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a mate suggested looking for a tokai hard puncher for a precision bass. never heard of them but went down the rabbithole, they seem well thought of, some preferring them to fender.
i dont see any for sale anywhere near me but its another one for me to keep an eye out for.
So, ive been playing Talk Talk and Cure stuff etc since getting my new Squier mini P bass (in lovely red).
Practicing muting etc. The only problem is i cant do bass fingerstyle, as i need my fingernails to do guitar fingerstyle 😀 problems, problems, problems. So pick playing only it would seem.
Unless anyone has any suggestions. Playing bass with long fingernails......
I find palm muting easier when playing with a pick than fingers. The whole “Real bass players don’t use a pick” thing is just a bunch of bollocks anyway. If you are looking for a softer sound, use a felt pick like uke players use. Also apparently what McCartney used to use with his Hoffner.
I don’t know how long your nails are but Geddy Lee and others use their nails as part of their fingerstyle attack. And it does feel like nowadays more bassists play both and that pick playing is less often (foolishly) vilified.
Tons of great bassists use a pick most/all the time - and they’re not all playing rock! Steve Swallow and Bobby Vega are worth checking out, two of the pick playing greats.
@sadexpunkAny good?
thanks for thinking about me mate, but sadly no on a couple of counts. price-wise its a good couple of hundred or so more than i can afford. secondly im not a fan of sunburst really, i prefer either pastel colours (pastel pink, green that sort of thing) or glittery gold/silver. i guess thats not set in stone as sometimes you just see something and think 'thats the one', but i usually scroll past sunburst 🙂
like i said tho, thanks for looking out for me.
heard charlatans 'one to another' on 6 music yesterday and thought thatd be a good groove to get under my belt. went searching for youtube covers/tabs and came across this....
with associated tab.....
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hce4JPZni68-HlTA84q2BH12TR3NpTTE/view
so ive been having a bit of a practice, however ive noticed that some other tab sites list the notes as being one fret lower. so whereas the main groove that matey (and me) have been playing is F# with the little drop to E, songsterr has it listed as a constant F, so no 2 fret drop available there (as you cant go lower than E) and all the other chorus/bridge notes one fret lower too. UG doesnt seem to have bass tabs, but if i read the chords right then that suggests it matches songsterr and its all one fret lower.
if that is indeed correct, i'll probably leave it as i dont fancy altering my tuning just to get the lower D# drop. (i think)
anyone know what the 'proper' version is so im not practising the wrong thing?
cheers
the "proper" version will be whatever sounds in tune with listening to it!
The youtube video sounds correct as far as the actual pattern goes,
Lots of bands tune their guitars down half a step ( so on bass e flat, a flat , d flat g flat ). Jimi hendrix famously always did. All of the early green day stuff is
Bands sometimes do this in different performances of the same song. I'm never completely clear why, i know some people believe the guitars stay in tune better (&sound slightly heavier) and it may be to take some strain out of the singers voice if hes had a heavy night!
If you have a little electronic tuner gadget, its not that difficult to change the tuning quickly
the "proper" version will be whatever sounds in tune with listening to it!
of course, i should have just trusted my ears shouldnt i. played it through the speakers and its fairly clear to me that its the 'dropped' version thats correct.
If you have a little electronic tuner gadget, its not that difficult to change the tuning quickly
yeah just had a go and its not that difficult, dropped the E string down to Eb/F# and it sounds better. now i have to practice keeping the former notes correct on that string but dropping them down a fret on the A string but its all good fun.
cheers
Ooh, New Bass Day for me! A lot of the music I'm asked to play is written for a five string, so after a bit of saving and research I got myself a Sire Marcus Miller V6 5 string. The things that sold it were the Jazz configuration, rolled fretboard with the same 9.5" radius as my Fender Jazz and a 3 band EQ.
