Bag It Up
I spent most of the day Saturday installing new locks on the house - not that the old locks were bad per se, but my lovely wife bought some electronic deadbolts with the spiffy new keypads. See, now I can't lock myself out of the house anymore (twice since we moved in). It was okay when security was around to let me into my apartment, but the locksmith is more expensive and a little farther away now.
These locks run on 9-volt batteries, so I did what most enterprising young musicians would do when faced with a need for the little square givers of electronic life. I raided the gig bag. By the way, it's a sure sign of domesticity when your gig bag becomes your primary tool kit. It isn't that I'm overpacking the gig bag, though. That bag could be a savior at a show when your gear (or soomebody else's) breaks down. It's a good thing I checked, too - the batteries in the bag were dead, and I ended up having to run to the hardware store anyway. Better then than at the show, even if I did have to extract my car from the snow to do so.
Anyway, if any of the readers of the bass book are checking this out, here's what's in the gig bag at any time:
- Multitool, like a Leatherman® or something
- Screwdriver, 'cause I hate the screwdrivers on the multitools
- Extra set of strings
- Polish cloth for bass body and neck
- Polish cloth for strings
- All necessary cables for gig
- Backup cables for the necessary cables
- The 9-volt batteries I had to replace
- Spare tuner
- Bass DI (in case the amp goes or they need a PA feed
- Spare fuses for amp
- Electrical tape
- Sharpies (Silver and Black
- Business Cards
- Flashlight
- Kazoo (once used for a solo and kept around just in case since then)
A good gig bag will help you out of a lot of jams, and it's handy around the house when domesticity ensues. Just make sure to test the batteries and make sure everything gets returned.
Finally Stocked Up
It should be a hard and fast rule for every player. Always keep an extra set of strings in your gig bag or case, no matter what. No matter how expensive bass strings can be (up to $75 in most cases for bass guitars, much higher for uprights), you should always keep a set at the ready, and maybe more at home just in case. I went ahead and splurged on some extra sets - partly because there's a new bass in the stable, and partly because I have to change the strings on the Jazz bass more often to keep things functional on the MIDI side. With the new Reason program, I want to program some new sounds into the Playboy Psychonauts set, and that means making sure the notes translate well through the MIDI pickup. The brightness of the new set is the biggest difference-maker in that department, and I just like the sound of them. Conversely, I've kept the same set on the fretless for a couple years or so because I like the duller, thumpy sound they make. Strings are a huge part of the sound, and even at $75 they're a lot cheaper, even in the long run, than the $8000 amp I just saw reviewed in Bass Player this month.
Also, I got just around to watching the "special event" of "Battlestar Galactica: Razor" last night after a few days' delay. It was decent, but I wonder if new episodes in March are still on the horizon given the writers' strike. I'm probably obligated by my AFM membership to support the writers in this case, but I'd come down on that side anyway. Just because the studios don't (allegedly) make money on Internet content yet doesn't mean the creative types shouldn't be reimbursed for their efforts in making that profit to happen. Here's to a swift and lucrative resolution.
Finally, anybody know where I can find a Cylon bass guitar?
RTFM
I'd like to thank the good folks at Propellerheads (creators of Reason) for posting some extensive documentation on their website. The challenge of finding the instructions I needed in a 400+ page PDF more than outweighed the cost I would have incurred by putting my fist through a laptop screen. I'm still a little irritated at the workflow to edit clips in the sequencer, but I suspect that it's the newness of the procedure, and that learning the keyboard shortcuts might be in order.
Even the image of a punched laptop is making me sad. That tells me two things - first, that I'm thankful it never happened, and second, that I need a small vacation.
eSessions
Part of the idea I had for this site when I created it was to give me enough space to record bass tracks for folks from files they sent electronically and post them for FTP. I've done this a couple times with decent results, but I'm also noticing that services are popping up that handle this kind of thing, too. To wit, I've signed up on eSessions to see what's doing over there. Basically, they act as a middleman to connect those organizing recordings and the players. There's a little real-time collaboration, but most of it is based off of taking the files and recording them at your own facilities on your schedule. Which is pretty damn handy, 'cause it gives you easier access to players like Tony Levin.
It also means that, at least theoretically, I'm up for gigs against Tony Levin, and I know who wins that battle every frickin' time.
But if you're looking for cheaper tracks from somebody slightly lower on the low end's evolutionary scale, lemme know.
