I think it is very important, in such a small music market such as Denver to share positive experiences. I have had really good experiences working with Mark over at Tenoriowerx.
He has saved me a couple of times, and really takes a lot of time to work with each client to not only understand what their playing style is, but also to educate about the intricacies of bass and guitar setup.
The first time I met Mark I had just purchased a used Alembic that had some neck issues. He setup it up perfectly, and saved me a bunch of money. He sat with me for almost two hours talking about setup and why certain things happen with regards to the neck of a bass, it was extremely enlightening and extremely cool that I got an on-the-spot setup clinic. I thought it was worth a bottle of XO Cognac :) More recently I knocked over a MTD 5-string I picked up and severely damaged the 0-fret (they do use a traditional nut, but also a 0-fret that is made of metal.) I embedded the strings into the fret, and damaged everything up to the third fret. He was able to get it back in working order without replacing all of the frets, only the 0-fret. And the setup is perfect of course.
He teaches clinics on guitar and bass setup, and based on the mini-clinic I got from him, I would highly suggest attending one.
Now if I could only find someone so dedicated to his craft that works on double basses I would be ecstatic. I have two luthiers very close to me but they are very busy and less inclined to work on basses (read financial penalty haha.)
I have been meaning to post an update to the original article for a while. The constant buzz of a humbucking pickup, coupled with dirty power at bar after bar led me to rethink my amplification setup. That, and when playing the upright slap style I had a tendency to hit the exposed poles on the pickup–not a good way to make friends with the sound engineer (spiking the input on the board to +12db, that is.)
So it was back to finding a pickup that worked. I settled on the K&K BassMax pickup, it offers decent sound–not nearly as warm as the Realist–and sounds reasonably well Arco. For low volume venues I will definitely be sticking with the Realist. But when cranking the volume, the K&K BassMax was hard to beat.
It is so rare that I stumble upon a Jazz album that makes my jaw hang open, slightly askew. The Watts album is one of those. Aside from the heavy hitting lineup throwing down some of the best Jazz I have heard in a while–the audio production on this album is absolute perfection. Every nuance of some of the best musicians around is very clear, and the drums, ahhh the drums sound so good.
Did I mention the lineup isn’t exactly bad either:
Jeff “Tain” Watts - drums Terence Blanchard - trumpet Branford Marsalis - tenor & soprano sax
Christian McBride - acoustic bass
Lawrence Fields - piano (track 4 only)
I made the decision to leave the band I have been in for about the last year: Hellbound Billy. My last show was on May 23rd. It was a hard decision, but what it came down to was that I don’t want to travel, and if you are going to have a successful rock band–you absolutely have to go on the road (unless you are in a cover band.)
After thinking very hard about what I want to do I have decided to jump in with both feet and focus on getting my Jazz chops together. Jazz is a very different beast. I don’t have any desire to be the next Christian McBride, but I would like to be able to throw down some nice walking bass lines. I also want to study more on the production and sound engineering side of things too.
I have signed up for an online Jazz bass class through the “International Institute of Bass“. I am very skeptical of online music classes, but I have taken a music history class through a local college and it was actually quite fun. I will post my impressions as the class progresses, keeping in mind that with something like this you can only get out what you put in. I figured with a the price being so low ($25 for a 12 week class!) I had very little to lose.
Next up is back to lessons, locally I have found a very talented Bassist Robin Ruscio, who excels at Jazz. The one on one coaching is very useful.
I found an audio production class through Colorado Free University (no, it isn’t free though) hosted at Helmet Room studio in Denver. I am pretty sure they use pro-tools (and I am a logic user) but you can’t learn unless you step outside your boundaries.
In a month or so I will work on getting some time in an ensemble, probably in a classroom setting before I start sitting in in public. I will keep posting back here with my impressions of the various classes and groups I run into.
I saw that people were using the drumkit from rockband to create drumkits for use with garageband. Well I wanted to do this with logic, and I wanted a full kit–so I got a couple of rockband kits for the Wii (about $30 each) and set it up. It was pretty easy. Here is what you need:
Right now I just have the two kits haphazardly placed near each other. The plan is to get some PVC and set this thing up more like a real kit. Here is a picture:
One downside to the drums is that they aren’t pressure sensitive, so every hit is the same volume. Another problem is that each kit doesn’t use unique USB device identifiers–so they can show up as different device numbers depending on how you connect them, and in what order. Getting the mappings correct in Junxion took a few minutes to figure out. The hardest part was getting the high-hat correct. I wanted it to work like a real high hat, making a sound when you stomped on it, and sounding different when closed versus open. I figured that out, and it was pretty easy once you learn how variables work in Junxion. Here is a quick tutorial on how to map two Wii Rockband Kits using Junxion on a mac:
It’s been a while since I dropped an update on my blog. Playing in the band had been taking a lot of my time. We did a bit of traveling, and like most bands have some incredible stories from those trips. It sounds like we will be winding down for the summer, and to be honest I really need a break. One last show booked right now, May 23rd at the Beer Depot Lounge in Denver, it is a long story–we were booked at another place and things got messed up. Five bands which translated into a 30 minute set, less pay than promised, and some other things that I wouldn’t mention on a public website. Anyways, it’s my birthday, so come down and celebrate with me! Info here.
