Rebirth of.... 2 BASSES??

We live in interesting times! No sooner have I had my Toby Pro-6 supercharged with an OBP-3 and MIDI, than I rediscover a couple of old gems I haven't played much recently.

1. My 4-string fretless - my "bastard bass" of the body from my original Hohner 4-string from 1988, which I heavily modded using various wood planes and repainted myself. It's an ugly bastard, but the fretless neck is beautiful - a solid slab of ebony.

2. My Hohner B-Bass V, a nice to play 5 string with a crap preamp, which consequently sounds dull, muffled and crap compared to all the other basses I have, despite playing beautifully and being great for slap, tap and fingerstyle with heavier strings on it than I generally use. This thing saw 3 months of action in Andorra and played great, it just doesn't sound good compared to modern active basses. It's got passive pickups and a tiny built-in preamp with basic bass/treble.

So, in reverse order...
For the B-Bass V:
I scored an OBP-3, complete with exactly the wiring I needed already fitted (it was plucked from another bass) for about £60 delivered - steal, complete with push/pull pot for MID switch AND bass/treble stack. Win!

Next I ordered up a new slot-in bridge from Thomann, which I've got, and a CTS stacked 500K/500K pot (a la Jazz bass) to bring the 2 pickup volumes onto 1 pot. I thought about MEC-warwick style blend-and-volume but wanted to keep the costs down a little. So we'll go from vol - vol - stacked bass/treble to vol/vol - treble with push/pull - stacked bass-treble!

So far I've got the pickup volumes wired up, then realised I - gulp - have a little shaving to do inside the control cavity as the CTS pots are really meant to attach to the control plate on a Jazz bass. Arse! Well, I think I can safely manage that, there's a good 6-7mm of wood on the top, and I only need 2mm off (I'll have to shave the whole pot top face, mind - eek!).

Sourcing the control knobs is a PAIN! The "Alpha" sized pot already attached to the OBP-3's bass/treble is 6mm/8mm shaft size, piece of cake to pick up a good looking slightly domed stacked knob. Single knob for the treble, no worries. But the stacked knob for the CTS pot is a real PITA, expensive and not carried in many places in the UK. Consequently, I pay under £5 for the Alpha sized one and £12 for the CTS one at Allparts! Jeez...

And that Fretless 4-string neck? Well, when I took it off the old bass body I found this, which is lovely of me to leave on there -





So apparently I've decided that 20 years mounted on a crap body is long enough. I'm tempted to leave myself another Easter egg comment in CD marker pen this time with the new date on!

The body was an absolute steal on eBay: a complete, loaded Allparts 3-piece alder in 3-tone sunburst, with fender covers and neckplate, all for £116 shipped (eek!) - it's immaculate too, after a little neck adjustment (which I have to complete - you can see the strings aren't straight yet) I got this rather beautiful creature:





My word, retro-tastic! I'm going to need to do a fair amount of head-scratching to get the neck to work well, but the outcome will be a lovely bass.

Wish me luck, it's fun and games at Basexperience tower...

OH MY GOD, THE TOBIAS RESURRECTION IS NEARLY COMPLETE!

Ladies and gentlemen, the upgraded Toby Pro-6 has landed... and she's a beauty!


To stress - I haven't actually held her yet (it's been 6 months since I did that!!!) but this picture from Julian Mullen shows the job - and trust me, this is stunning in comparison to the huge black metal jig that was attached to the rear end previously.
What you see here is a 10 year old Tobias Toby Pro-6, which is a great sounding bass, but it's been upgraded with:

• Internal GK-3B Kit (the only control "mod" on the front is the switch for the MIDI pickup)


• 9V OBP-3 kit


• Stacked knobs up the wazoo to incorporate both a 3-band EQ, pickup blend AND the GK volume control


• An excellent new Hipshot brass bridge - made to order and which got stuck in the US during the massive winter storms they had (in Florida, no less)!

Bridge and MIDI pickup in full view - the hipshot gives me lovely fast string changes and more mass than the old one did. The MIDI pickup is finally properly installed instead of being a jerry-rigged adhesive job (I do still have the old GK-3K, it's currently attached to a 4-string Aria Pro II). Beautiful!


My new socket-wonderment! I still have good ol' analogue out with the OBP-3 giving me far more headroom than before - the stock preamp was really, really quiet compared to the Warwicks I have, and I like a bit of grit when I dig in!


And finally... one very crowded engine bay!
I am literally slavering with anticipation to see what this beast has become: I'll be getting over to www.bassgear.co.uk in Twyford with the GR55 and the right cables in tow to check out and get some tinkering in. Julian will be on hand to iron out any glitches, and then she'll come home, for the first time in nearly half a year.
It's been a long haul, but it looks like we're nearly there. Don't regret a thing!

The mystery of the dead 10" driver (Warwick Neo can, celestion driver)

Aha - I've been a little paranoid about the Neo magnets in my cab dying on me since I had a long hat with David Eden at the Bass show 2014 in London.

One of my drivers failed a couple of years ago, in a Neo Warwick 4x10 cab. I was lucky enough to bag a replacement celestion matched to the originals at pre-raise prices, which was cool.

Anyway, I wanted to see if I could use the magnet for something else, thinking the coil must have died, so I dug out the old speaker and (with some glee) ripped it open today.




Here's the driver. Seems fine, but the cone travel is "crunchy". You can feel it.




Cone out...





Bingo. The nickel plating was lost on the front of the magnet, allowing the elements to corrode it: hence the filings you can see on top, and the "crunchy feel" when gently pushing the cone in and out.

Keep at eye out for this if you've lost a driver, or it's failing: mine sounded buzzy for a while.

The good news is, according to posts I've read, Neo drivers don't fade if they've got good anti-corrosion in place and decent heat sinks. These drivers have good fins on the back: the other 3 are fine, and the new one is too.

An interesting morning!

A quick update on the Toby Pro-6 rebuild... it's started!! Control positions under review...

I have confirmation, the bass is being actively worked on! Current plan is to fit the new bridge and the OBP-3 preamp and controls (we're putting all the pickup blend / EQ controls across 3 of the current 4 pots) - with 18v, naturally - and then we meet up to finalise where the MIDI controls go.

I supplied the guys with a quick picture detailing what I have in mind -





You can see the general idea - incidentally, this pic is of a 5-string, mine is a 6, but the rather glorious grain on this bass is very like mine.

I think the control positions should do nicely - the idea is that the audio controls are located within easier reach than the MIDI ones, as the GR55 will do volume duties with the expression pedal under normal circumstances: the centre-detented pickup blend is right there easiest to get at, the bass is right underneath it, and treble/mid are stacked in front, which feels logical.

The tricky bit (and something Julian Mullen has ideas about) is mounting the supplied patch up / patch down switched on the lower bout of the bass; I don't want them on the surface, it wouldn't help the look of the bass at all and they'd probably get pressed by accident: much more sense to put them out of harm's way. The thing is the bass has a very curved profile: you can see it from this picture. The buttons have a fair diameter and they're flat.

I'll be interested to meet with the guys from Bass Gear and Julian over at twyford - I'm hoping the bass will be there (I haven't seen it in 3 months now!!) and Julian will relay his interesting idea.

My thoughts revolve around using buttons with small tops which have a curved top profile, or perhaps using buttons which don't have tops and carefully forming wood tops for them which keep the silhouette of the bass as it is, which giving positive tactile feel switches for pushing patch up/down.

Keep it here to find out how this plays out... looks like I will have the thing for summer though, and considering I started looking into this last october (!) I think this is a story worth following.

In other news, I finally managed to make a semi-permanent (i.e. reversible) mounting of the GK3 I already have onto my old Aria Pro-II: I managed to get the perfect height adjustment using the supplied plastic bars for the pickup, but the slight curvature of the bass top at the ends meant I had to play a little fast and loose and the pickup wouldn't stay stuck. Cue a couple of blobs from the hot glue gun... it's on solid now!

I then spent about an hour and a half getting to know how to create patches for the Roland GR55 with mapped expression pedal settings and CTL pedal mappings to various effects - I even stumbled on the rather excellent effects routing options which are beautifully rendered graphically on the LED display.

End result? A wicked patch with rhodes piano, pitch shifted an octave up, with tremolo, and to my ear what sounds like a great approximation of the piano sound in "riders on the storm". Even the chords sound authentic. I adore rhodes, it's the most organically expressive keyboard instrument I can think of.

TTFN lowenders

Andy

IOS / Android and "battery drainitis": some thoughts.

I'll divert away from my fascinating story of Tobias Bass Guitar renovation for a moment, if I may.



