| Author | Message | ||
| jazzyvee
Senior Member Username: jazzyvee Post Number: 4698 Registered: 6-2002 |
I recently went to a presentation by a professional bass player which was superb. I won't name the person because that's an aside. Anyway one of the questions asked during the presentation was about the instrument being played and what the pickups configuration was and what the controls and switches did. The presenter said that they had a vague idea but didn't know the details of what they actually did but knew how to use them to get the sound that was required either live or in the studio. Is there anything wrong with treating that stuff like a black box and merely learning to use the controls to do what you need. If I can use the analogy of a car, many drivers have absolutely no clue about what happens under the bonnet or how the transmission or how anything at all on a car works. However they have the controls to interface with the car and are able to drive perfectly well. Yes like me, you may have an interest in knowing the details of how things work but is it really neccessary. Knowing this stuff helped me but that's because I have a painfully inquisitive mind so want to know how everything I use works. But had I battled on blindly I would have eventually learnt to use the bass without knowing the theory. | ||
| tubeperson
Senior Member Username: tubeperson Post Number: 519 Registered: 5-2005 |
Same issue with computers. Most people by much more computer or laptop than they could get by on. We tend to like gadgets and features. If you look at purchases using cost per use, your buying decision might be very different. Still we all like gadgets bells and whistles. Play on Sir! | ||
| keith_h
Senior Member Username: keith_h Post Number: 2286 Registered: 2-2005 |
The only time I can think of where having more than a black box knowledge of the inner workings would be helpful is when something doesn't go as planned. In the case of a musician that would be more in the area of handling poor room acoustics. By having some knowledge you are more likely to adjust the needed controls faster than hunting for them by fiddling but even the fiddler should eventually resolve the issue. Keith | ||
| 811952
Senior Member Username: 811952 Post Number: 2395 Registered: 10-2003 |
It's always a judgement call, tailoring the presentation to the audience. If he'd detailed what the controls did, he'd need to go into inductors and resonance and all that hoo-haa, and the physics people would still be waiting for the explanation of what actually the controls were doing. ;) I work at a university. Can you tell? ;) John | ||
| hammer
Senior Member Username: hammer Post Number: 756 Registered: 9-2009 |
And then the theoretical physicists would argue with their applied colleagues to the point where their discussion would be as much about philosophy as about acoustical physics (I work at a university too). I agree with Keith that knowing the inner workings of things is critical when everything doesn't go as planned and your on your own. Beyond that, however, as everything has become more complex it's become increasingly difficult to develop both a practical and theoretical understanding of all of the technical aspects of one's gear while having the time to maintain the technical aspects of one's craft. If I was to take the time to attempt (and I emphasize the term "attempt") to fully and deeply understand the workings of my basses, F1-X, SF-2, amp etc. I'd have absolutely no where near enough time to sufficiently practice the musical aspects of the craft. Now you might say that's because I am an amateur as opposed to a professional musician but I think it applies to the professionals as well. A couple of good examples...From what I understand Jackie Stewart and Sterling Moss two of the most prolific formula 1 drivers knew everything about just about every aspect of the cars they raced. With the complexity of today's cars it would be nearly impossible for Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel to possess that same degree of knowledge (they may actually know more but there is so much more to know). I also had an experience in Europe a number of years ago when I was watching The Tour of Flanders and George Hincapie flatted on one of the famous cobbled hills of the course. As he was waiting for a support car to catch up to him to provide a wheel change I stood about 5 feet away as he struggled to get the rear wheel off his bike all the while cursing and under his breath muttering "how the hell do you get these f...ing wheels off." So practical knowledge (e.g., where do I set the pan control to get the tone I want..yes. Theoretical knowledge...as much as have the time and capacity to understand. | ||
