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I prefer short scale, and happily the Fender/Squier offerings have a P pickup in the middle and a jazz pickup at the bridge. The Squier Jaguar has the neck joint at 15 and the Fender Mustang at 14 so that's a point in favour of the Jaguar. And I prefer the Jaguar neck which is a thin C. If an Epiphone EB-0 comes up second-hand locally I'll try one.
Tonally the P attitude is more my thing, it’s so much more of a sledgehammer.
Yeah, that, I've never been the most subtle of creatures and the P just fits better in my meaty paws bashing out Punk and Hardcore lines. Much happier on the Roundwounds with a bit of overdrive blended in via my Sansamp.
Working on Mystery by Turnstile ATM.
Interesting piece that 👆
As a beginner, I’m trying a bit of everything, J, P and short scale, but maybe I’d improve quicker by sticking with one? 🤔
"As a beginner, I’m trying a bit of everything, J, P and short scale, but maybe I’d improve quicker by sticking with one? 🤔"
I think until you're confident with your technique then it's probably easier to stick with very similar dimensioned basses - string spacing at the bridge being the key thing. But the most important thing is to play lots! Playing through gear with more clarity (single coils vs big humbuckers, headphones or fancy full-range cabs vs old 15" speakers etc) tends to force you to tidy up your playing more quickly and also shows you the expressive potential of a bass guitar (it's very much like a bigger guitar!)
But as it isn't a competition and there is no destination, just stops along an endless journey, then I'd enjoy the journey however you prefer.
I'm just coming here to post this morning's find...
www.espguitars.com/products/26337-surveyor-87
It's ridiculous and I love it. I might be buying my own Christmas present this year! I've never really looked at ESP before but they've got some very nice PJ style guitars on their website.
In other news... 5 month old mini-me has finally accepted that his 7pm bed time is not flexible and he's passing out pretty consistently every night so I've started playing again. The new Squier P sounds lush and I've been really grilling it, trying to get some speed and accuracy back. It's amazing how much I dropped off the pace by not playing for a few months. Well, since June the 6th exactly. I found it impossible to do anything for a while there!
There's a studio/practice room set up near me which offers lessons. They've been shut for ages but I've made an enquiry. I want to play somewhere other than the living room and hopefully try playing with some real people.
Wow, that ESP looks interesting.
Not in the same league, but the Musicman Dark Ray is also shaking things up with the leds around the knobs. Definitely a bit ying to the pre-aged yang.
So, been noodling round on my old BC Rich but never massively got on with it, it's been kept mainly for sentimental reasons. Been looking at PMTs online store and quite fancy either one of the entry level Ibanez GSR200B (£199) or the Hofner Ignition violin base (£289). Don't want to spend too much and both guitars get rave reviews. Edging towards the Ibanez. Anyone got direct experience they can share or a recommendation around the £250 mark?
I’m not a fan of the violin basses.
For that price you’ll struggle to beat a Squire Affinity but I’d flex the budget if I could for a Yamaha TRBX304.
https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/yamaha-trbx304-4-string-bass-guitar-factory-blue
That ESP looks mental, love it, not a fan of the 'relic'ed' look, (unless it's an actual vintage instrument).
You won’t go wrong with a budget Yamaha, either the trbx304 or the BB234. I personally prefer the tone of the BBs but there are plenty of sound clips on YouTube
Thanks for the recommendations but I would really like to keep the spend south of £250. No thoughts on the Ibanez?
I haven't played either. It's an odd short list in that they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. A violin short scale and a plank long scale. I think trying a few would be a good idea to narrow it down. Of the two I'd take the Hofner because I like short scale and I quite like the bass sound on Beatles recordings.
The Ibanez are meant to be very good value for money, but you could do with getting a feel for various different types before you buy. Can you get yourself into a PMT store? I found them very accommodating and helpful. At your budget you can't really go wrong with a Yamaha as said above, or a Squier. Depends what you want to play of course, although anyone that tells you you need a specific bass type to play specific genres is either inflexible or looking for an excuse to buy more basses ....
Did you fall in love with your mate's USA Jazz bass, or decide it wasn't for you?
Asking for a friend who MAY be in the market for a USA Jazz at the right sort of price if he wants to shift it on......
It's gone back to him now, if it was a P or a PJ I'd be working out which child to list on Ebay but yeah the thinner neck wasn't for me.