I'm an iOS user: there are a few reasons why. I use it because:

• it's simple to use


• upgrades are regular and I don't have to rely on networks


• applecare is pretty good


• the operating system curtail(ed) the worst excesses of bad programming by bad apps

I use iOS despite being a programmer, and a repairer of tools, systems and mobiles: I've worked in and around mobile software for more than 10 years, most of that as a system test engineer. I have an android phone and an android tablet which I do upgrades/updates to, I've rooted both and have fun with them. But I don't use them as my main devices (I have an iPhone and an iPad and have for several years now). Why?



Well, until recently it was because iOS stubbornly refused to give app developers more power / freedom. This results in a platform which is better for "less savvy" (and for me, lazier) users.



I know Android does work to apps which aren't running, and can free memory, etc, but the multitasking in Android, plus the low level access to system devices, plus Google's apparent disdain for looking after the platform ("throw it at the OEMs and they will come" appears to have been the mantra) has, I think, resulted in an entire OS platform which is "on the back foot" from the point of view of most of the points above. Google are working hard on those points on several fronts.



But I digress. This is about "battery drainitis", something which is prevalent in both Android AND iOS (particularly post-iOS7). Admittedly that Android link is specific to the Camera app, but I've got something to suggest which might help both platforms.



What we need (surprisingly) is Clippit, the hated paperclip from early office versions!



I've been sending tweets out to people who complain that ios7.1 has led to poor battery life, suggesting they upgrade their iPhones again using iTunes (I'm a sceptic on OTA, I think rewriting the OS from scratch just helps to avoid issues with "patching" OSs - I may be wrong there), but I've had an idea for a system-level application which all smartphone OSs which indulge app designers to use onboard devices (think camera, GPS, 3G, Wifi, accelerometer, etc etc).



We need a system battery monitor alerting application. This isn't the same as the Android app which can tell you what application/service is drawing current, it's in addition to it. iOS needs that battery monitoring app, by the way, Apple.



What the alert does is tell you if your phone is losing battery in an "abnormal" way. Say it's sat at idle on your desk, or you're asleep - if your phone loses battery while doing nothing else, and background processes are causing this, and it looks like you didn't intend it to happen (say, using some form of opt-in to say you don't mind an app using a lot of battery power), then the alert will put a notification in place to say that it has seen abnormal battery drain, and point out the culprit.



If your OS platform supports clamping down on apps which appear to ask too much (iOS's "background app refresh" setting, for instance - possibly the worst named settings option I have ever seen, by the way), then a wizard-style app could be launched to help tell you how to maximise your battery life wrt apps which run in the background.



This would certainly help out people who just never seem to read the endless array of advice like this - it simply doesn't occur to people to just google for it... which isn't a sin, but the device itself could help out.



It's just an idea, but something I wanted to explore a little.

The Toby Ressurection - BEGINS (all parts are confirmed with the Luthier!)

Just got word from the guys at www.bassgear.co.uk - Julian Mullen now has all the components for the great Tobias Toby Pro-6 refit.

To recap, this all started as an idea last year (during november time) when I decided that after 10 years of faithful service the Toby deserved a kick up the arse. It's a good bass, but had some points of improvement:

1. Quiet - the pickups sound pretty good, but the preamp is really quiet, and not that flexible.
2. MIDI - I had strapped the metal frame GK-3B mounting kit on the bass, and decided it would be excellent to have all MIDI support onboard.

By carefully selecting the control configuration (and ignoring the red LED on the GK kit) we're keeping the 4-pot configuration and adding a single switch on the top (which will be the 3-way for the MIDI controller). Patch up and down buttons will be discreetly mounted on the lower side of the bass, and the MIDI volume will take one of the pots while the 3-band EQ, mid-shift control and pickup volumes will all be taken care of across 3 pots.

Preamp will be an Aguilar OBP-3 (what else? It's in so many basses and does a great job) running at 18V (Julian has to rout out a new cavity for the battery anyway, so why not go 18V for the hell of it).

Really looking forward to pictures of the operation - it's a good bass, but really needs this upgrade. Folded in will be a damn good fret dressing to get rid of any buzz and a set up job to get the action down.

Watch this space - if I get any pictures from Julian they'll be up here ASAP!

London Bass Guitar Show - abbreviated highlights!

My first LBGS. And I'm impressed! Went in on the Saturday, and:

- saw Lee Sklar, always nice to catch someone you aspire to be later in life - a true laid back Californian player, you can see why he gets so much work, he loves his craft and is obviously so easy to get along with. And has a good philosophical view on his work.
- saw Frank Bello, massively enthusiastic player (get a new iPod, Frank!). Huge smiles as he cranked out Anthrax classics, and the way he plays Rush had me in stitches!
- totally failed to recognise Jeff Berlin at the Cort stand - he was inviting bass players to try the setup on a bass (which was ultra-low) - lovely fellow, I thought he was a stand-guy. The player before me nodded appreciatively, Jeff offered me the bass, I sat down, played some of Midnight (arranged for bass, it's a 2-handed tap piece by Joe Satriani) and said it was ideal for that and that my Aria is similarly set up. Then I dug in a little and said that the E was too low and had buzz - "what if you play really gently so you can hear every note", says Jeff - "nah, it's still too low", says I. At this point one or two eyebrows are raised in the amassed audience. I gave him the bass back and someone asked "what are you going to do now?" And he said "raise the action on the E!" Hehe
- changed strings at the show just outside the auditorium entrance haha
- tried out Gallien-Kruger, Eden and Warwick amps with the Warwick I brought along for the job
- tried out a Rikker bass, an utterly stunning olive top 5 string fretless with Piezo in individual bridge saddles - gorgeous tone, setup perfect, ~£2100 worth if heaven! Turns out it uses the same Aguilar OBP-3 as I'm having fitted into the Tobias, so I'm hopeful the boost and control will give me something great. The rikker guys talked with me for more than half an hour on the Metaphysics of Quality and how they make the guitars: they wind their own pickups, meditate and use zen breathing, I love their approach. The basses just ooze the results of it. I will be saving up for one.

Also met several bassists and chatted - including one who spotted my bass in earl's court tube and told me there was a train running to Olympia, which was massively appreciated!

And I got to see Paul Turner and shuffler, whose groove and infectious smiles are exactly what you want to see in a band. They love their little side project!

On my way to London Bass Guitar Show 2014. Thoughts.

Platform has 2 teenage girls who will develop tech neck with their mobile use. Continuous selfies abound. Passenger on my iPod. Discover headphones that came with the iphone 5 sound great with the iPod classic. Reflect on intellectual irony and age-specificity of blogging about teenagers spending all their time faceborking selfies.

And also, bass is with me. 10 minutes of quiet before the train, in the brittle but bright march 1st Sun. Strings to buy. Gear to try. First time in years!

See you there. That's my train.

An update on the Tobias Rebirth - plus London Bass Guitar Show 2014

Well, the Toby gets ever closer... the bridge (recap: it's a Hipshot 6 string solid brass bridge, painted black to match the existing hardware: a Type B) got held up in the US extreme cold weather, and ended up in Florida(!) - Barrie at Bass Gear is chasing it up.

I like to think that a little bit of my Bass decided to fly south for the winter, but in reality when I get this bass it's going to be after nearly 5 months of trying to find someone who would do it, and then finding someone who would do it, and then having trouble sourcing components (first the Roland GK3B kit, then the bridge).

I've also got my Saturday 1st March ticket for the London Bass Guitar Show - http://www.londonbassguitarshow.com - first music show I've been to in years: I plan to take a 4 string, maybe the Aria (which now has the GK3B attached to it) or possibly the Warwick Ltd Ed 2004.

Any bass people heading that way - drop me a line, we'll meet up! Looking forward to seeing the Bass Gear stand, and the BassChat guys, as well as trying out a bit of gear. If I took the Aria I could try out some new Roland synth gear, I guess... ;-)

I've reached the point where I'm not really that worried about tiny increments in tone which a lot of people think they're getting when they try out new gear: your ears will get tired really quick trying amps side by side. I think you need time with a piece of equipment to get to know it, to find out what it will do, and if it works well with your fingers and basses. The old Warwick Pro IX head I use has headroom in spades - no worries there - and I think the only gear envy I have is for the Breeze lads who have a Trace Elliot V4 15 inch combo, which is an utter beast. Weighs about 20 tons, but that thing has the hugest tone ever created - played it for 3 months in Andorra with my 2x10 trace cab (as was - traded it in now). I'd love a V4 head (or even - gulp - a V8) but those things are like rocking horse sh*t now.

We'll see what interesting new gear there is on Saturday, I guess! Lots of pics to come.

Recycling - a GK3B! Updates on the Toby rebirth, and Sheds: A studio phenomenon

Good times in 2014, as predicted!

