GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?

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I can still routinely play classical guitar stuff like this but I really need to practice my more advanced stuff: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/vals-ho ... onio-lauro

This isn't very good but it's a beautiful piece: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/preludio-alfonso-montes

I also recorded both of those on a 2010 smartphone despite having a hell of a lot better gear :slol:

This as well: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/romanza ... -ben-mobbs

I do really heavy similarly minimal / psychedelic doom stuff too: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/wires

And silly synth things like this: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/organ-donation

You can pretty much hear my thumb falling off in alzapua style (basically using thumb like a plectrum in tiny motions in both the down and up direction) bass pull off riff thing here: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/breadbaking-blues

Minimal beat piano stuff like this: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/lunalac ... reflective

And really strawberry floating crazy stuff like this I did when I was 16 and kind of miss not giving any strawberry floats (not that I give many when it comes to music, I save that for other stuff): https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/lunalac ... nt-to-make

As for my band, if you can deal with it, well, we recently released this wall of noise: https://tbstokyobroadcastingsystem.band ... x-sessions

I just saw this picture on there which I don't remember AT ALL, I think my bassist in Belgium must have uploaded it :lol:

That's me on the left, probably pretty wasted. What I definitely remember is buying a frozen curry from that corner shop in Brighton and being violently sick the following day.

My bass is finally in stock and being packed :toot:

Edit: sorry GG I missed your post above. I'll have a listen to your stuff tomorow.

It's here, it's finally here.

One of the tuning things is mounted slightly on the piss which is annoying in an ocd way, but the body finish is gorgeous.

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Isn't it normally just a threaded washer on a cylinder of some kind? You can probably tweak it, but if it's threadlocked, I probably wouldn't risk strawberry floating the finish and just leave it as it is.

Victor Mildew wrote:It's here, it's finally here.

One of the tuning things is mounted slightly on the piss which is annoying in an ocd way, but the body finish is gorgeous.

I may be in the minority, but I love stuff like this. My 2012 Schecter has a few manufacturer faults. They don't impact the instrument beyond aesthetics. Adds a bit of uniqueness to it. It's also useful if it ever gets stolen :lol:

Glad you got your bass though. I want to hear some sick bass parts.

Plays really well, and has some pretty big variation you can get in the tone from the combination of the pickups and the tone dial (a lot more range than a normal guitar would give).

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Nice. I think my Yamaha bass has at least 2 maybe 3 pups, humbuckers with two flushed next to each other on an offset, so they're focusing on the low and high range respectively. It's wired somehow to fade between the two on one set and then you can also use the bridge pickup. It's really versatile, and I can get some ridiculously powerful sounds out of it.

It has 4 tone controls I think so half the time I have no idea what I'm doing lol.

I traded an original DS with 2 games for it, so it was a ridiculously good deal, I think it goes for around the £250 mark. Yahama really do make some fantastic instruments for the price and it has the same cherry red sort of colour but with a metallic finish so it looks pretty metal and kind of my style, somehow, I wouldn't normally pick a bass like that. My taste would probably something closer to yours or a slimmer thing like my Ibanez Prestige S. I'm a lanky guy so I'm fine with a strat or tele shape, even if they don't suit my acoustic origins, there's just something convenient and playable about them and they stay out of your way if you're flailing around and stuff).

So have you literally never recorded with a bass then? Just direct input and a basic bass amp model should work, or no "amp" at all, a little EQ and compression is all you need. Bass is a fairly unique instrument like that, it's fairly easy to control the dynamics in a mix if you just direct input it. It's the ambient sounds and massively exaggerated, small room bass that creates issues in a mix, so I wouldn't mic up a small bass amp; if anything, you'll just loose frequency response that way. Plug it right in and you can do whatever you like with that 20-40Hz range :datass:

Previous to getting a bass, I just used my digitech whammy on the ludicrously over the top EMG 81/85 pair in the Ibanez, or I used upright bass samples once or twice. Ocassionally bowed double bass and cellos, man what a fat and dramatic sound you can get from those :nod:

That's a beautiful looking bass.

I have three Yamaha instruments. A FS830 concert acoustic , a BB424 bass and an AES420 electric guitar from 2008 or so.

Once I changed the pickups in the electric, it became one of my favourite instruments. The bass is good, although it's had pickup switch issues since I got it. It can literally do the bridge pickup, and that's about it now. The acoustic sounded great, but it played terrible when I got it. A professional setup got it sorted.

I've come to the conclusion that they don't really set their instruments up on leaving the factory, but with a bit of work, they are great instruments. I really want a Revstar.