I'll ask him what his plans are, where's your mate based? We're down in St Albans.
Thanks for the recommendations but I would really like to keep the spend south of £250. No thoughts on the Ibanez?
Ibanez are pretty good. I had a higher end one that played really well but didn’t get on with the thin tone on the D/G string. There are a few places doing the TRBX174 under £200 and that would probably be my first choice at your budget.
Who wants to see some Squier build quality?
A few days after I got the new P bass I noticed that the scratch plate wasn't sitting flush. Once I saw it, it started really bugging me! Also when holding it up to the light you could see loads of unidentified crumbs and scum in the gap.
Last night I had a chance to whip it off.
This is what I found...
Wires outside of the recess, squashed by the plate and sitting (luckily) either side of the screw that was holding it down.
Also the whole thing underneath was full of paint spray and saw dust which I've cleaned out.
So yes, quite nice for the money, but still thrown together on a production line by people who would much rather be doing something else.
Thanks for those setup videos up above, I'm planning to go through the process when I get the time. Some of the new string zing has worn off but it's still rattling like hell.
Dagan likes the Ibanez
Dagan likes everything. 😉
Here's his previous cheap bass vid.
PMT cheap bass vid 1
I bought the Squier vintage modified Jaguar before seeing the vid. I went into the shop to buy a Fender Mustang but prefered the Squier. Try before you buy. Mine is on page 2 of this thread.
I’ll ask him what his plans are, where’s your mate based? We’re down in St Albans.
West Yorks, but sufficiently mobile for the right deal!
I needed a 5 string for various bits of accompaniment work and got a Squier 70s classic vibe Jazz V ...... takes some getting used to, but the quality isn't an issue. It's made in Indonesia if that's any statement?
Regarding less expensive basses, I’ve always felt that you can’t assume they’ll be consistent across a brand or model. Pickups and electronics and strings will usually be consistent but the core tone of a bass comes from its neck and body - to simplify it somewhat, the neck needs to be stiff, the body needs to be resonant.
With more expensive basses there’s more chance more that time and effort at the factory is going into picking the right pieces of wood. But with budget instruments I feel it’s more luck of the draw, so playing the exact bass you want to buy is a lot more important.
I always play basses unplugged at first because if it sounds great unplugged it can sound great plugged in (but might need a different pickup etc). If it doesn’t sound great unplugged then you could be fooled by the electronics but then find in the mix (which is where the core tone matters) that it’s lacking in punch, growl, etc.
Scott's (Devine) Bass Lessons have a huge following https://scottsbasslessons.com/ and there's a 14 day free trial.
I'm using Fender Play ( https://try.fender.com/play/play-now-2021) + some face to face lessons
Bass to Badass is also worth a look https://www.bassbuzz.com/lessons/
And there's also Scott Whitely https://www.scott-whitley.com/free-bass-lesson-library/
Have a play!
Obliged, thanks!
Having sold the Fender P bass, jazz bass and Mustang and returned the Sire U5 I've picked up a Sandberg Elecktra VS (The manufactured in Korea, assembled in Germany) P Bass. I picked it up cheaply on eBay and it came with a set of flats.
Just wow! I found the Fenders easy to play, but the electrics were nothing special. The active pickups in the Sandberg are lovely - 2 band eq.
I also bought a used Shechter Banshee short scale from GuitarGuitar after seeing a couple of reviews. It's alright, but not amazing, and I'll probably return it after the weekend.
Off to Denmark St on Saturday though, so I might come back with something else!
I play with a guy whose open stage favourite is I Saw Her Standing There. I've dutifully learned the Lennon part on the guitar but it's one of those strumming sequences I struggle to play and sing at the same time. So in the Covid pause I've learned the bass part which I can sing over. Reading about the bass line, Mc Cartney used the line from Chuck Berry's I'm Talking 'bout You which they covered in Hamburg, two songs one bass line. The obvious step was to learn the song, now I've just got to persuade my mate to learn the guitar part. Here's my part on the little Vox.
I got a bass for christmas !! it's an encore p-bass which is perfect for a beginner like me I reckon. Having played other stuff for years the biggest hurdle is the lack of finger power and the hands not doing what my ears assume they should be able to 🙂
question, how do you mute the bottom strings if you are playing on the top two? I'm trying to lock in the habit of thumb on the back of the neck not over the top, if you move the thumb from the bottom string you get ring out
Also the action is about 5mm, is this too high? I know it should be high compared to a guitar but I reckon I could bring it down a bit, unless this is a bad idea?
edhornby
Full MemberAlso the action is about 5mm, is this too high?