GK3B recycling

First - I've retrofitted the GK3B to my 4-string 80s Aria Pro-II Integra - the only other bass I have which it will fit (all the others either have arched tops behind the back pickup, or pickups which are too close to the bridge, or both...).

This, as it turns out, is an excellent choice, as I keep this bass set up with extreme low action and very light (read 30-50-70-90) strings - this means the bass is a supremely expressive beast, good for tap, slap, and string bending. In fact, the strings are so light I have to adjust to using it if I've been using the other basses for a while.

I kicked myself into getting it done for a musical collab which is starting up with a friend of mine who works exclusively on synths, and I figured he'd love what the GR-55 can do... but as you know, the Tobias is away getting a GK kit fitted internally, so I've got nothing to drive the GR-55 with. Fortunately I carefully removed the externally mounted GK-3B before I handed the bass over!

The result is actually pretty good - the bass is in metallic white, with black hardware, so it's a great match -





The bass has a curved front with a flat central stripe, top to bottom, so the pickup fits nicely (managed to get the heights perfect with a little adjustment) but the controller still needs the full metal jacket on there as it won't mount anywhere else - the bass also has small wings (but it's still an angel).

Put a new named profile in for the Aria on the GR-55, some tiny tweaks to sensitivity for the strings, and it's go go go - and the expressive nature of the bass comes through straight away, the more organic and squidgy synth noises can do some really weird stuff, and sounds which feed back can actually move through different harmonics!

The Toby Rebirth
We're just waiting for the bridge - custom manufacture, brass with black coating. I'm expecting good things of this hipshot, apart form anything else the Toby will finally fall in-line with most of my other basses (including the aria) in having quick-string changing capabilities. We don't do it that often, bassists, but I think we all agree that changing strings is a lot less painful when you don't have to unwind the strings at the top.

Also - I recycle my strings (yeah, I'm tight) by cleaning them in a meths bath - and if you don't have to unwind the strings, it makes a massive difference to how long they'll last as you don't stress the metal in the top of the string where it winds onto the tuners.

The experience of playing the aria with the pickup just whetted my appetite for getting further into editing patches and sounds on the GR-55. That thing has some excellent sounds....

SHEDS...
Great day yesterday. A friend down Guildford way who writes cool electronic stuff and I decided to get together for the first time to lay some bass down on some tracks he's kicked around: we got some good sounds. I took a decent amount of kit down with me too - I figured we could hunt for noises to suit his stuff, and man, was I right.

Kit that went with me included:
- Aria, now GK-3B equipped
- a 5-string fretless
- The Ashbory rubber stringed bass (great for sub-dub type bass)
- A regular acoustic guitar (I can pick out arpeggios pretty well, for Massive attack style backing and ambience)
- Bass PODxt plus floorboard
- GR-55 synth
- Warwick CCL combo for monitoring

Great afternoon and evening, 4 or 5 hours of creativity - pure play, exactly the kind of stuff which keeps all musicians energised. It turns out his electronic influences are exactly the kind of music I'm interesting in working on using live bass: Massive Attack style stuff with a lot of emotional energy.

And his studio is in a shed at the end of his garden - a BIG shed with plenty of power. It's a sweet place - heaters, good lighting, his studio gear is nice and simple and his monitors are excellent. The place was big enough to set up the gear, guitar stands etc and be able to stride about, pacing while trying out sounds, etc.

All in all, good times: I'm thinking I need to get the GK-3 pickup I've had lying about onto the Strat: 1 guitar and 2 basses all MIDI equipped? Interesting times.

Electric Bass String Cleaning: or, how I saved a fortune

This post will save you money, I guarantee it. Early on in my bass playing life, when I had paltry sums to buy strings with, I used to boil them to remove the skin, oil and cack which causes them to go flat. I've always liked zingy (played in, mind) strings - plenty of top end, good mids and rounded lows. I'm not a massive fan of the flat dull thud which some people regard as fine - not my thing, and my opinion mind, don't be offended if you're happiest playing 10 year old strings to get that tone from the 70s ;-)

Boiling worked, I even added washing up liquid at one stage - but, of course, you're effectively promoting chemical reactions. Water acts as a mild acid of sorts, and promotes rust in the steel of the strings - particularly, I noted, in the cores of the strings I was using at the time (rotosound Geddy Lee style PSDs I recall).

More recently, I've used Warwick black labels since the warwicks I have came with them, and they seem like a great compromise between cost, sound and longevity, and I hunted for a better (read: lazier and more effective) way to clean strings.

METHS!

I can recommend this: the meths does less harm to the strings (they certainly seem to survive better), it actively stops water (we used to add it to petrol tanks to soak up water and improve running in cars with carbs), and it does an excellent job of removing the oils and skin grease from the windings of the roundwounds.

I use an old sweet jar, with extra sealing inside the lid to ensure there's no evaporation. Big neck (you need to get the strings in there), and buy enough meths to fill the jar. I found it in B&Q, available in smallish bottles. Don't worry if it's pricey, the meths will very quickly pay for itself.

All you have to do is wrap the strings up in a small enough loop to get them in the jar, make sure they're under the meths, stick the lid on and leave them for as long as you want. I've left strings in there for months(!) and they've been great.

When drying, make sure you do it somewhere ventilated - the meths will stink the place out while it evaporates from the strings - but it won't take that long.

I can get 3 or even 4 uses out of a set of Warwick black labels: that's a serious saving on a 6-string bass.

Let me know if this helped you via the usual buttons - like it on facebook, or RT on twitter. If you use it, why not say you found this useful on Google+? ;-)

I've picked a great New Years resolution... by accident!

While chatting with someone a few evenings ago, they asked me about New Years resolutions, and without thinking, I replied "to fear less".

I've adopted it now, it's great - short, specific but sweeping and punchy enough that I'll remember it.

Every time I mention it to someone they ask me what I'm afraid of - to which I reply - "everything!". I'm a bass player, the choice of instrument was probably a reflection of the lack of self confidence in an 18 year old who didn't want to overdo it.

I've pushed bass into places a lot of people don't go: this year I intend to lever the newly refurbished Toby and make some truly odd noises. I've started editing video already, finding the time to get to grips with (of all things) windows movie maker 2012, which - gasp - turns out to be very good!

Here's to 2014 - to anybody reading this, join me in fearing less, loving more and living well.

CLEARING OUT / REBUILDING YOUR STUDIO.... gulp (anyone else done it?)

I'm about to embark on a comprehensive 2014 studio cleanup - and we're talking top to bottom here. The room isn't huge, so a lot of built up stuff has got to got, to make room for an electric drum kit I haven't had set up for several years: I want to get back into some Zen-like co-ordination drumming again.

To do this, I'm actually going to:

1. Pack the studio into boxes as if I was moving house, categorising the contents according to what they are and cataloguing everything
2. Set up the drum kit
3. Reverse engineer the rest of the studio around this, removing everything which isn't studio related.

At the end of the day, there's a lot of other stuff in there which isn't core studio stuff. I'll get some cable clips and guitar hangers for the walls too: really trick it out.

Anyone else attacked this task and won?

Tobias 2014, further developments - the tale of the Bridge...

It's great news - the bridge from Hipshot looked like it was going to cost £80 to ship(!) - but Barrie from BassGear was on the case and secured it as a custom build: brass Type B Hipshot with all the quick release goodness I've got on the other basses (warwick and aria pro II) for £135 - brass and painted black. Sweet!

I'm itching for the bass back with all the goodies onboard: the GR55 doesn't have anything to power it at the moment (I'm thinking I might fit the pickup I have to one of the other basses!), and those modelled bass sounds are calling me to play some Rush... some freebird... some original material!

The bass is going to be a real monster when it's finished. I'm hoping it'll be tap-friendly as well: I have a lot of old tap pieces (I arranged Day At The Beach for bass, also Midnight (both satriani tracks) and learned a few Stu Hamm solos years ago - these usually get practised when I use the Aria as it's strung really light and the bass itself is stupidly playable (it's on 30-50-70-90, a la Mark King!) - thin strings, low action, pro setup did that for that bass.

The 5 string gets 20-40-60-80-100-130 (I like a decent wedge on the B) - Warwick black labels. Great strings, they come up beautifully after a week in Meths!

Toby’s Rebirth: the bridge to 2014

Puns aplenty in this Bass blog… yep, as I mentioned, my 2000s era Tobias Toby Pro-6 is having a makeover – MIDI, Aguilar preamp, the lot – and fortunately Julian the Luthier has been up to his eyeballs in work, so I got the chance to realise that one of the other aspects of the bass I wanted to get right was the bridge.