| sonicus
Senior Member Username: sonicus Post Number: 4520 Registered: 5-2009 |
A skilled surgeon might not need to manufacture his own scalpel . | ||
| ed_zeppelin
Intermediate Member Username: ed_zeppelin Post Number: 116 Registered: 2-2010 |
I went to a party once where somebody had rented a massive PA and by the time the second (of eight) bands took the stage, the "soundman" (I.e.: the guy who rented the PA) was passed out. The garbage coming from the PA was horrific, and somebody had to do something quick. I had no idea what any of those knobs and sliders did, but I stepped up anyway, if only to shut down the ear splitting feedback. Nobody else did. Meanwhile, the band kept playing, and the "singer" made a big show of his disappointment in my lack of ... well, anything ... And people all around the board were yelling at me; "turn up the singer!" "More bass!" "More drums!" Etc. it was absolute pandemonium, and they kept it up all night. Instead of being hailed as a hero, I was cursed and reviled among men. I resolved to learn just enough about mixing boards so it never happened again. ("Resolved" means; "when I get around to it" in my world. Just ask the Foghorn.) I bought the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook and got all the way to page 4. Woo hoo! A couple of years later I was in a killer band and we played a festival, and the sound was superb. We were on early, so after our set I hung out at the board and just watched. Between bands, I complimented the soundman and we got into a discussion that is still, to this day, the single most productive conversation about sound that I've ever had. He showed me the layout of the board and how it pertained to gain structure (remarkable that neither topic would have "sunk in" to my rather thick, yet handsome skull without the other, but because he equated gain with each knob, I GOT IT!) The most important thing he told me was to get a set of Sony 5706 flat-response headphones and use them to familiarize each knob and slider so I'd get the FEEL of what it did, purely by ear. He said that the trim/input/mic knob was to set the "hotness" or sensitivity of each mic or instrument, and that you wanted as much out of it as you could get without distortion. Easy! I could listen for it in the headphones, and it would be just like the singer was singing directly into my ear. Once it's set, don't touch it. My god, that simplified things. He also said to never let a singer go "check check one two three" etc., because it was worse than useless. Have him sing a song, because with headphones you'd have the trim set in about five notes, and could move on to the next channel. It was all about finesse. Things like; "you should know what the trim pot setting is for an SM-57 or 58 without hearing a note, roughly" and he was dead right. (And I do  ) He told me about using a parametric EQ to eliminate the bad, rather than staring into space, going; "does this sound better than THIS?" Crank the level, sweep for what sounds worst, turn the level down and away it goes. (It's startling through good headphones, believe me.) It was all about getting the basics, as quickly as possible. Boy, did I Hoover every word of the Sound Reinforcement handbook after that. It was such a pleasure, rather than the drudgery of my first attempt. I'm not telling you this for my ego's sake. Quite the contrary. I was astounded by my ignorance, and how much I could learn from listening with headphones. My favorite tip was; "nobody bothers you when you have headphones on." He was absolutely right. I apologize for the length of this rant, but it was important to this topic because I learned how "precious" my "bass sound" ISN'T, in the great scheme of things. Somebody posted a video of their band a while back, and even though he was a MONSTER bassist, I cringed because they only faced the audience for a few seconds and spent the rest of their time twiddling with knobs on their amp and bass. I don't think they realized that everyone else in their band was relaxed and smiling, and they looked like deer in the headlights. Just petrified. I was just like that for a long time, until somebody way smarter than me (which admittedly ain't saying much) told me to get some headphones and find out what those knobs actually sound like, and how much of "your sound" is actually in your hands. (Especially because upright bass is my primary instrument, which includes all the weird harmonic stuff that happens when you smack the crap outta the strings about two feet from a couple of Fishman transducers clipped to the top of the [wooden] bridge. At serious volume levels you can potentially make people ears bleed.) It literally changed everything about the way I play bass, and focusing on the FUNCTION of bass within an ensemble. I try to sound as close to the bass drum(s) as possible. Like one of my favorite drummers said; "you play like you're hiding from the police." Yeah, that's why I get the gigs, though.  | ||