5mm is miles too high. 2.5mm on the G, 3mm on the E is about right. (Or to where you feel comfortable to be honest, but around there is there abouts, measured at the 12th fret, top of the fret to bottom of the string.)
Process to setting up a guitar is:
Buy new strings.
Tune it.
Set neck relief, put a capo on the 1st fret fret the string at the last fret. check what gap there is under the middle point between first and last point, it should be around 0.5m (Some people like less, some more)
Tune it.
Set string height, as i said around 3mm on the E 2.5m on the G, if you've not got a radius gauge, just measure the other strings around 2.65 and 2.85ish, you want the radius to match the fret radius. These measurements are taken from the 12th fret, top of the fret to the bottom of the string.
Tune it (Always make adjust ments to a tuned instrument, this is important after every adjustment you make and always adjust in the playing position.)
Set intonation. 12th fret harmonic and 12th fret fretted should sound the same(and look the same on the tuner(your hearing isn't good enough to notice below 5 cents)). This is achieved but making the string longer or shorter. Probably best google this tbh.
I just bought a piece of shit Clarry jazz bass for 85 quid, cause my 5 strings electrics went kaput, active with no passive mode, so gubbed. Stuck some flat wounds on it and set it up, neck like a baseball bat, but it'll do a job till I can save up to buy a better yin. Been pleasantly surprised tbh! 😆
Getting a guitar set up nice is half the battle, there's nothing worse than a badly set up guitar, and it's the main issue with cheap instruments.
edhornby
Full Memberquestion, how do you mute the bottom strings if you are playing on the top two?
Muting is done with both hands.
If you are playing the E string, you are muting the ADG with the left hand. if you are play the A, you are muting the DG with your left and your thumb is most likely resting on the E naturally muting, further down you can mute the EA with your right too thumb on E and another finger can rest in the A. A simplistic explanation tbh. But muting is done with both hands is the main point I'm making
tbh there's loads of different techniques, and it's something that changes depending on how and what you are playing, probably best to youtube it.
Here's some crap playing on the crap Glarry! 😆
https://soundcloud.com/seosamh77/oh-darling
https://soundcloud.com/seosamh77/sunday-morning
https://soundcloud.com/seosamh77/boris-the-spider
Ignore the mistakes, I'm just learning/remembering them again on this 2 day old hunk of junk! 😆
Mrs OTS treated me to a new cheap Jazz Bass for Christmas. I've always got on withe G&L stuff and the colour just did it for me. Sort of alike a pound shop Flea bass.
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Grade 5 book now after 14 months learning. Nearly nailed Sweet Child o Mine!
I'm no really sure a 450 quid bass qualifies as cheap. 😆
£299 in the sale at GuitarGuitar - and it's all relative 😉
fair enough. 😆 very good price, so well done!
tbh I've never really lusted after very expensive instruments, diminishing returns and all that. 10 or so years ago, I'd have put the sweet spot around 4-500 quid, guess these days, can probly bump that to around £6-700.
I had fender p and jazz basses that I ultimately didn’t get on with. I have a music man stingray which I’ll never sell, but other than that I tend to prefer the sub £500 kit.
thanks team - new strings are a good call as they are probably the originals on there and I'll have a go at working on muting as that's a good explanation Seosamh, thanks
Muting is one of the biggest challenges in moving from 6-string to Bass and its something I've found really only comes with time as you get more used to it.
Muting finger style is as Seosamh descibes. I base my efforts on watching Jack Bruce vids - watch players who played really loud. I have more trouble with a pic as the strings are further apart than on guitar which complicates left hand muting.
edhornby
Full Member
thanks team – new strings are a good call as they are probably the originals on there and I’ll have a go at working on muting as that’s a good explanation Seosamh, thanks
No worries, just remember, muting is somewhat of a dynamic process so it's changing alot during a song and from song to song. There's a lot to learn, but you get it after a while, though I do still struggle myself from time to time. it's easy to not do it right.
Edukator
Free Member
Muting finger style is as Seosamh descibes.
