What's your preferred bass string construction?

[Cagey]

I'll bet you can keep time, too. A rare talent anymore, it seems.

 

[drewfx]

Most of my basses use RotoSound roundwounds (the BS66 "Billy Sheehan" set which is gauged 43/65/80/110 - because I can't really live without having that 110 on the low E).

But the 8-string and the "high C" 5-string currently have D'Addario roundwounds on them, though the 5-string will get RotoSounds soon.

And the "low B" 5-string has DR Lo Riders rounds (which give me a little bit more string tension for the 34" low B string).

The fretless Jazz gets D'Adderio Half Rounds (groundwounds).

And the tele bass (with the mudbucker and SCPB PU's) has GHS Pressurewounds on it. I tried the D'Adderio Half Rounds, but found them too dark on this particular bass. The Pressurewounds are perfect for it, but they don't sound much like flats.


And I very rarely change strings, as I tend to hate the sound of new strings on bass.



I am considering doing a build sometime down the road for the sole purpose of putting real flats on it. Or does that just sound like an excuse? :laughing7:

 

[elfro89]

I'll bet you can keep time, too. A rare talent anymore, it seems.

Too true. It amazes me how little people can keep time solidly. It's something many musicians take for granted as if they were born with natural time keeping abilities but it's just not true. Playing by yourself to nothing but a click track whilst creating and maintaining a groove whilst reading music/chord sheet for 3-5 minutes is a skill that must be honed.

 

[stubhead]

And then you learn to do it without a click track.... :cool01: I have a friend who runs a pro studio in Minneapolis, at various times it's been the preferred place for punk, metal, bluegrass (?), "acoustic rock" etc. He's pretty much appalled at the the percentage of bands that come in there unable to play their songs straight through, all the way from from start to finish. In these days of home Pro Tools, they want to record one measure of D, one measure of G, one measure of Em and have the "producer" add them together. I've developed a real allergy to the "music" made one track at a time by five musicians in five different basements and "flown" together like a lego song. Without even (always) knowing it, I tend to prefer music played in one room at one time, at least the basic tracks. Thank doodles for sugarmegs....

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/

I don't think digital recording itself is evil like many do, but it seems as though the temptation to mess with the tracks while they're in the digital realm has driven the tinkering type insane with track-dickery. If you have to "time-shift" the drummer's parts or "fix" the entire guitar solo, one note at a time, maybe you need a different producer - at the very, very least.

 

[elfro89]

Stub you are totally correct. But even before the world of digital, messing around with tracks was still going on all the time. Drop-in's were not unusual and Multi-tracking is something you have to do take after take after take to layer properly, It's frightening how perfect it has to be in order to sound like one instrument. Many of the things you talk about have always went on, but the digital world has allowed this to be done more easily and sometimes much more frequently. You don't need to play a chord sequence all the way through a chorus anymore just cut and paste. But it's their musicianship that suffers when they cut one too many corners.

Live recording is always the best option as it saves time and that is of course expensive when your in the studio. Creating massive albums with all the production techniques that one can use requires the use of flying in all the tracks like a lego song. Some of the albums I listen to are so full of studio techniques that they could almost take on a whole unique Intellectual Property status as works of art. Of course it takes ages to build up songs that layered and requires a totally different approach from the live band scenario.

 

[line6man]

And then you learn to do it without a click track.... :cool01: I have a friend who runs a pro studio in Minneapolis, at various times it's been the preferred place for punk, metal, bluegrass (?), "acoustic rock" etc. He's pretty much appalled at the the percentage of bands that come in there unable to play their songs straight through, all the way from from start to finish. In these days of home Pro Tools, they want to record one measure of D, one measure of G, one measure of Em and have the "producer" add them together. I've developed a real allergy to the "music" made one track at a time by five musicians in five different basements and "flown" together like a lego song. Without even (always) knowing it, I tend to prefer music played in one room at one time, at least the basic tracks. Thank doodles for sugarmegs....

I was watching an interview in which one of Frank Zappa's bandmembers described how the band did recordings a few bars at a time. Frank would give someone a ridiculous piece of music to try to learn, and they would learn it and play it for whatever part the the song, and then he would give them something else to learn, and they would learn that and record it, and so on. They didn't play all their parts in one take.
Now of course, in another interview somewhere, it was stated that Frank wanted all the bandmembers to know about 300 songs when they performed live, so there certainly is no doubt that they could play a song all the way through! I guess Frank wanted to record his music that way. :dontknow:

 

[jackthehack]

I don't play bass often, but when I do.... I play Flatwounds. Stay bassy, my friends.

+1  :icon_thumright:

 

[hannaugh]

I think I read somewhere that when Flogging Molly records their albums, they learn all the new songs, rehearse a lot, and then show up and play all together and get them recorded in one or two takes, just like if they were recording a live show.