By This Time, My Lungs Were Aching For Air
Even after this weekend's football debacle, I knew that the universe would somehow correct itself and make things right. And so it has - and once again we owe it all to the Internet. This Wired report has some of the original MST3K cast coming together for what appears to be riffery of a more refined sort (in that they gave up the jumpsuits, you know) as "Cinematic Titanic," riffing away on terrible movies 'til there ain't no more crappy frames left. Toss in some RiffTrax, and it seems like the entire cast of the old show is active once again in satirizing crappy movies. It's a good thing, too, as my videotapes of the series are still in boxes, and I don't have a functional VCR anymore. I still retain, however, my original fan club materials and stickers. I want those buried with me.
One can only hope, however, that it doesn't return to the Mike vs. Joel wars of the mid-90s. We lost a lot of good soldiers then.
Bass, Steelers, and the Weekend
Yes, that's a snapshot of my Second Life avatar playing bass while flying over a Japanese garden. So what? There's so much bass in my first life that I needed to create a second one just to handle it all.
I was searching for a bass with a Pittsburgh Steelers paint job as the correct prelude to this Sunday's Pittsburgh/New England game, but there just wasn't one available on the Internet. And I don't have the money or inclination to produce one myself or have it done. I've got no qualms drilling into a perfectly good new bass to install a MIDI pickup or have a little wood carved out for a new active pickup. There may even be a replacement graphite neck on the Stingray soon - I've always liked the sound, but I'm having issues with the neck moving, and the truss rod has nearly been tweaked to its limit. But a new paint job just doesn't sound that appealing. The others are matters of function, not form.
Oh, well. Enjoy the weekend, and try to avoid contacting me around 4pm this Sunday. I'll probably be yelling a lot.
Another Podcast Emerges
You can download it directly or listen to it on the flash player at IMN. Highlights of this episodes include Steve and Ryan's rantings on Hannah Montana and a little confusion about the second installment of R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet" saga. Just how long can one backing track continue?Sadie's fascination with the snow lasted exactly one day, and she has since decided that it and the cold in general is to be avoided at all costs. With another day of accumulation predicted for tomorrow, the dog may have to choice between cold and exploding. I fear for the consequences.
Those first set of tracks in the snow?
Yeah, those were mine. The smaller ones belong to the dog. Turns out the small ball of fur I thought would want to jump out and get back in as soon as possible when confronted with cold weather thinks she's a St. Bernard looking for lost skiers. I finally coaxed her back in, but it was a chore.
Snow in Fountain Square gives a comforting sameness to the neighborhood that I enjoy, as a thick blanket of snow just seems to make everything more connected. It also means I get a 6-month break from yard work. This, I enjoy.
First Friday is coming up at the end of the week, and I'm looking forward to a couple big shows - The Philosophy et al at Big Car Gallery, and The Redwalls, The Whigs and more at Radio Radio. Toss in a couple of holiday-related get-togethers and a MySpace revision deadline, and stuff's getting busy.
Knitting Cozies for Your Bass Guitar?
Google News occasionally shoots me updates on the keywords "bass guitar" - most of the time I receive yet another story about Rockband or Guitar Hero, but I occasionally get some interesting news. Something from PRWeb caught my eye today, mostly because it mentioned my bass book (I am a vain little monkey). It was just a passing mention, but the press release kicked off with this line:
From the series that brought you Teach Yourself Visually Knitting, Teach Yourself Visually Golf, and Teach Yourself Visually Bass Guitar . . .
Somebody (at least the publishing company) has matched playing bass guitar with hitting the links or making a nice little sweater. Toss in a Republican candidate playing bass (another thing the Google News updates remind me of constantly), and the low end has practically become a Norman Rockwell stronghold.
While I'm heartened by the place mainstream America seems to have given to bassists, I'm afraid of total assimilation. It was crazy enough when James Brown endorsed Richard Nixon. Can we afford another step in that dark, dreadful direction? The funk is truly music under a big tent, but these are staggering implications.
The Bass Geek’s Twitter
- Glad Dermontti Dawson can remove the "should be in" from his Hall-of-Fame status. #congrats63 19 hours ago
- Did I mention how happy I was to heartily boo Tom Brady on national television? 1 day ago
- Enjoyed our time in downtown Indy tonight, and feeling pretty good about our decision to leave a bit early. 1 day ago
- New blog post: Too Music Music This Weekend http://t.co/bwgYNEWZ 2 days ago
- Morris Day and The Time! #SuperBowlVillage #sb46 #SuperIndy 2 days ago
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