On picked muting, just playing there, it's not actually too dissimilar tbh, you are using a more guitarist orientated palm muting style, but the left hand is the same, except you are doing a kinda half palm muted thing at the back on the E and A in particular, D if you need to. But the string you are playing is ringing out as much as you want to.
With muting it's about the sound too, cause you can mute different ways to achieve different levels of muting, pressure is quite important, as in you can mute absolutely dead or just a slight mute and everything in between really.
Just some observations cause I've got a beer and a bass in my hand at the minute. I am far from an expert, so better opinions are out there. 😆
I often mute the E string with the tip of the finger which is holding down the A string on guitar - that's what I fail to do on bass. I can't use my thumb to mute the E string on walking bass lines that require a stretch because it's round the back of the neck. I find myself muting when there's a finger or thumb free and trying not to hit the E string when I shouldn't the rest of the time.
I decided I no longer loved my Modern Player Jazz, despite the totally awesome neck, so I decided to sell it to fund a new P Bass..... we all need a bit of diversity don't we! I advertised it on the dreaded Marketplace and within a couple of days a guy messaged me all excited as he had been looking for a Modern Player. Then came the dreaded "would you consider a swap?"
A cautious "depends on what you want to swap it for....." yielded a pic of an absolutely mint Mexican Standard P Bass from a few years ago..... about the same age as my Chinese Jazz. In gorgeous Candy Apple Red with a Maple fretboard. So, a straight swap (don't think either of us could believe our luck!!) and so my old Chinesium marvel is now gigging somewhere near Cannock.
It was strung with flatwounds, which are a new experience ( so much so my Mex Jazz now sports some Rotosound 77 Hybrids ) and plays like a dream.
The money I was going to spaff on a USA performer has now been turned into an Orange Crush 100, plus a nice MXR compression pedal. Happy bunny to say the least.
I might have a belated Xmas present for anyone who wants to try full Yousician membership. During the Black Friday sale I wanted to renew my membership with the 50% discount but I didn't realise the offer only applied to the family version. So I accidentally paid £90 (ouch!) for another year instead of the 60 I paid last year.
I can add 3 people and you can use the full version of the program with any instrument. You need to make an account then I think I just need your email address to add you to my 'band'. If you don't like it I'm assuming you could drop out and give someone else a try.
What it's great for...
1. Practicing when you're not sure what to work on. Just turn it on and play songs all night.
2. Stamina. I used it almost every day for the whole first year and it transformed me from clumsy noodler to someone who can bang out full songs consistently.
3. Dexterity. You'll be skipping strings and using the whole neck whether you like it or not.
It's not great for learning any music theory and it's probably boring if you're already a competent player. For a beginner it's like going to the gym for your fingers and you can level up fast. If you can play with some decent headphones on it sounds like you're in the band.
Let me know if you want to try it. I'm struggling at the minute with a baby in the house but I've had a few sessions this week and I still enjoy it.
I picked up my first bass on Monday night, an Ibanez GSR200 in a brilliant blue/purple colour. Its 10 years old and in "new" condition - not a mark on it. I love it already. Came with a wee practice amp, so I'm all ready to go.
I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the learn to play bass stuff on the internet however. Can any of you experienced players suggest a reasonable website to use? I'm looking about locally for a bass teacher, but nothing is jumping out at me so far.
TIA,
paul
I love flatwounds for the sound but they are weird to play. Especially if you are doing a gig and things get sweaty!
I could be interested in that yousician membership sharkattack - think I'm on the free trial still.
I have my old bass for sale btw if anyone is interested. STW mates rates apply obvs 😉
https://reverb.com/uk/item/49520620-fender-precision-special-deluxe
No one else has asked yet so inbox me your email address and I'll add you. I'm loving it at the minute learning Cream and Hendrix tunes, I feel like I'll levelled up a a bit.
I have my old bass for sale btw if anyone is interested. STW mates rates apply obvs
That's lovely. And... I'll say no more because I can't have it!
Ooooo P-Jay, sadly T'wife would have my gizzards if I did take you up on your mates rate as my van just came back from the MOT with a list of advisories as long as my arm that need sorting.
Ironically I love the way flats feel (so silky!) but much prefer the aggro sound of round wounds, especially when you put a bit of Overdrive on there.
Can any of you experienced players suggest a reasonable website to use?