For the time being I am experimenting with a website I found: kompoz.com. Pretty fun site, allows songwriters and musicians to collaborate over the Internet.
I am also planning on an experiment using a couple of “Rock Band” drum kits for the Wii and an assortment of tubing to create a midi-capable drum kit for fooling around on. I will post pictures and maybe some video (you really don’t want to watch me play drums, really) once I get it working.
I also see that I have more than 1500 comments waiting for approval, so if you dropped a note recently sorry–it was lost in the deluge of spam. It should be appearing soon!
We have posted some rough mixes from the recoding studio. We are planning to go back and record a real album, but for now you can here the demos we have been sending for booking the band.
A little about the bass you will hear on the tracks: it is a 1950’s Karl Knilling made in Germany. It has a carved top, and laminate sides/back. It really projects well–nice mid-tone response and is particularly good when played arco. If the bass wasn’t so good for playing in bars I would swap it into rotation for orchestral playing, but the laminate construction makes it so much more resistant to getting cracks and it resists feeback so well, that, despite sounding better than my carved bass I will probably keep it setup for playing rock for now. I picked it up in a trade for a couple of electric basses, an American made Tobias Growler and an Alembic Essence. It was hard to give up those basses, especially the Tobias because I have had that in my arsenal since 1996 and it was so fun to play slap on. The strings are Tomastik Spirocore Mediums, not exactly a great choice for playing slap unless you enjoy pain (I do!) And the recordings were done with just a condensor mic placed about 18 inches from the left F-hole.
I had never recorded an upright bass before, so when we went to the studio, at the request of our engineer, I brought everthing I had to throw at it. I ran with a magentic pickup, the K&K golden trinity mic, a realist pickup, and the regular condensor mic. I also had a couple of differnt pre-amps thrown in there too for good measure. No suprise that the studio’s condensor sounded best. What was suprising was that given the nature of digital recording we were able to look at the waveforms from different pickups and see what frequency ranges and phasing effects we ended up with. It turns out that the setup I have been playing live with is out of phase (the Krivo magnetic and Realist) which explains why it was more resistant to feedback. Though after being able to hear them compared to various other setups in a controlled environment I have decided to change my live setup once again.
The studio we recorded at was Module Overload in south Denver. It was wonderful! We were able to lay down tracks for six songs in a single day, and didn’t go broke in the process.
I recently started playing in a punk/psychobilly band. Playing punk on an upright is hard, and I haven’t quite nailed down the slap technique. But the hardest and most expensive part was dealing with feedback. When I joined the band I had to use my Ergo electric upright that I bought for night practicing just to be amplified enough to be heard over the drummer. Unfortunately, I am a bit of a purist and really don’t like the sound of an EUB–besides it lacks the stage presence that a big bass has.
So I began on a journey to eliminate feedback. This is a frequent topic on many upright bass related discussion boards. Many rockabilly and psychobilly bassists simply tape the F-holes on their bass with duct tape to reduce ambient resonance. I think it looks really dumb, and shows an unwillingness to understand the dynamics of the instrument they choose. Really, if you don’t care why not just play an electric?
There are several things that can be done to prevent feedback at ear-splitting volume levels:
Use a laminate or hybrid bass, fully carved basses are much more susceptible to feedback. The carved surface vibrates more freely. At one point during a band practice I got that familiar low frequency feedback loop that upright players dread and looked down to see the top plate on my fully carved Calin Wultur moving almost a full inch! Not good for creating cracks and really not good for sound post placement.
Get a good pre-amp with phase inversion abilities. If you can get the signal coming from you bass out of phase with your amp it will not feedback as much. One downside is that the bass loses a bit of the warmth through the amp, but it works in a pinch. Better to sound thuddy than not be able to play at all.
Turn down the volume. Duh. Not an option when playing with a punk drummer though.