The original bridge is workmanlike, but I’d really like it to have quick-release ball-end design – like the Warwicks and the old Aria Pro-II – so I can change strings quickly and easily, and indulge the economic side of my personality by not having to unwind (and therefore stress) the ends of the strings. See, I like to leave my used strings in a big vat of meths I keep for the job – leave them there for a couple of weeks, and they come out like new: no rust (no water!), and no skin / oil in them either (this is what makes strings go dead). This means I can keep using the same very reasonably priced Warwick black labels strings up to 5 times (and I do, on the Warwicks) – if the 6 string had the same design of bridge, it’d make life a lot easier, and this is supposed to be about giving an old friend a new start.

So, after some great suggestions from Barrie at Bass Gear in Twyford - http://store.hipshotproducts.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=348 looks good in Black: the curves of this bridge should work really well with the bass, and they do a lot of different string spacings, plus there’s a great PDF I could send direct to Julian of the mm-dimensions of the bridges.

I see this refit as a new birth for the bass, a new start – not a new relationship with a bespoke bass (I had considered that already), but a fantastic new lease of life – even when I removed the black clamp holding the GK-3B from the bass, it suddenly looked… well, nicer. I can’t wait to see it with the MIDI pickup fitted properly, all the electronics internal, and the original jack socket AND the 11-pin GK socket available, with the 2 patch change buttons on the lower side.

It also gives me a chance to get the bass set up from the outset as a MIDI bass – fix the fret level problems (they’re not huge, but they are tedious) – get it really humming as a fingerstyle and tap-based instrument. I’ve got other basses to slap, this one is intended to give me the ultimate fingerstyle funk/rock/synth platform to launch into 2014. I think it’ll make a real difference to pick the bass out of the case, set up the GR55 and look really pro.

Anyone out there ever done similar?

The Great Tobias Toby Pro-6 Makeover BEGINS! (3 months late!)

The prologue

Way back in the mists of time (2003), Andy bought a Toby Pro-6 – a fine, very reasonably priced 6 string bass. He used it for many years, on many projects, and many bands – including the epic 15,0000 crowd gig with Janeiro in 2005 – and it’s been in use for 10 years. Over time, it’s picked up a few idiosyncracies – including a GK-3B, bracketed on with the pickup glued in place using the nifty shims Roland supply.

Bless em, the Internet Archive wayback machine even still has the Musicyo site on it!

https://web.archive.org/web/20040210040239/http://www.musicyo.com/product_specs.asp?pf_id=336

It’s got a good sound, but… it’s always been a bit quiet. I cranked it as high as I could get it - I used to use the Bass POD to boost it further, then when I got the GK3B and GR20 I ran it with the output volume turned up, which made a big difference (and told me the pickups had a pretty good intrinsic tone).

Then I got the GR55 – about 3 months ago. That unit is excellent. My eyes were opened to a world of lower latency, and the modelling… I play the toby, and a vintage precision comes out. Now it’s a rickenbacker. Outrageous. But…

the bass is now in need to upgrade. D’oh, it’s G.A.S. (gear aquisition syndrome, if you haven’t heard of it). I thought I was past that… but there it is, the old familiar feeling.

So I decided it was time for a 10 year tune-up. The whole 9 yards – fix the buzz that appeared at the 15th fret… upgrade the electronics (I started thinking about aguilar preamps)… get the GK3B fitted internally.

This was all about 3 months ago – I approached a luthier in Reading, who initially sounded enthusiastic, then went utterly silent – no response! OK… I post a message to BestBassGear on twitter, and they give me the details of… BassGear (no relation) in Twyford! These guys are much more friendly. Much more interested. And they secure the services of Julian Mullen – round about my birthday in October, we get together at BassGear HQ and talk, discussing how to fit an aguilar OBP-3, 18v of battery AND a GK-3B kit into it.

Then Roland take over a month(!) to ship it! And today… I dropped off the Toby with them! Keep tuned for how this goes – I’m truly excited that this bass, which has served me well for a long, long time, is going to get a comprehensive makeover in every department.

Work / Music Balance

While I'm not one of those rabid bloggers who thinks every last aspect of their lives is worthy of scrutiny, there is one thing I've been considering lately which definitely falls into the "mid-life (most would say tediously self-indulgent) metaphysical reassessment" cateogory.

I've recently purchased a GR-55 to go with the GK-3B on the bass, I'd been using the GR-20 on and off for years, with varying success - the tracking on the low B was always pretty suspect, but with a bit of judicious shifting you could play an octave up and get some great bass synth sounds out of it.

The GR-55 is a revelation by comparison - I've only gigged it once, but the fun I had creating sounds on it for that gig was great. The rig emerged as the bass POD and GR-55 as two sides, switched through a boss 2-way channel switcher. I used some synth sounds with modelled bass mixed in, which sounded great, but on some other tracks I wanted the regular sound of the bass - the GR-55 has a live direct feed of the unfettered bass pickup sound.

That last paragraph relates back to the title of this post. I lost myself for nearly 2 hours just... well, *playing* with settings and sounds! It was musical playtime at its' finest: directed, to try to find sounds for the songs we were playing (we did "moves like jagger" and I really wanted something like that inverted "waaaaaahp" on the original recording), but playful, with constant changes, like sculpting or painting, until I was happy enough with the solution.

Pure quality-led concentration: the best kind.

Trouble is, I'm getting that at work as well: this means I have 2 sides to my life, both of which are fulfilling and engaging - I literally have to tear myself away from work at the moment, it's great stuff.

I'm not trying to give myself the big up btw, or encourage trolls, etc. I'm going to have to schedule more playful music work - jams with Tony at PhatTone studios in Reading are a good start, had one week before last, we had a blast - some really cool funky lines, he laid some down on logic pro.

So I guess the moral is: love what you do, love your music: I appreciate I won't make anything like the money I make at work doing music stuff - these days, making money from music is frankly a pipedream unless you're a clinician, teaching, etc - so it becomes a job: enjoy being able to be playful while you can. Maybe work has its uses after all.

Thunderbird == genius

No shit, sherlock… if this was algorithmic, the programmer is drunk!

Why shouldn't lunchtime be musical?

Going to work on some solo pieces for half an hour. Zen out!

Fully filled weekends

It’s been a while since I had a weekend that full. We covered nearly 26 miles on bike on the Thames path, although we did forget to cross the bridge at Sonning so the route to Henley from Reading was… interesting. The route back was great. We have a habit of doing that, we’ll set out thinking signs will tell us what we need to know, then get sort of lost.

Current slang for this between us is “is this the road to Loutro?” which I’m sure some will recognise.

I can recommend the cycling from Reading to Henley: there’s a long stretch in the countryside, it passes by some very pretty locks on the Thames (one of which has it’s own Tea Shop) and the sunbathing potential is HUGE on days like today. I can safely say that the F1 race didn’t even cross my mind.

So Saturday, I spend the morning getting ready for the evening wedding gig (the drummer from Breeze, Steve), including some great tone-hunting on both the bass POD xt and the GR-55 synth pedal I’ve just got – that thing has some serious capabilities, including on-board USB stick music file playing, your own backing tracks? Not a problem. I got back from the gig and was asleep just after 2am after winding down.

Sunday, we get up late (maybe 9am), I sort out the bikes (mechanical checks, brakes, tyres, oil chains etc) we get them on the back of the car, drive to where I work, which happens to be a short ride from the Kennet and Avon canal, which has excellent cycle paths. We then ride to Henley and back! Now utterly exhausted, body humming after the exertion. Loved it.

Roland’s GR-55: It can Save Your Gig

I had a great gig last night, but it could have been so very different. I’ve had a GK-3B pickup on my 6-string bass for a while now, and I’ve used a GR-20 synth a few times for tracks, mainly for small backing sounds and laying down backing while writing tunes. I dipped into the technology again for the first time in years and found out about the GR-55 from some posts on Twitter, mainly about a spectacular fretless bass player in the US who uses a slightly modded one as his main solo gig-machine.

Intrigued with the apparent capabilities, I was lucky enough to be able to buy one – I haven’t bought any new gear for several years now, last thing was the NEO cabs for the stack, and that was probably 7 years ago. So, suppressing GAS, I decided to try one out, properly, with the bass, and see if it was all it was cracked up to be. I was impressed enough to buy it.

My plan was to use the GR-55 on “forget you” (Cee Lo Green) to get the high-pitched glockenspiel-type stuff during the choruses, as it tracks the bass. I got something which just about worked on the GR-20, but it tracked really badly on the low B (the guys in the band pitch the track down a semitone). The GR-55 coped very well, and additionally it let me put a piano underneath as well. The UI is intuitive enough that I worked out how to get the expression pedal to act as a volume control just for the synth bits, leaving the real bass signal untouched.

Then I started to explore the signal modelling capabilities – they take the signal from the GK3B and turn it into other instruments, not MIDI triggering, so no lag. We were doing some tracks which sound great with an old P-bass, so I dialled up and EQd a really nice sounding vintage Precision. Sounded great!