I also have no Bass tutors that I can get to easily so I'm using various Youtube bods, Fender Play and Rocksmith, Rocksmith is bascially 'Guitar Hero' with actual instruments and hugely enjoyable, was up until way past Midnight last night trying to nail the intro to Peaches by PUSA, you do need a £30 cable though.
I’m a bit overwhelmed with all the learn to play bass stuff on the internet however. Can any of you experienced players suggest a reasonable website to use?
Did you see my post above yours? Get a free trial on Yousician and if you like it I've got a free membership you can have.
It's great when you're not sure what to practice and just want to bang out full songs for an hour.
@sharkattack I checked and I have gone onto a quarterly sub so I have paid up until April I think - maybe best to let someone else make use of it for now?
Cheers though
Thought it was time to give this a bump.
My playing has stagnated a bit over the last month or so - flipping Sweet Child O'Mine 🤬
So I've reverted to nailing more of the songs in the Grade 4.
And bought and sold some more gear 🙂
I miss my short scale Mustang, but I don't miss the buzz and hiss from the pickups, so I've decided my next shortie will be a Sterling Musicman. Just ordered one from Project Music in Exeter.
Yay the thread's back!
Also just been on a bit of a kit buying spree in the form of a Earthquaker Westwood Overdrive
And a EHX Bass Clone chorus pedal.
Having a ton of fun with the Chorus pedal and ticking off all the relevant 'guitar shop' classics; Come As You Are, Love Will Tear Us Apart, ETC. For £60 it's a brilliant bit of kit, mildly annoyed I didn't get one sooner.
Bass into EHX Big Muff into the Westwood then into the Bass Clone and then into the Sansamp can make some astonishing noises!
Still haven't found a tutor so it's all on Youtube/Fender Play/Rocksmith.
Also just been on a bit of a kit buying spree
This is me. All the time.
Just picked up a full fat double bass though! This'll be fun to see how I get on with it, having really only ever played electric bass (and a bit of time with an electric upright)!
Don't think I've posted here yet, but have played bass on and off for close to 37 years (!). Very much a home hobbyist player these days, enjoying playing along to old grunge stuff. Got a 1990's MM Stingray 4 string (honeyburst, black pickguard, gorgeous bird's-eye maple neck), but grabbed a 5 string Cort last Christmas on sale at Guitar Guitar. Great instrument and immediately felt at home on it. Now desperately trying to resist the urge to pick up a fretless, after having had a couple back in the day (a Westone thunder II, then some years later a Fender USA Jazz longhorn, defretted by Overwater). Really wish I'd kept one!
Looking at Sire to keep costs down but have seen an early Warwick Rockbass 2nd hand on ebay. Google reviews suggest the early ones were pants, though much improved in later years. This one has the single bridge. Any opinions or experiences?
Was also looking at the EHX Bass Clone chorus. Comments above have probably convinced me to get one...
My playing has stagnated a bit over the last month or so – flipping Sweet Child O’Mine 🤬
@oldtennisshoes yep, it's a tricky one! I had the first bits and pieces sorted, but it's taken me several weeks to get to the stage where I can play it through to the backing track with only a little it of swearing! Here's a hint. Don't stick rigidly to the suggested fretting positions in the tab..... for example there are a lot of places where you can play open strings in the middle of fast passages..... especially where you're fretting a D on the A string and then told to fret an A on the E string. The end of line licks can be fretted differently too, in fact the suggested fretting is in places a complete nonsense. The way the rhythm chops and changes from phrase to phrase keeps you on your toes, and the speed of the backing track doesn't help either....... I found a couple of drum only backing tracks on Youtube and although the Trinity version doesn't match up exactly with the real track, you can play along to the 4/4 drum track and go back over awkward phrases several times. Being able to slow Youtube down to 75% speed helps getting those bits under your fingers too.
As for buying sprees, well, I treated myself to an Aguilar Tone Hammer preamp as well as a couple of other pedals that appeared from Santa...... a synth pedal, a chorus pedal and a phaser. Always up for a challenge I've been getting my fingers round some Muse stuff. So far I've got Psycho nailed, and I'm working on Hysteria. I've got the main riff at about 80% speed so far!
I'm very much a beginner, even though I've owned a few bass guitars over the last 30 odd years. I currently have a Squire J-Bass in a lovely Lake Placid green. I pick it up, learn a couple of easy songs, then put it down again for months on end. I've started learning songs and techniques again via a Fender Play subscription and I'm quite enjoying it. However, in all the time I've had a bass, it's always been a right-hander. That's what I started learning on as a teenager, and it's what I've stuck with all through the years.