| gtrguy
Senior Member Username: gtrguy Post Number: 931 Registered: 9-2004 |
All knoweldge is a good thing, I think. My own goal is to be able to know as much as possible so as to be as transparent or do as little tweaking as possible at some point and concetrate on my playing during a gig. However, I will move the knobs to get there. Often I have to accept what I can get, knowing that what I hear may not be what is out front. I do know that when I like my sound, I play better. I also know truly great players who can play through any situation and still play fantastic. A good thing to do is video tape your gigs and see how you look and sound. If you are always tweaking stuff, it looks bad. | ||
| 5a_quilt_top
Junior Username: 5a_quilt_top Post Number: 22 Registered: 6-2012 |
If you are a musician, you need to know whatever is important to you that will allow you to create and perform to the best of your abilities. This is personal and will vary from person to person. For some, it is critical that they understand everything from mic placement and room acoustics to the tonal properties of wood and the purpose and parameters of each knob on their instrument and amplification system. For others, as they say, ignorance is bliss. Hendrix, for example, was certainly no technician, but he was very intuitive and creative. In his case, not knowing what each knob did allowed him the freedom to think beyond traditionally accepted practices and use his tools in ways that most likely would have been discouraged by a strict technician. He was pursuing the sounds that existed in his mind and was using whatever he had available at the time to find them. As a result, the "rules" were re-written and a new set of traditionally accepted practices was established. The same could be said of our hosts. If they decided to continue to design and build instruments using the "accepted standard practices" that existed at the time Alembic was born, these fantastic creations that we are so privileged to use might not have ever seen the light of day. Thankfully, they had the courage to challenge tradition. | ||
| bigredbass
Senior Member Username: bigredbass Post Number: 2462 Registered: 9-2002 |
I've seen everything from guys who had utterly no clue who were brilliant players all the way to guys who could build/repair their whole rig who couldn't play their way out of a bingo hall, and everything in between. It just depends on the person. But then, the wondering is how Les Paul and Ed Van Halen and more like them did the things they did. This puts me in mind of Ed talking about opening up his Marshall head to add the Variac and getting lit up and blowing up the head more than a few times until he figured it out. For me, the things I taught (or learned from brighter heads than mine) myself were out of necessity. When I began, like most of us, a lot of older guys would give you the 'well, if you don't use one of THESE, forget it' speech when it came to basses and amps. In my case, they were uniformly FOS. So as to not waste any more money, I began researching and asking smarter people and reading and eventually found my way here. I was never going to be one of those guys with a beater Precision and a rattle-trap amp. Not that it was a smooth trip through the education. I'm utterly convinced that my go-round with an Eden stack is proof that you really can be 'educated above your intelligence'. Still hurts when I sit down . . . . Joey | ||
| terryc
Senior Member Username: terryc Post Number: 2435 Registered: 11-2004 |
I addition when I was 'volunteered' to do the sound(how come it always seems to be the bassist?) I too took some time to learn 'the strip' as you only need to know one channel as the rest are all duplicated. On addition to get the singer to sing acapello he advised me to get them to say the alphabet as well as the 5 vowels. Glad I don't do it now because as mentioned previously you can either be George Martin/Eddie Offord/Phil Spector et al combined or be the most hated person in the world ! | ||
| sonicus
Senior Member Username: sonicus Post Number: 4522 Registered: 5-2009 |