So the gig comes around, and I’ve got this great rig going – I’ve got the GR-55 feeding 2 signals into a 2-way Y switch, with the single feed back to my amp. On one side is the “full” output, which contains all 4 channels (synth 1, synth 2, modelled and real bass pickup) and the other is the bass output, which is just the bass. This is going through the Bass POD XT, which I’ve got patches on for some of the other songs (auto wah, etc).

All went well in the gig, until… the battery in the bass went dead! Cue silence in one of the tracks, my sheets of patch to song are out of the window… and after some confusion about what the hell is going on, I realised I could use the P-bass patch on the GR-55 because it doesn’t use the bass pickups at all!

Bingo – I play the rest of the first set on a vintage P-bass – although without any synth effects on some tracks. The audience do not care, it’s a wedding and they’re having a great time. The guitarist (the excellent Ryan Robinson) doesn’t even notice, but the drummer does because the bass failed at the start of “living on a prayer” – ummm, I think the bass is mandatory on the start of that track…

Moral of the story – complex tech can be complex, but it can give you a great safety net!

The second set went beautifully: Nigel Parsler is an excellent drummer and Ryan Robinson nails more styles than any guitarist I’ve come across, his funk chops are great.

Weather: crap. Diagnosis: studio time.

I've done a lot of cycling recently, thanks to the better weather. Since it's turned wet and crap again, it's time to work on the... Smaller muscles. In my fingers. In the studio. Yay me!

I've always thought having a woodshed in your house was odd. Especially when the axes are all blunt.

Enough punnery!

Bass boogies

I remember years ago reading an interview with Joe Satriani who said he used to just sit and noodle, and end up coming up with what he called Satch Boogies. It's where the song of the same name came from, I think.

I was sitting with the acoustic bass yesterday, which I've enjoyed a lot more since I strung it with electric strings (elite blue labels, very light) than the phosphor bronzes I had on there - the bronze strings always felt sticky, uncomfortable and I didn't like the smell (which I'm guessing is copper). I fiddled around with some shapes as usual, climbing around, but ended up doing some kind of open E boogie thing with high neck register figures in between, which turned out to be loads of fun on a sunny day.

Anyone else do this when they're not trying to overtly write or learn something? Those moments when you're just indulging in the pure playfulness of music? I need to make more time for those moments.

Upcoming wedding gig, for one of the Breeze boys! Setlist reactions…

The drummer for the band I filled in a season with in Andorra in 2007 is getting married. Apart from having a stag do in Vegas (not too shabby), he’s putting the icing on the cake by employing my fingers to put the low end into his wedding band.

I’ll be working with a couple of great guys to form part of the core band – Ryan Robinson on guitar and Nigel Parsler on drums.

Ryan stunned me with his Talkbox on “living on a prayer” when we gigged in Brackley with Steve on drums – suddenly what could be seen as something of a cheesy rock song actually took on a huge amount of energy. He’s a great player, Ryan, we share some music tastes as well.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever gigged with Nigel though, according to his bio he’s done the ACM as well so we’re guaranteed a great night.

I thought it might be interesting to list the setlist I have so far – there’s a lot of personnel changes as you can imagine, Steve has the breeze guys up and down in both sets for a sort of supergroup – and give me reactions to the tracks. A lot of them are Breeze staples. The keys are in the list, as is the persons involved, to a degree…

1st set

crazy little thing called love (jay)(D) – realised I played this first time in about 1989 with Fat Freddy’s Cat in St Andrews. I’m taking the time to go through it again and re-learn the feel, it’s a bouncy bassline and I didn’t appreciate that before. Finding fun!

shine (jay) (Eb) – Never played this, it’s the Take That tune. Thankfully the progressions are simple and the tune spent so much time advertising Morrisons that it’s earwormed enough into my long-term memory and just seems to come out of the fingers on demand. Cool, might even be able to try some vocals on it.

sweet home (jay) (D) – The original feelgood track with the original feelgood frontman, Jay

3 tracks with kelly singing – don’t know what these are yet, I’ll have to wing it on the day!

forget you (neill) (Bb) – learned this a while back for a Brackley red lion gig but we never did play it, have been learning that little funky bass breakdown to get it just so. Definitely a 6 string job, I’ve been considering the synth to give the bass a little more pop (literally)

dont stop me now neill (F) – great track, this one will be one to enjoy

billy jean neill (B) – always enjoy this one, that metronomic beat is infectious to play, always find myself bouncing from foot to foot while I play it.

 

2nd set

mustang sally (steve charlie) (C) – Steve will sing this of course. I reckon his voice is better than the bloke from the commitments

valerie  (michelle) (Eb) – I don’t have the Winehouse version lying about, I’ll just have to work on the original

sex on fire (jay) (E)  - wonder if we’ll do the start properly… I’d better polish it just in case!

moves like jagger (jay neill kelly rich) (A) – Now this one I think I will get synth bass on, I think there’s a patch on the GR somewhere which will do the job.

funky music (rich and caj) (E) – another track I’ve been playing for 20 years, but these guys get the modulations at the end right, it’s a great track when you do it right to the end!

shake your tail feather (neill) (Eb) – I’ll be channelling the Duck himself on this one. Look down on me and wink with a puff of yer pipe Mr Dunn

dont stop believing (neill) (E) – Neil sings this really well, the man’s a star – how to keyboard players do that?

bo rap (breeze) – at last, bohemian rhapsody. Another track I learned ages ago!

let it be hey jude (breeze) – or, as I coined it after seeing McCartney miming at the olympics – “I, look like , your, Nana na-na, Nana na-na, Hey Jude”

eBay tales

I've had an original line6 Bass POD for years - its seen me well for live shows for at least - what - 7 years or something? The floorboard controller for it does a great job, tuner, wah, volume, all in one.
When the PODxt came out I was interested, especially as it didn't have the annoying gap while changing patches, but the cost of a replacement system - bass PODxt plus the FBV short board - always seemed to put me off enough not to bother.
Well, fast forward to now, and there are good deals to be had on eBay! Fortunately, the gear is well built and often spends its life in studios: total cost on eBay (I was amazed to win both first time with a reasonably high max bid) was a very reasonable £170 including P&P.
I even had the chance to fix the FBV a bit - switch replacement. I can recommend Doctor Tweek on the web - fast, great communication and he's got the right parts for the job: after desoldering the old switches, easy job, completely fixed. Satisfying - an irony is that this means I now know how to fix it later, and also how solid it is.

Great new project, built new equipment for it!

New project: I've got hooked up with a truly talented, enthusiastic vocalist - She's had stuff released before.
Great energy in her songs, and a new genre for me: reggae, but with a lot of other styles thrown in. She loves her crossover - she's into loads of styles, and regularly likes to flip between them.
With that in mind, this time around I finally knuckled under and made up the monster live studio PC in a flightcase I've always wondered about... Net result, a machine which runs ableton live, with a behringer MIDI floor controller to kick off the scenes and modify tempo.
We've tested it, and it seems like it'll do the job - the drummer's got great tempo, and the gear is reliable.
All I need now is a better audio interface than the old 2x2 I'm using... Anyone got a MOTU 828 I can have?

Unsolicited Ambulance chaser claim SMS text FAIL

Look what I received:

---

Sent by unregistered version of SMSCaster: FREE MSG: We have now had the £3150 compensation released by the insurer for your accident. To claim this now reply '

---

Now THAT's tragic. Pathetic on sooOooooooOOOOO many levels.

When you're not funkifising

Zen-chill out growing 10ft tall tomatoes.

When you grow your own food, you feed your soul as well.


Just lashed them all up properly. Needed doing.

In other news... Fantastic new musical project starting, big bass and BIG tech.

Chicken Soup Mix 1

Chicken Soup Mix 1

Just wanted to re-share chicken soup. It's in need of some remixing at the end, I think... but I'm pretty happy with it.

Solo bass pieces and meditation.

I've had the itchiest fingers last couple of days... Went to a wedding over the weekend, which was fun, but I didn't take a bass (just a grip exerciser). Managed to tear a calf muscle dancing, which is a minor limp now (healing fast, I think).

The itchiness, though, developed into a sort of dark, sleepless yearning. I've got to play, play new things, write new things. Weird, out of character things. New sounds from research, radio 1, Maybe buy a Novation controller at some point, abandon old band concepts, shrink the personnel, programme a lot: expensive synth strings, horns, drums...

So to calm the beast, tonight was declared "dig out old tap pieces and start learning a new meditative solo piece" night. Other people's work, all, but something to still me before bed.