A big part of me now thinks that my reluctance to really commit to learning the darn thing is that in the back of my head, I'll never really play it well because it's a weird righty shaped thing.
I've started eyeing up proper left-handed basses, but I'm still kind of reluctant to commit because for all I'm very limited in what I can play at the moment, I don't know if I really want to go back to complete basics!
Arrgh!
@scapegoat indeed. I've been altering the tab where it makes more sense to play an open string or just other fret. I think it's the relative randomness of some of the variations that just does my head in. But as I'm only learning for fun, I'm just going to play it how I want to 🙂
@beagleboy I'm fully right side dominant, but I often wonder if I'd play better left handed.
I might try to pick up a cheap left hander and have a dabble.
My kit buying spree has been limited to a König & Meyer clip on light for the music stand. I used it first time at a gig last night and am really pleased with it.
More generally what are people‘s opinions about the online bass courses available. I looked a Scott’s and that looked interesting but are Fender or any others worth considering instead?
I used fender play for a while and it was OK. I keep thinking about Scott's Bass Lessons course, but I'm yet to commit. Another I also keep looking at is the Beginner to Badass Bass course - again, I've not committed
https://www.bassbuzz.com/lessons/beginner
I do have a 1 to 1 less a week as well.
I ended up signing up for Scott's Bass Lessons for $149 for the year.
It is very good - loads of options and some great tools like the looper for practising specific parts. I'd recommend it to anyone.
I'm thinking of taking a break from my face to face lessons as well as a result.
I've got SBL but I haven't found any spare time to dive into it yet. It's such an overwhelming amount of information. It's hard to know what to do first.
It's so much easier to just jump on Yousician and bang out full songs for half an hour but I'm not learning any theory.
I've got absolutely no routine at the minute with a baby running around. I'm really starting to miss it!
I ended up signing up for Scott’s Bass Lessons for $149 for the year.
Their 'players path' series of pieces to learn are brilliant and it's worth paying attention to the recommended courses for each piece as that is a sort of guide through what they want you to be learning at any one particular level. I love it but ran out of time to practice so have cancelled but it was great while I was going through it
It’s such an overwhelming amount of information. It’s hard to know what to do first.
As above, follow the Player's path stuff and make sure you go through the recommended courses for each piece as that is an excellent way of not being overwhelmed with which course to do next
Afternoon all, I am nowhere near good enough (yet) to be able to learn a piece by ear. Can anyone recommend somewhere or someone where i can ask for a piece to be taken from a recording (most likely youtube) and noted down in a tab? Obviously, there will be some some of payment involved, i would imagine.
TIA,
paul
i got some songs transposed a while ago using people per hour.
https://www.peopleperhour.com/
A music student in Colombia transposed two albums for me, relatively cheaply and obviously a decent enough price for them as well. He had some fancy software that enabled him to do something with the mix so he could also reduce the other instruments and voice so I could hear bass well above the mix as a sound file too.
Also on the positive side; The Wedding Present now have Colombian fans.
Also on the positive side; The Wedding Present now have Colombian fans.
🙂
cheers! I will have a look into that!
There are loads and loads of folk on the net who do bass transcriptions, but it can sometimes be hard to find exactly what you are looking for. What songs are you wanting to learn?
Cover Solutions on Youtube is very good and does requests in exchange for payment. If he chooses your song then everyone gets the benefit because his transcriptions are bang on.
In other news, I'm tackling SBL. I now have a much better understanding off what a scale actually is and why they are useful. By focusing on the intervals rather than the notes or a pattern you can remember how to build a scale and recreate them anywhere. I don't know why more people don't explain it this way. I just need to memorize more of the fretboard so I can move around a little quicker.
Also, I've wanted a Boss OC-5 for ages and they've been out of stock for years. They popped up at Anderton's and I grabbed one. It sounds mint. Really deep, thick, sub bass sounds that sound more DNB than guitar. Haven't had time to play with it much yet but I love it.
There's a guitar tab app I use that gets Bass tabs added to it pretty quickly, you have to get pretty obscure before you draw a blank, quite a few tabs are submitted by the band themselves.
Currently learning Wenceslas by Gnome
YouTube comes up trumps again and again.