Green Gecko wrote:
So have you literally never recorded with a bass then? Just direct input and a basic bass amp model should work, or no "amp" at all, a little EQ and compression is all you need. Bass is a fairly unique instrument like that, it's fairly easy to control the dynamics in a mix if you just direct input it. It's the ambient sounds and massively exaggerated, small room bass that creates issues in a mix, so I wouldn't mic up a small bass amp; if anything, you'll just loose frequency response that way. Plug it right in and you can do whatever you like with that 20-40Hz range

Never mind record, I'd only played one once before :lol:

In an old band practice we were playing fool's gold, and I had a go on the bass, and our bass player got pissed off I could play the more complex bit better than him.

I'm finding I can really dial in to the soind I want far easier than on guitar, maybe becuase there's so much range between the bottom and top strings.

Green Gecko wrote:I can still routinely play classical guitar stuff like this but I really need to practice my more advanced stuff: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/vals-ho ... onio-lauro

This isn't very good but it's a beautiful piece: https://soundcloud.com/benmobbs/preludio-alfonso-montes

Them two tracks are beautiful bud! I haven't gone through the whole post yet but strawberry float have you got a repertoire on you!

Yeah those are really lovely GG, good work

Beautiful stuff GG. Love it.

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Thanks guys. It's Alfonso Montez and the simpler piece is a homage to Antonio Lauro by Anthony Clarke, the former who is a fantastic melancholy composer. Villa Lobos is also brilliant, although bloody challenging. It's sometimes said that if you can play all of his "numered" pieces, you've got to be a great player. I don't have all of the tabs but I have played several over the years. I really should complete the set. It's a great goal for any guitarist, especially widdly widdly ones! In terms of harmony and big chords and stuff, I have to be honest that on electric there's really a limited amount of harmony people play. I suppose one could argue electric doesn't have enough sustain but it's really just the way rock and roll went. With the right set up you can definitely play more dynamic music. The guitar is a fantastically diverse instrument so one genre doesn't cut it for me personally.

A lot of those tracks are experiments and one bar things I've never finished and probably never will, and (ludicrously), the guitar things are done on the Soundcloud app without any rehearsal. Several of them are super dodgy non-things that are out of tune and just plain weird. I use my soundlcoud as a bit of a dumping ground because I just like to record a thing, sometimes upload it and move on with my life. Kind of like instragram. I probably could record an album of just Latin American guitar music but, well, that would close off my life goals and leave me with nothing to interminably accomplish :cool:

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If I have some more polished stuff, or Jesus Christ if you want to hear completely horrible, destroy your ears sort of psychdelic brute rock stuff, go to https://soundcloud.com/tbsbrighton

The latest bunch of sessions "Bequinox Sessions" is suitably unrehearsed, spontaneous, somewhat maddening but at times brilliant as well. It's about as raw as it gets. We are all competent musicians but a lot of it sounds like people who have never picked up an instrument before because, well, we probably haven't for weeks/months. We just go with the flow and take no prisoners. I love making music that way, it's so cathartic as you're not constantly judging each and every note/beat you play, which leads to some really bizarre stuff that doesn't sound like anyone else ever.

Another xmas track me and the old man did in 2018!

Something I can't figure out that is driving me nuts...

I'm trying to plug an electric instrument in to a smart phone, in the hope of recording a direct signal in an app (in this case BandLab).

Whatever I do, the phone mic keeps picking up on ambient sound. I just want it to receive a signal from the instrument and nothing else! Why does this appear to be impossible? :cry:

I Shot A Kid wrote:Something I can't figure out that is driving me nuts...

I'm trying to plug an electric instrument in to a smart phone, in the hope of recording a direct signal in an app (in this case BandLab).

Whatever I do, the phone mic keeps picking up on ambient sound. I just want it to receive a signal from the instrument and nothing else! Why does this appear to be impossible?

Can you disable the app from being able to use your microphone?

All my music these days are digital however, I have recently got a record player, so will be going back to some records in future

Ming wrote:
I Shot A Kid wrote:Something I can't figure out that is driving me nuts...

I'm trying to plug an electric instrument in to a smart phone, in the hope of recording a direct signal in an app (in this case BandLab).

Whatever I do, the phone mic keeps picking up on ambient sound. I just want it to receive a signal from the instrument and nothing else! Why does this appear to be impossible?

Can you disable the app from being able to use your microphone?

Good suggestion, thanks! Will give it a go when I get chance.

Ming wrote:

Another xmas track me and the old man did in 2018!

I had a listen to this earlier, it made me laugh :lol:

Do you and your dad write together then or do you put him up to it?

Victor Mistletoe wrote:
Ming wrote:
I had a listen to this earlier, it made me laugh

Do you and your dad write together then or do you put him up to it?

He's been making music since before I was born but has been making hip hop since the early 2000s. When I moved back home a couple years back we started writing together and haven't stopped since haha!

GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?

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