Satriani's "midnight" and "day at the beach" work surprisingly well on a 4 string, although the warwick's too heavily strung. The rhythm for Midnight took time to come, but the familiar alpha waves hit me and that sense of continuity, stillness, chronological nowness - it came to me, fleetingly, leaving that same beautiful feeling of being "at one" with something, anything, instead of the terrible otherness of day jobs.

New piece to learn is "Jacob's Ladder" from 100 degrees and rising, by Incognito. It's a beautiful piece, with a mainly Latin feel behind some wonderfully articulate gentle slap and fingerstyle, all light, feather-touch and playful. Things I'd rather be!

Overall, a good start, I've got the main A-E part right, along with the higher register piece which breaks it before it heads to F-B flat. It's so fast I think I need the Aria Integra, with the light 30s on it, to get the feel right. Beautiful piece, the strings towards the end are really nicely done. The whole album's got some great moments on it, they rein in the worst excesses of the strained female vocals on nearly all the tracks they appear on.

Keep playing, world. It's important.

Anxiety dreams of a Bassist

Wow, Freud would run screaming from this morning's little oddball moment. I suspect I'd stopped breathing again (last night was pretty rough) and from what I remember the dream had points in it where my left hand had been replaced with a transplant, which kept going numb and powerless until I took time to flex and work on it.

At one point, very lucidly, I was thinking this would stop me playing permanently, and I started remembering how to play Donna Lee in my head. After this, the fingers (previously looking pale and lifeless, and unable to clasp at their tips as if broken halfway down) came back to life and appeared to be fine again.

I woke up gasping, as usual - not a function of the dream, more me not breathing. Yipe.

Creative acts with paint

Horrible, horrible helmet:



Plus Altern-8 style painter:



Equals primed helmet,



Then ORANGE.



And finally, shiny shiny.



Much better.

The benefits of daily metronome practice... strength.

It's weird how quickly you start to get strength and definition into your playing when you're regimented in your practice, even if you can only get 45 minutes of bass aerobics and a quick play along to some Madeon (his stuff's so good i tend to slap all the way through it, trying to embellish the excellent bass that's there already).

My right thumb has that self-guiding feel you get when something is starting to really "work", you know?

Also - found a bunch of guys on Diaspora who are running a collaborative music project, a lot of them are using soundcloud for it, so what the hell, I'll stick some low end noise on there!

Stashing parts for fixing stuff later - planning for the apocalypse

Well, maybe not the apocalypse. I've been stashing some parts for the car, mainly suspension bushes and other "consumables", while they're plentiful and cheap, as I want to keep the car for 8-10 years if possible (it should last that long, I reckon). I've now decided to do the same for my iPhone 3GS: I've got about £70 of spares and tools from http://www.AppleiPodParts.com/ including a complete OEM re-case (including the silver front bezel and internal attached parts) and a new OEM battery. These will now get stashed for use in approx. 2 years to recondition the phone completely when things start to wear out. I'll probably pick up a new digitiser / front button panel at some point as well - about another £30 or so. That should hopefully ensure a long and useful life for the iPhone. I daresay iOS for it will be deadended somewhere in 5.X long before I stop using it ;-) Fix your own stuff: it's the only way!

And at last, BlogPress came back up... google apps account using a virgin email address?

Non-music post - on the iPhone / iPad I've used a tool called BlogPress in the past - pretty good multi-platform blogging tool. Not the cheapest, but it's got reasonable integration of pictures and, more crucially and interestingly, video. It's been unstable under iOS5 and the last straw was when it simply wouldn't log in any more. I stopped using it and have been waiting for an update which Apple were apparently slow to approve. Installed the update yesterday (I'm sneezing and coughing my way through the first - and I hope only - cold of 2012) and couldn't get it to work - logging in seemed impossible... Turns out my google apps account wasn't keen to let me log in with my email address: this may well be an argument with my virgin net account, as they're the same, and Virgin have moved to using google mail. If I log in using an application specific password (google thing to allow one-step auth when your account has 2-step enabled) against the **username** I've associated with the account instead of the email address, everything works! I suspect there are other "clashes" like this out there... anyway, it's all good. I'm back into blog territory. I think I've even got twitter to log in...

New year, old music...

Here's some FunkyBass recorded live in Oxford's Bridge club, circa 2005/2006: from the Janeiro / Tempa Tempa era. Great track, this - Jake Carter wrote it, it's a classic. Jake can now be found online at http://www.jake-carter.com/. Do Your Thing - TempaTempa by Andy Basexperience Watt

A Day in the Studio... with output!

I spent Friday in pleasant creative flow, in the studio. It's been a while, and I had a project I'd started way back which I wanted to complete.

In the process, I wanted to upload some stuff to SoundCloud, where I've had an account for an age and not had any sounds on there at all. I want to start an audio CV with some recent work, something which showcases some bass, I hope.

Aside from the dodgy solo in the outro, I'm fairly happy with the result, as it gave me a great opportunity to learn some new Cubase skills I haven't used before, automating mixdown with the MIDI desk I've got (it's actually a 16 channel live desk that has a MIDI mode, I defined MIDI mapping configs for Cubase control). Great learning experience - effect inserts, panning, automation in general. Weird to watch the desk (it's automated and motorised) fiddling around with its own levels during playback.

If you're interested in the outputs, you can check my soundcloud stuff out here - this was the track I made a first mix of.

It's not bad but it's rough and ready, and that solo section is all over the place.

But I got something finished: that's desperately important.

Working on Chromatic Fantasy again!

I've reached page 3 of the transcription... it's coming together, slowly but surely, like one of those promises you made yourself and never quite managed to follow through on. I intend to be able to play this thing through at least once!

Ski tracks app - sweet

Ski tracks generates some excellent data you can plus straight into google earth. Was just reminded when is started it on the iPhone just now and got this excellent map of the last day's epic trek last march:




That's a fully zoom able and twist able map. A really nice keepsake of an excellent ski holiday.

Oo, that's got my appetite up.

Turning down a gig? Me?

It's true - I got an offer through the excellent Tony of Phat Tone Studios in Reading (his studio's a cracker) of a dep gig in London, expenses paid, hotel, etc. I turned it down after some deliberation.

The bands name is "the Gentlemen of Distorted Sound" (GODS. - look them up on YouTube, they're pretty impressive onstage.

Thing is, this gig was important for them. The chance to support the Quireboys, apparently, rested on it. But their bass player's wife went into labour, so they needed a stand in who could get the songs quick and run with it. I _could_ do that OK.

Thing is, look them up on YouTube, especially live; they're definitely part GnR, part leather-waistcoat-no-shirt-grungeglam. I would simply not fit it, not look right - and these guys have a look as much as a sound and songs.

Simple truth - If I did the gig, they'd sound great, but look hamstrung by the gimp on bass. I can't cause them not to get the gig, it's not fair to them or me. We'd both feel awful.

So I turned it down! Do you think I did the right thing? Let me know with some comments.

Old classics and revisited gems

Dug into bits of "Permanent Waves" by Rush last night: very enjoyable.

I've also been spending time trying to sight read more of jaco pastorious solo pieces, as these may form a great batch of warm-ups instead of using my rather mechanical regime (which I've been using for years).

In amongst all this appreciation for very old stuff, I've got a Moog softsynth for the iPad, which sounds just beautiful! Introductory offer: £0.69. Utter, utter bargain and sounds phenomenal.

My ex-bandmate Terry Collie appears to have had fun last Sunday finding open nights at pubs in London - twickenham / George was apparently very well organised. Rocky styles apparently, but well organised cuts it with me.

Thomann tryouts (again, first for a long time...) - tuning peg frenzy

Been a long time since I ordered anything on Thomann. I've put in an order ( €79.00 including postage ) for no less than 10 tuning pegs. It's time a couple of the beasts got some well deserved care and attention to the mechanicals.

The Tobias really does need new pegs - I replaced several a few years back, but my stocks are out, so I'm swapping all 6 of them out for Warwick ones. Here's hoping they fit.

The other 4 are silver ones to replace all the pegs on the Crafter acoustic bass I have - I was saddened by the quality of the pegs on it, they're out of character with the rest of the bass which has a quality well beyond its price tag. It sounds great, but the tuners have basically just eaten through the cheap metal the gears were made of. Not impressive. So it's warwick ahoy for them as well.

The fitting will be a damn sight simpler than the car seat was yesterday. Found that control knob, finally - another £6 to add to the pile, but the job is complete (bar a damn good leather clean and feed for the seat itself - it'll come up a few shades after that I'm sure!)

Also think I've worked out how to grease the seat. No euphemism intended.

Of cars and mechanics (sort of)

For the first time in a long time, I got the tools out in earnest and completed a much put-off job. My wife has a rather nice diesel estate car which has done us fantastic service zooming around France, but it has one niggling annoyance for her - the drivers seat. The car has leather upholstery, which is nice, but it's the basic model so the seats were only adjustable in a couple of dimensions.