Type the name of the song followed by “bass tabs” and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find a version of it, otherwise, and this is a good test for any player, find a video of someone playing a cover version and watch how they play it. YouTube is a great learning tool as you can slow it to 75% or even 50% without changing pitch.
There are also free transcription sites available via a google search, some of the free. One such is freebasstranscriptions.com
He has something like 200 songs written out in standard musical notation.
Liamguagan.com also gives free downloads and has tab as well as musical notation. His YouTube channel also has a lesson on how to play by ear. I’m currently using his transcriptions for a couple of Muse tracks.
In other news, I’m tackling SBL. I now have a much better understanding off what a scale actually is and why they are useful. By focusing on the intervals rather than the notes or a pattern you can remember how to build a scale and recreate them anywhere. I don’t know why more people don’t explain it this way. I just need to memorize more of the fretboard so I can move around a little quicker.
That’s just it, once you’ve got the patterns memorised they are repeatable over the entire fretboard. Arpeggios are also very useful for this, as long as you think why you are playing them. Simple triad arpeggios show you where to find the 3rd, 5th and octaves. Simply stick a I, IV, V backing track on and riff on arpeggios. Let’s say you start in G major, and ply arpeggios on G C and D, then start in A and play A D and E Now B to play B E F#. Kept as simple as possible start on the E string so that the next two chords have roots on the A string. You’ll soon realise you’re playing exactly the same patterns two frets higher each time. That I,IV, V pattern never varies, so you can play a I,IV, V arpeggio bass line in absolutely any key, all you have to do is find the root on the E string. To challenge yourself, try to name each note as you play it. So your G major arpeggio is G B D G, A major is A, C#, E A. You soon learn where the intervals fall
So... I got a guy on fiverr to transcribe the bass line from a YouTube vid! For the princely sum of £6!!!
I realise its not exactly an advanced baseline but I'm a complete beginner and I adore this track. I hope you enjoy!
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Currently learning Wenceslas by Gnome
I enjoyed that. quite alot
does anyone have a recommendation for a decent small bass amp?
preferably teenytiny headphone amp that isn't plastic tat thing
like a tiny head or a belt mounted thing.
It doesn't need anything like "sounds" my black wound trubass strings sound ace as it is 🙂
New Bass Day
Sandberg California II VS4 Lionel Short Scale
Soft aged - 'tis a thing of beauty and gives me the chops of Victor Wooten.
(well 1 of those things is true 🙂 )
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Oooosh that Sandberg's nice, like the chunky 6-bolt neck join.
Nice bass!
Am likely to buy my first bass tomorrow. I like the look of the Squier 40th Anniversary Precision at Andertons.
I'd be there today if the trains were running.
Those Squier P basses are so good. My white one (pics on here somewhere) sounds lovely. Build quality is fine but QC isn't great so make sure you get a good one and don't be scared to ask for an exchange if you need one.
I keep looking for decent local used ones so I can have something to mess around with. I want to try flat wound strings and BEAD tuning, stuff like that. Maybe even a crazy paint job.
Also, if you're a current SBL member they're offering half price lifetime membership. It's a chunk of money that I wasn't planning on spending but it might be good value in the long run. It would be nice to just have access to it forever.
Anyone got experience of the Sire based?
I’ve had a couple of Sires. A short scale and a 5 string active jazz bass. Both were poorer than the Squier equivalent in terms of build quality and the 5 string weighed more than it should. I’m not a fan.
@eddiebaby how about my fender p bass instead of the Squier?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304579025826
First time posting on this thread...
I've played bass on and off for 30 years now, been in bands etc, and then once the last band finished I stashed everything away about 10 years ago...
Decided that going to work, training and racing wasn't enough of a life so I've started 'ProjectFunk'
Having essentially played 'rock' bass for 30 years I'm dedicating myself to learning a completely new style.
Currently learning the first two Jamiroquai albums as I love the work of Mr Zender, and exploring Funkadelic etc..
Read a few people on here talking about getting things tabbed etc. My advice would be to persevere with tuning your own ear and trying to figure out what's being played yourself. It may take you 469,000 listens to a track and screams of 'what the funk is he playing there!?', but when you figure it out it's much better than just reading a tab.
Darn. I appear to have bought a secondhand P Bass from some dodgy bloke on here...
Happy days.