Terry " the most hated person in the world ! " was how a " new soundman in training" looked at me recently when he approached me at a recent festival gig that I played at me when he told me that they wanted to take a DI signal from my bass. ____I asked him " do you want pre or post EQ ? " " do you want a balanced or un balanced signal?" If balanced do you want PIN 2 hot or PIN 3 HOT ?" He then handed me a quarter inch TS cord ! He said "from your Bass" , "NO" , I replied I then said "give me a balanced XLR and be sure to be PIN 2 HOT , the signal is pre EQ and +4dBu . He looked at me with daggers in his eyes and then ran to the Dog House and another Sound man showed up who was the actual FOH guy at the board/desk , he smiled and said " thanks for making it clear what your signal source consists of, the other guy is really green and just learning. " That real FOH guy did a great job just to mention and provided the band with multiple monitor mix's and put my bass through his house system only after coming up to the stage and listening to my stage volume and tone and EQ preference and asking me "is this what you want to sound like ?"___ I nodded and smiled and he gave me a thumbs up and said " You got it man " That was KOOL ! SO " What do you have to Know ?" ___ " It helps if you know what you want and can communicate in technical terms , BUT if there are real professionals on the job with educated ears then ;"A skilled surgeon might not need to manufacture his own scalpel " as I wrote in my post 4520 above in this thread. Wolf (Message edited by sonicus on October 01, 2015) | ||
| 5a_quilt_top
Junior Username: 5a_quilt_top Post Number: 24 Registered: 6-2012 |
Supplement to my previous post above: The knowledge requirements are quite different if you are interpreting the creative requests of the musician / artist while you are assisting that person with their sonic quest. Back to the Hendrix analogy - I'm dead certain that Eddie Kramer knew far more than the average bear about what each knob did. Same could be said for Sir George Martin and his army of technicians working with the Beatles. And Ron Wickersham and the Dead. And the list goes on... The magic happens when the innocent / ignorant creative asks what if we did THIS and the knowledgable technician has the courage to explore the idea instead of simply dismissing it with a bunch of rhetoric based on the dictates of "conventional wisdom". | ||
| ed_zeppelin
Intermediate Member Username: ed_zeppelin Post Number: 118 Registered: 2-2010 |
>>>I was never going to be one of those guys with a beater Precision and a rattle-trap amp. <<<< Careful what you wish for. From the time I got my P-bass when I was 9, I was infatuated with Motown. If you'd have told me all those songs had the same bass player, I seriously think I would have had a heart attack. Much less that he used a P-bass. Mine sure didn't sound like that. Let us pause to listen to the great James Jamerson's isolated P-bass on Marvin Gaye's "Heard It Through The Grapevine." http://youtu.be/_iyprNR4I2E Here's John Entwistle's isolated Fender Precision bass (you read that right) on the Who's "My Generation" from "Live At Leeds" in 1970 (historical note: the first recordings of Rotosound Swing 66 roundwounds, according to Entwistle) http://youtu.be/DgfiW5XcOUw As it relates to the topic, Jamerson's bass always sounds the same, no matter which Motown artist or song you listen to. Frankly, it sounds like elephants farting on a hot day. Jamerson was an upright bassist who preferred jazz. He never touched his tone knob. He left the foam mute in place (originally, P-basses came with a foam strip glued in place inside the "ashtray" bridge cover). He used ancient LaBella tapewounds that he never changed. The action was jacked so high, Bootsy Collins said "you had to have a friend help you play it." Most notably, Jamerson played all those bass parts with the index finger of his right hand, period. He used it like a pick, just banging the heck out of it, and used a right hand position adopted from upright bass, with his other fingers anchored on the pickup guard.   John Entwistle couldn't have been more different than Jamerson. He used his unique "typewriter" style (he developed it from drumming his fingers on his desk in school) alternating with using a pick, and created the legendary "Swing 66" roundwounds strings with Rotosound. He cranked the P-bass' tone knob to full-on treble.  My only point is that most of us know basslines by Jamerson and John Entwistle by heart. But when it comes to selecting "our" sound, I don't know of any bassists who would deliberately seek out Jamerson's flat, muffled, distorted flatulent honking or Entwistle's sloppy clanking as their model. Discuss. | ||