I've had a great afternoon learning to drive it. The knobs are a fiddler's dream, with volume and tone stacked (which acts as a treble cut/boost in active mode) pickup blend, another stacked knob with mid cut and boost and frequency sweep, and a bass cut and boost which is also a push-pull switch between active and passive. It took me a few minutes of head-scratching to work out what they did, but I've more or less got the hang of them now.
It's great fun, but my 4 string muscle-memory is struggling a bit with the tighter string spacing, although I'm sure that'll come right soon enough. I'll post a pic in the morning, as the slightly lurid "buttercup" colouring needs a bit of daylight to show it in its best light.
Eb/D# ..........
dohhh.....of course.
thank you 🙂
dropped the E string down to Eb/F# and it sounds better. now i have to practice keeping the former notes correct on that string but dropping them down a fret on the A string but its all good fun.
Forgive me if I misread but conventional wisdom is you drop all the strings a half step, which maintains chord shapes and relative positioning of notes.
That reads to me like you might only have dropped the E which will make your life much harder with tabs and fingering.
Forgive me if I misread but conventional wisdom is you drop all the strings a half step, which maintains chord shapes and relative positioning of notes.
That reads to me like you might only have dropped the E which will make your life much harder with tabs and fingering.
no you didnt misread, i only dropped the E string as i was under the impression that thats what you do. happy to be proved wrong, i spose itd make more sense to drop all 4 strings for chord shapes, but i guess harder if you play by knowing your notes on the fretboard as theyre all 'wrong' then.
EDIT: chatgpt suggests its just the E string, not all 4 strings?
You do you as they say! 🤣 for that charlatans bassline it probably doesn’t matter but it would for others..
so confusingly there are two different things here. (& bear in mind this is being done on the bass to match the guitars )
There’s detuning all the strings by half a step so that the notes on the fretboard all drop by a semitone and the relationship between the frets stays the same across the neck. That’s useful if you are matching detuned guitars. For example. Most of the early green day stuff is detuned like this. If you don’t do all 4 strings then the patterns of fingering don’t work as easily and also there are open string notes between ones fretted higher up the neck that you can’t keep in as you play along.
secondly there is “drop D” style tuning which is used in metal a lot. In guitar only the lowest string ( e) is detuned to a D ( a whole step down) this allows a heavier feel to the guitar riffs and makes power chords super easy to play quickly. In this case the bass might get only the lowest strings dropped to match.
hopefully that makes sense.
Nice choice @Scapegoat. I’d a brief flirtation with a 5 string last year. Fun for a few months but I didn’t really need the B string and ended up not using it, so sold it on. Was a mighty sound with the bass boost engaged though. 😀
Been in London with the family this week. The others were tired yesterday and went back to the hotel to put their feet up. I took the opportunity (for a bit of peace) and took a wander through the music stores in Denmark street. Small selection of basses compared to guitars but saw some beautiful vintage Fenders. One shop had a gorgeous ‘73 Jazz but at 7.5 grand, it’s a bit out of my price range.
My current bass lust is for a Gibson G3. Seen a couple recently but both around the 3 grand mark. Epiphone do the Mike Dirnt version but I really want the natural version which is only available direct from Gibson but is as rare as hens teeth.
Much better explanation there by @ceepers 👍
I'm a metal head so that was my reference point and the majority of what I play massacre on bass or guitar was recorded in Eb tuning (so strings are Eb, Ab , Db, Gb (Bb, Eb)).
Some of those are also "drop D", but in practice that is usually a Db, Ab etc.
There's a bunch of stuff out there with very odd tunings though.
A lot of the stuff we play is in Eb. I play mostly from notation, so the patterns don't matter so much, and so far I have got by fine with DADG tuning (hipshot D-tuner on both 4string basses) . It sometimes gets a bit sticky if I'm sight-reading, as you have to fight muscle memory to remember the notes on the D string, but it does have advantages, for example 1-5-8 arpeggios are all on the same fret.
I've tried playing stuff in D on the 5 string, but most of the stuff I know pedals the open D, so that wasn't as successful as in thought it might be!