Her previous vehicle had been a top-line company car, custom spec BMW 320d, with full electric seats, and she likes to drive with a lot of support under her legs, slightly pitched backwards. This was impossible with the stock seat.

I found an eBay listing a few weeks back for an 8-way electrically powered version of the same seat, so I secured it (and later, the switches, which the breakers yard had removed, the cheeky bastards - they got another 30 quid out of me for that and I still have to buy one of the switch tops) and it's been with us for about 3 weeks or so.

Last night I got home and decided there was enough light left to go for it, so I did a little investigation, established that the plug under the seat for the supplies had a full set of cables (there were 15 cables and the stock seat only had 3 plugs so I made the assumption that the car has a stock loom which will take all the optional extras), and went for it.

It was great to dig out the tools again, get my hands dirty, and figure out how to remove the seatbelt assembly (another piece the bastards at the breakers yard had taken off and neglected to mention in their listing!!!) and transfer it to the new seat - this went off without a hitch, each element under the seat actually had a physically notched removable plug so they couldn't be inserted into the wrong slot in the plug unit.

Best of all, the seat is in fact the right colour - so, although it needs a good clean and feed, I don't need to remove the upholstery and transfer it across.

The forward-backward motor sounds a little tired, I suspect the tracks need grease, but otherwise it's working fine and she now has the driving position she wanted.

I just have to find that switch knob. Grr.

Possibly the oddest Gig I've been to... Roger Waters does the Wall at the O2

Good gig: huge venue: enthusiastic performer: political content as subtle as a sledgehammer (and bang up to date, including plenty of recent footage from our current war fronts): a spectacular audiovisual experience.

But the audience... weird. Half-dead suits who have dug out an ancient T-shirt (or worse yet, have bought one at the venue): fat, bloated versions of their earlier, more energetic and visionary selves, suddenly half-reanimated like Jackson's backing dancers (and just as jerky in their motions).

Seriously, I sat near a fat bastard who nearly ripped the seat out with his catatonic rocking motions.

And at points, the whole floor audience stood up, and then in the next track realised they were quite tired and really needed to sit down again, but did it very gradually so they didn't look too old.

I spent a good portion of the time laughing at the audience!

Oh - and prostate problems and roving Becks beer sellers create CONSTANT TRIPS TO THE BLOODY LOO!

Gawd, these wispy remains of men...

Great gig though.

Best laid plans of the long weekend...

Well, a combination of things meant I only got a small amount of what I had in mind done. I got the studio set up, but then got myself exhausted moving crap gravel...

On the plus side, I think the project I started a while back is going to arrange itself into a nice trippy piece of 80bpm big-beat bentley rhythm ace / ethereal crossover.

I got experimenting with the GR50 and the 6-string, and started messing with pad13 - a 5ths heavy reverb flute pad affair. After a little low C bass and some heavy big beat, it's morphing nicely.

Today was a 12 hour day in work, so I've been restricted to a half-hour aerobics session on the Warwick. This turned out to be reassuring - fast fingers tonight.

I think the hard work over the weekend paid off - that, and the screwdriver work out I had this morning trying to dismantle a 6th high crate which arrived from Frankfurt... Pulled 8 "screws" out of the marine ply and pine before I realised they were actually a form of nail. Then I used a massive 8mm flatblade screwdriver as a crowbar and split the bastard from stem to stern. Very cathartic.

1st May Practice and musings

Breeze are playing O'neills in Oxford tonight. Get down there and suck up the sticky goodness.

I've got to mind the fort here at home, so it's 6 string practice time this evening.

25 mins of warmups with doubled finger warmups and some additions to the hammeron/pull off exercises.
Today's scale was A - majors, minors and arpeggios with triads and 7th chords.

Use some Jamiroquai to warm up the funk muscles. Decided on a stamina session so played:
- revolution 1993 full-on, all 10 mins 16 seconds of it. This one will work out your left hand, it's got a lot of B work down at the low end. Feeling pretty good at the end, can still pop around the fills.

Now we'll move onto a song for the day - analysis and catching some new vibes. My big list has some good tracks on it, all on the iPod. The idea here is to try to get some new ideas into the playing, maybe some new rhythmic influences.

Today it's "talkin loud" by Incognito. A challenger. That'll see me through to about an hour and a half of work.

Tomorrow should be a good studio day, if things are willing...

Another Nigerian bank scam

But this one is simply hysterical. Have a read. It came through to Nic as a JPG which I presume gets around spam filters.

Anyone know what a "suspense account" is? I don't think Hitchcock had trouble, but this fella has no idea.

The evening's work

All the usual stretch exercises, 15 minutes.
Spiders for 10
Hammeron and pulloff stuff for 5, finger isolation LH
3 octave Arpeggios for 10 across all 6 strings.
Right hand dexterity, all 3 finger workouts: both directions with lead and drag of alternating fingers.

Then some cover band work on 6 tracks, paying attention to the rhythm of the baselines on "smooth" (Santana) and checking the outro in particular.

Should have had a jam this afternoon but the drummer's in Armenia... How random is that?

Great night at the White Horse

Great night last night - White Horse, Emmer Green, Caversham, Reading.

The pub was packed - great atmosphere, like pubs should be, a lot of happy, friendly, chatty people.

The house band is the function band I'm working with - sounded pretty good for a first stab at public playing: lots of funk too. I think these guys could have a go at some original material... Hmm!

18th March is the next one; come on up and get a seat early - the place is jumpin! My last post shows how quirky the stage area is. It's total 80s front room chic!


<<<<<< Posted While Roaming / Gigging >>>>>>

Location:Emmer green

Stop Giving Me Choices

Bless the Hoosiers, they've given me something to think about.

A lot of the best creative work comes from constraint; star wars with physical models and the film print-though matte tech which Lucas and his team perfected still look better than the modern equivalent; they had to create something because they didn't have much choice.

Modern life has created industries who exist only to give choices of approach and tools; apart from the danger of paralysis this creates (which tool? argh)


<<<<<< Posted While Roaming / Gigging >>>>>>

Shot from White Horse

Meant for illustrative purposes. The venue feels like a living room! It's like TFI Friday all over again...

The iPhone's not bad but loud stuff still overloads it totally.

<<<<<< Posted While Roaming / Gigging >>>>>>

18 years and counting

Nic and I have been together 18 years, and romance ain't dead yet. Isn't love grand?

Got to make the effort, so I forewent(?) the customary flowers for a "I live hunting chavs" card and a tomtom satnav.

Yep, an old romantic, me.






Dinner is special though.

Love ya Nix

Best spam ever?

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To browse lists of accounts related to your interests, just look for the "Browse interests" button on your new Twitter homepage.
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We already had some great sessions with entrepreneurs in Montreal building a community among small businesses; members of New York City’s art scene sharing a world once confined inside museum walls; and, folks at @WhiteHouse and on Capitol Hill providing a view into the inner workings of government and how they use Twitter to demystify it.
I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build.
Follow our adventures @OnTheRoad.

Finally, a little white stuff.

I've been watching the news about the north with a certain amount of jealousy - I know, grass greener (whiter) et cetera, I wouldn't want to be there, etc - but truth is I really want to snowboard in the field opposite again :-)

Now it's come, and it's continuous. Advising to the Met office (those famously accurate* people) this'll keep up until 1700 or so. If so, we'll be well and truly snowed in again in our little valley here in south bucks.

This is good. Quiet, peace, time to think, south east england forced to contemplate its' navel for a while - I believe B&Q withdrawal symptoms will claim several in Slough this weekend, as they are forced to put off choosing a new sofa in a range of ****ing fabrics (ta renton).

A little enlightenment would go a long way around here. Maybe people could wake up and realise we're being crushed by the government and businesses and we need to take the power back. It's happening now - people are rising back up, realising what's actually going on. Our government is not scared of us. They bloody should be.

(*this may be sarcastic)

Android experimental "Trojan" angry birds add-on

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002063.html

This was only an exercise in proof on the part of the researcher, but I'm afraid this marks the beginning of the end for android. Note where this story is, and it closes with "buy F-secure's crappy antivirus software for your android handset". All the vendors are pushing hard, just ask Graham Clueley from Sophos, who pops up all the bloody time regarding mobile security issues.

Those nifty 1GHz snapdragons are going to seem pretty crappy when antivirus gets in there. Stick with platforms which don't allow unsigned code to be installed BY DESIGN - why did google leave that backdoor in there? Idiots!!

Btw another rehearsal on the 29th, and the cheese keeps on coming. New strings for the Tobias I think.

Airbus jets - not the A380 oil leaks, something worse... Software?