| sonicus
Senior Member Username: sonicus Post Number: 4523 Registered: 5-2009 |
Forest, Your post above is Kool and asks of our influences and quests of emulation to either add them to or bag of musical tricks or in a journey to find our own sound and technique. If we are called upon to provide tracks in studio work our bag of tricks can be an important aspect of our ability to span multiple genres . I my self find that my hand techniques are a product of such emulation and have resulted in a mix of influences on the electric bass. I think of it like a triangle in the moment of action . Why a triangle ? Here is why ; ______________________________MIND_________________________________________________ LEFT HAND (fingering hand)___________ RIGHT HAND (plucking hand) I utilize the techniques that I have observed from different players right and left hand techniques and the mentation( chops and perceived mind set) of different players simultaneously as my own voice on the Bass. In example My Mind might be in " LESH" mode / My left fingering hand in"ENTWISTLE MODE" / And my right plucking hand in "JACO MODE" . I feel free to mix and match at will with other influences at any given time This has been developing for over four decades and changing all the time. I have fun with this ! Wolf | ||
| ed_zeppelin
Intermediate Member Username: ed_zeppelin Post Number: 119 Registered: 2-2010 |
You're absolutely right, Wolf. Brilliantly put. I can't believe how badly I expressed my point, which is that the bass parts I listened to and emulated as a lad sound horrible when isolated. It's only when they're mixed that they fit perfectly. I never knew Jamerson's bass sounded distorted at all, much less gaseous, like someone breaking wind through a tuba, underwater. What Alembic owner can't play every note of "My Generation" in their head? "Roundabout?" "Superstition?" That - and nothing else - is what makes us bassists. The simple, utter fact that we NOTICED THE BASS. That's what I think of when someone (mis)uses the term "influences." The physical ability to replicate a bassline note for note is the only alternative to being "influenced" by a bassist, I think. Otherwise you're automatically playing like you, regardless. I built my own copy of Jaco's bass out of stuff laying around the music store repair shop I worked at. (Okay, I may have "substituted" stock Guild pickups for the EMGs and used a fretless Chandler neck off a trade-in). I bought the (VHS) videotape of Jaco's "Modern Electric Bass" (it's probably on YouTube by now) because I was determined to learn to play "like that." Then I got a gig playing upright bass for a band called "Roomful of Blues" and did a lot of rockabilly and blues gigs. No room for any Jaco or Entwistle tomfoolery there. Somewhere in there I got a gig with a kick-ass country-rock band for six years. I survived winters in New England by whompin' out "Gimme Three Steps" and George Strait "belly-rubbers" for drunk Yankees in western garb. The "self-expression" aspects of high-speed bass hijinks went out the door quick, and I didn't really have any choice in the matter. It was a professional family band, four guys who had been singing together all their lives. It was just incredible. But your point is taken: there's some Jaco in there (especially because my Alembic is my only fretted bass). Do that little "bup-de-bupBUP!" Thing Jaco did at the end of the phrases in "Teen Town," y'know? Slip it in there when nobody's looking... Yeah, like that. To be honest, I always liked to see how many ways I could use the opening riff from Frank Zappa's "I'm The Slime" in country ballads. (A lot.) My favorite thing about playing upright is that everyone else automatically assumes mistakes are their fault. Really. I'm not kidding. You can go plonking down a I-IV-II-V turnaround on your own and instantly everything crashes around you, and everybody looks at YOU sheepishly, shrugging and going; "oops! Sorry!" I'm sorry, but there was a school shooting at a college about fifteen miles from where I sit and I have no clue what I'm babbling about. Ten people dead so far. I'm numb. | ||
| bigredbass
Senior Member Username: bigredbass Post Number: 2465 Registered: 9-2002 |
What I meant Eddie Z, was those same brainless, half-ass, half-drunk club players with crappy P-Basses and a guitar amp head and a bingo-hall PA bin for a cab, usually playing those George Strait belly rubbers . . . . That some of the greatest bass lines have been played on P Basses by NOT the kind of cats I mentioned above is without question. Joey |