While we are talking the Eb thing ( all strings down half a step ) Does anyone definitively know the reason behind using it? I remember reading some people think guitars stay in tune better when playing live but I don’t know if that’s true. Or is it to give the singers voice an easier ride?
Edit….
main reasons seem to be to do with historically playing with brass players / in bars with detuned pianos / it’s easier on the singers vocal chords / it’s easier to bend thicker strings / things sound warmer
more details here
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/13tahc1/discussion_why_do_so_many_different_bands_use/
but this is my favorite reason……
”Ebm pentatonic is all the black keys on a piano/keyboard. makes it very convienient for jamming and taking acid“
“While we are talking the Eb thing ( all strings down half a step ) Does anyone definitively know the reason behind using it?”
There’s a few different reasons; matching the typical horn keys is one but in more guitar-oriented music often it’s for the tone and/or easier bending.
I was talking with one of the guys from Placebo about how people underestimate the effect of tuning on tone (when you downtune it’s equivalent to shortening the scale length AND moving the pickups towards the neck). He said they’ve used tons of different tunings across their albums for that reason, even tuning up half a step on early material to make it edgier and nastier.
as some of you know ive kept a casual eye out for a dedicated P. dont know why really, my pink ashdown is fine, but i guess its the (retired) singlespeeder in me, keep things simple, fewer options maybe.
i set my ceiling at £500 and would have bought a sire P5/P5R if id seen one in a colour i liked, but i just havent.
anyway, a chappy who was selling a fender a few months ago has just got back in touch to say he's selling it again (he decided to keep it but has since bought a yamaha BBP34 and so its on the market again.) i originally declined as it was above my ceiling (its still above my ceiling), and i have no qualms about sticking to my limit, but thought id ask your opinion on how its priced, whether it would actually be a bargain if i got it at £500.
fender player in daytona blue, think its a made in mexico jobbie with seymour duncan pickups. apparently its a 'saturday night special', in 'as new' condition and cost £800 new.
thoughts?
Play it first. Seymour Duncan’s are quite hot pick ups and modern sounding, compared to a normal P. Plus, you don’t know if you’ll like the neck.
I know it has upgraded pick ups but the price seems a bit high for what it is. It says Fender on it but a top line Squier will be just as good for less money. The player series is the equivalent of a BMW 316i.
For what it’s worth, my Classic Vibe Squier feels better to me than my previous Mexican Fender Vintera II and was 40% the price.
ok, thank you mate
I was talking with one of the guys from Placebo about how people underestimate the effect of tuning on tone (when you downtune it’s equivalent to shortening the scale length AND moving the pickups towards the neck). He said they’ve used tons of different tunings across their albums for that reason, even tuning up half a step on early material to make it edgier and nastier.
that's actually really interesting, thank you!!
on the p bass thing, id have thought that for £500 you could easily find a squier classic vibe and have enough left over to change the pickups / pickguard to taste.
I have a classic vibe jaguar guitar, originally intended to change the pickups but haven't bothered and played quite a few gigs with it.
Theres a cool gold squier p on ebay £330 and a refinished reliced and upgraded blue one for £425
Just my 2p but I'd say stick to the ashdown as the squiers and Mexico etc are all good but not fundamentally better instruments. Main thing that makes a player like an instrument is how the neck profile feels
The tuning and scale length is definitely interesting because piano makers figured this out 200yrs ago when building pianos with iron frames and made bass strings longer than the top strings because if it didn't matter they could have used the same string length and been simpler to manufacture
Theres a cool gold squier p on ebay £330 and a refinished reliced and upgraded blue one for £425
i like a sparkly bass but sadly theyre nowhere near for me to try, but thanks anyway.
Just my 2p but I'd say stick to the ashdown as the squiers and Mexico etc are all good but not fundamentally better instruments.
no good asking for advice and not listening to it, ill stick with the ashdown then 🙂
for now.... until i see 'the one' 😀
thank you