Something caught my eye yesterday. My day job is in software, mainly in testing. Anyone who will listen to my droning on this subject will know I have huge worries about the reliance we place now, and will in the future, on embedded software systems (e.g. Google's recent trials of a driverless car in California).

It seems airbus has more than mechanical troubles (recent A380 oil fire and the rather journalist friendly shots of bits of engine cowling). Mechanical issues don't worry me enormously as they get fixed (this is a very rare error on Rolls Royce's part), but what is happening to some A320 series airlines worries me enormously.

Now, it could be electrical, but the idea that at any point cockpit systems, including computers, might just "wink out" scares the living daylights out of me. These planes are exclusively fly by wire. Do they have manual backups? And even if they do, do the pilots still have the skills to pilot a plane whose aerodynamic profile is at least partly compensated for by auto stabilization systems? God, I hope so.

If it's software, it would feed into my software engineer tinfoil hat paranoia about software in everyday life; I'm perilously close to choosing the devices I use and rely on by their reliance on embedded software and not upgrading where possible. I'm starting to think I should get a pre-1974 car, a very old washing machine, and extremely cheap TV... Where could it end?

We don't fly often, which is a comfort, and I'm actively considering next summer as an exercise in what can be done without using modern airliners.

Human beings are human, they get bored and lazy. Software project managers are stressed and driven by gantt charts. Software engineers are at the bottom of the heap. Software test engineers are at the end of the project (and usually that gets squeezed so hard the testing is compromised).

All this makes me think that increasingly complex software (and it's usually just enhancements of existing software, they rarely do rewrites, too expensive, so it's patching and extension all the way, baby) will lead to higher failure rates in devices which use software as control systems, and it doesn't get more critical than airliners.

Watch the skies, and wear rollerskates.

First rehearsal in a while... Oh yep.

Well, the function band thing has kicked off. The exploratory operation on 2/11/2010 turned out to be in a surreal location - the main hall area of a preschool in caversham! I was cranking it out surrounded by painted lizard cut outs on the Walls (one of which was labelled "tortoise" - education education education eh?).

Ts been a while since I did any serious live playing so it's fair to say I was worried about levels of preparedness. I didn't do as much work on the tracks as I wanted to, but I figured this was a get together to see what our dynamic would be like.

After about an hour I'd loosened up a lot: things started to flow a little. Then I realised I was dancing while I played and my face was sore. From smiling. Grinning, actually. This is what I was made for: the interplay, the vibe, the groove, the good feeling, the drummer and me tearing the roof off.

It was a little rough at the edges like you'd expect, and I don't have the tones ready on the pod yet, plus I took the synth with me and didn't use it (not sure if I need it yet - I could do the brass into on celebration I guess!), but it was simply glorious.

I lit up like a dusty bulb after the pullcord ping. Can't wait to dig into the tracks properly now, get them bang on so I don't fall into my Jaco habits when overplaying! I tend to bubble a bit.

People, live music is a joy everybody should experience. Go out there, do it now.

Location:Bassland

Bassist: original and covers. And now, cyber political activist

What a weird week.

Before I get kicked off - the music projects are continuing: Tony is recording further material with a click track to get us to work with: he's also got some potentially awesome support slots we might do through a swimming buddy (of all things)... hope that's not a euphemism (I'm sure it isn't...). The Function Band from Hell is having a first get together on the 2nd of November so I'll be working on the first 10 songs double-time from this point onwards. Good tracks too, they've thrown in "this love" by Maroon 5 at the last minute - the baseline is surprisingly well-formed. I'd forgotten how instructive it can be to listen with a musician's ear to chart music sometimes: just because it's popular doesn't mean it isn't well written.

Anyway...the last few days have been a bit... well... odd.

A week ago last sunday the ol' Xantia (142000 and counting) decided to stop starting - a first, it's been bulletproof until now - so I was stranded at home working remotely for the week, something of a busman's holiday.

On thursday lunchtime I read about the Vodafone UK Tax "deal" from the government: a long-standing tax demand for an estimated accrued £6Bn from Vodafone's profits and acquisition of a german company years back, and subsequent profit stashing since then: they have a company called "Vodafone V2" *eyebrows arch* based in Luxembourg, that well-known place of business (for those who wish to escape european taxation), and have been using this to purchase the German company and give a tax-friendly haven for their profits since.

The whole thing has been grinding along for years, but lo and behold with our new Uber-Priviledged government, the negotiations are suddenly taken out of HMRCs hands and given to someone who would apparently take a less hard line approach: net result, Vodafone are eventually billed for only £1.2Bn over 5 years. What a joke.

I got angry. I surveyed twitter and facebook and the web and found an utter lack of interest, apart from Private Eye, who broke the story ages ago.

So I thought "Why is nobody else saying anything?" and I wrote a few tweets. Including this one:

https://twitter.com/basexperience/status/28014835912

and now it looks like this:

http://twitoaster.com/basexperience/important-please-retweet-this-if-you-believe-that-vodafone-uk-should-be-made-to-pay-their-6bn-tax-bill-to-offset-the-cuts-osbourne/

this is the tweet's entry on a site which tracks their popularity. Currently the tweet is number 6 in the world (seriously - in the WORLD) and has reached over 400,000 twitter accounts, being retreated by nearly 2000 people.

Since then, and spurred by the strength of feeling and goodwill I've received by some excellent people, I've turned it into something of a campaign. We're starting to get noticed (guardian unlimited story last friday).

I've started a petition - funnily enough, the e-petitions site at number10.gov is offline! What a coincidence.

Mine is at gopetition: http://www.gopetition.com/petition.40035.html - if you believe as I do that it simply doesn't matter if it's legal, what Vodafone have done is rob food from the mouths of every single one of the 500,000 jobs which will go as a result of the government's cuts. The benefit cuts alone are something like £7Bn - how much would the original £6Bn have offset?

The petition has over 1000 signatures since I started it last thursday, with some comments made by people who are just as angry.

The whole experience has completely changed my mind - I was one of the apathetic, but now I see that through technology I had thought was irrelevant a few months back, public strength of will can be expressed.

Stand up and be counted. Oh - and it turns out George Osborne is a tax avoider as well. Nice. A hypocrite as well as an idiot.

Location:Cyberspace, baby

It's all kicking off...

Excellent. The vocalist Tony found is stunning - simply stunning - her voice is like Alicia keys meets marcella Detroit: soulful, with a range and depth which belies her age.

Meanwhile the function band for gigging fun has first rehearsal 2nd Nov. I've got 10 songs to cram, many of which are quite funky. Excellent.

<<<<<< Posted While Roaming / Gigging >>>>>>

"Discover" - the offline WikiPedia app - VERY useful.

While out in Paris, we visited many many places. Actually, we need to go back for a week to get around the places we missed out on, including going up the eiffel tower (discovered you can book online now, but was all booked up!). I digress.

While using the excellent wifi in the "Secrets de Paris" hotel - an EXCELLENT hotel, very reasonable too - I found "Discover" for iPad, which is a rather nifty reader for Wikipedia. Free, too.

Turns out it's more than nifty, it caches your history - which means you can load it with up to 250MB of info on the places you're seeing, then use it as an offline tour guide! Worked wonderfully for the eiffel tower, we sat with ice creams and read all the stuff a tour guide would tell you!

Good app. Rated highly.


<<<<<< Posted While Roving / Gigging >>>>>>

New project - when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up

Well, tony's given me a CD of the new vocalist he recorded the other weekend. It's a rough cut of 5 single takes of her and an acoustic she was playing (in a pretty simple style too).

This 17 year old has quite simply got the voice of an angel. She's got marcella detroit's range, with a sort of smokiness that maybe Sheryl crow has sometimes. And her lyrics are excellent.

At the moment I keep feeling like I want to put something very massive-attack like on it, but this is a personal thing only. I know we're trying to look at a band for live work only at this stage. I suspect it could be a little like a slower version of maybe some of KT tunstall's work - but much less of the pop.

It's a totally new genre to me, this. It's not fast, furious or funky (although she'd have no issues whatsoever cranking out the attitude of Alanis Morissette and I could go v Flea a la "you oughtta know") and I am well outside of my comfort zone on it.

I must like it though. One tune in particular has the chorus stuck nicely in my head.

Hmmm.


<<<<<< Posted While Roving / Gigging >>>>>>

Filming at Green Park???

I suspect it's only some form of cheesy corporate promo - possibly for a market research company if my ears don't deceive me - but there is something mesmerizing to me about watching a production team and actors going about their business.

They seem to be playing roles associated with working out what consumers want in a mobile phone, I think, and how to market it. An irony given my vociferous rantings in the past about just that topic.

<<<<<< Posted While Roving / Gigging >>>>>>

Location:Green Park in Reading