Feedback eliminators. These are digital signal processors that detect feedback and eliminate it. I tried a Behringer model, and it was rather inexpensive. It works really well. There are several ways to use it. One way is to set it to automatically eliminate feedback. I don’t recommend using this method because it will start to cut frequencies that you need to sound good, and if you play arco forget it–it will think it is hearing feedback not music. The second way is to “train” it. You set up, crank the volume and tell it to locate feedback. Once you start playing and get feedback it will lock that frequency out. Doing it this way only required five or so frequencies before it was totally eliminated. Remember though, this is a band-aid and is really not the best option–besides these devices were designed for vocal use, not bass. And another thing to consider is that because it is a DSP you are going from analog to digital and back to analog. It will slightly degrade the sound and add a small (barely noticeable) amount of delay to the signal.
Get a magnetic pickup. I picked up a KRIVO on eBay, based upon reviews from the talkbass forums. It sounds well. But there are a few gotchas. It requires a steel-core string to pickup the signal, so strings like Obligatos won’t work. Also it requires a metallic outer casing on the string for grounding–so you can’t use something like a Eurosonic string either. I can’t even begin to explain how much money I spent on strings during this experiment. The two major problems I have with the humbucking style magnetic pickup is that it doesn’t work well playing arco, and there is an ambient hum noise–the whole setup is very sensitive to proper, clean power. Not always available at bars and practice areas.
So what was my final solution? I ended up getting a 1960’s Knilling Hybrid 3/4 Bass (yes, that is my third double-bass and yes I know I have a problem,) and blending the Krivo pickup with a Realist transducer via a K&K pre-amp. This allows incredible volume levels without feedback. I am running through a Gallien Kruger 800RB head into a Trace Elliot 4×10 cabinet. At almost full volume there is no feedback, and the blending allows me to play arco. One really interesting side effect is that at really high volumes the strings will vibrate as if they are being bowed just through conducting the sound from the amplifier–it provides an uncanny amount of sustain for a double bass.
Back in the day if you wanted to work on your II-V-I technique or some Jazz standards you would pick up an Aebersold* CD or tape. But times have changed! With a couple of computer programs you can get access to an entire fakebook worth of musical accompaniment, change the key at will, speed it up, slow it down, add or remove instruments, and loop any section for as long as you like.
Sorry Windows users, this article focuses on the Mac, but most of the information should carry over to similar windows programs. The process is pretty simple. Here is the short summary:
Get good instruments for Garageband (optional, but recommended.)
Download “Band in a Box” standards off the internet.
Convert the files to Midi format.
Play them in GarageBand using good instruments.
Here is a demonstration:
One of literally dozens of websites with Band in a Box Jazz standards is Les Gorven’s Midistudio.
Ben Boldt offers a bunch of high quality instruments for Garageband if you don’t want to pay for one of the instrument packs, he requests a donation, but doesn’t require it.
Be sure to search on Google for more places that have Band in a Box files, because many of them are different, and some are much better in terms of accompaniment and melody. Have fun!
* Jamey Aebersold’s work is still great, and highly recommended.
Here is a cool group, consisting of flute player Greg Pattillo, bass player Peter Seymour, and cellist Eric Stephenson. They combine Jazz, Classical and other styles to form a very unique sound. I wouldn’t call it fusion, because that has a negative connotation to most Jazz fans–perhaps a better term is an amalgamation.
Here is a youtube clip of these guys playing Mingus’ Faubus Fables (you DO know who Faubus is don’t you?)
They released an album in 2007, and according to their website they are dropping another one later this year. I can’t wait!
I have found a few sources of free sheet music on the Internet. Most of it is public domain, which means that the copyright has expired. These sites are under constant pressure from music publishers, they have tried different tactics to shut these sites down. A few times they have been successful: for example, earlier this year the International Music Score Library Project was temporarily off line after running into legal troubles. Fortunately a few folks stepped up to the challenge and did what it took to get them back online. If you have some cash to spare, be sure to donate to these guys to help them stay in business.
Here is my list of free sheet music resources that I have found on the web:
Send me a message if any of these sites move or are unreachable–the nature of what they do makes them constant targets for corporations that think their business models are threatened by these web sites (they aren’t.)
Updated September 5th, 2008: Added Musopen Project link.
If you have ever sat and talked to me about classical music, then I have doubtlessly brought up Krzysztof Penderecki. My favorite compositions of his are the 3rd Symphony and Polish Requiem. Have a listen:
I saw in one of the last issues of Double Bassist magazine (before they killed it, which was saddening) a rumor that he is working on a double bass concerto. I am very excited for the release!
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CD or tape. But times have changed! With a couple of computer programs you can get access to an entire fakebook worth of musical accompaniment, change the key at will, speed it up, slow it down, add or remove instruments, and loop any section for as long as you like.
