (at least at the time) called: On Death And Dying. In it she related the 5 steps of dying, Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Acceptance, Death.
After a 36 year career as a teacher I can tell you that those 5 steps are how people deal with not only death, but all kinds of changes... learning included.
What Jimmy is seeing is the affect of that human resistance to change/learning. Those that don't understand it will learn slower (or not at all). Those that can put the tendency aside learn faster. But just because someone is in the 'Denial' or 'Bargaining' phase of their learning does not mean they won't complete the path and know something.
 
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#77
I've always appreciated @JimmyM 's thoughts and experience.

Consider the reality of online interactions: The average "click -through" rate of an ad is around 2%
I would expect rate of actual "engagement" with online content (like your advice in this forums) to be similar.
Around here It's actually noticeably higher: TB really does have more seekers of real wisdom than most places online.

duty_calls.png


The artificial urge to be right /argue online is a real thing people suffer from.
I realized my own tendency to do so several years back and do my best to avoid it:
I post what I think is the truth, and do my best to state it clearly and back it up with logic/experience.
If someone chooses to argue that's their thing, not mine. I try to only follow up if someone gets my words wrong.

If I ever met Jimmy M and he turned not to be a dwarfed James Brown in a Devo hat, I would be sorely disappointed.
 
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#79
I haven't been on here regularly in awhile and I have say it was equally nice and frustrating to see the exact same arguments being poorly argued by amateurs while the experienced and knowledgeable players bang their heads against a wall.

I have a theory that most players are hobbyists and people don't like being to told (even if they asked) how to do their hobby so we get all these dumb arguments about technique. :meh:
 
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