FIRST listen to the original composition:

Welcome by John Coltrane 1965

NOW listen to this interpretation for goosebumps:

Welcome by Santana 1973

So much creativity & beauty - life is good!

Sitting here thinking about it:

When I first got into playing I was not alone, a school mate wanted to get into music as well. Through friends who were in established bands we picked up a Rickenbacker bass guitar ala Geddy Lee, two cabinets, one with eight, ten inch speakers, one with two fifteen inch speakers an ashly preamp and ampeg amp, what a set-up, it was a tower of sound.
Together we built a rehearsal room in his mothers garage, for weeks we gathered old news papers from around the neighborhood, inside the garage we filled two outside walls with the gathered papers boarded them up, next we built two walls adjoining those walls also stuffed with old news, a total of eight inch's of sound guard that had a four inch gap. For the final two walls we constructed double thick, eight inch's, also stuffed with old news, For the ceiling we layered news papers inside paper grocery bags in between rafters, inside the room, walls had carpeting, egg cartons, posters and what not, we wired for sufficient electrical needs and boom a rehearsal studio was born. Let me tell you we played loud and late in the night, our suburban neighbors had no clue it was that quiet outside the garage. That studio as it were, was a potential inferno. The down side was that it became to much of a hang-out, too many drugs never enough girls, (we did not possess the talent that attracts groupies). There was this kid (we were all kids) Karl who was born deaf, I remember once while we were rehearsing Karl came by to hang out, I don't read sign language, but having grown up with Karl I kind of was able to converse, not easy for either of us, anyway what we did not have yet was a singer for the band and Karl in his immutable way volunteered for the position, it was his way of making a joke and to this day it cracks me up. Something interesting was Karl explaining how he could feel the music we were playing, he always new when we f'ed up or played a piece differently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8yGGtVKrD8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahoJReiCaPk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTqVHEJZ0A

LanDroid wrote:So much creativity & beauty - life is good!

affirmative

My bass guitars:


1977 Fender P-bass. Bought it brand new for $500! I've seen new ones as high as $2200! These 70s P-basses are in demand because they used heavier wood then and it gave the bass a huge, deep sound and infinite sustain if you wanted it. If not, just knock it back with compression.


Schecter Stiletto Studio Model 5 Fretless. Excellent bass, first one I owned with active pickups. Handles like a dream, almost plays itself. Amazing price. Bought in '04 for $600 brand new! Another guy was trying to sell me an American-made Lakland of the same type for $3000! So pretty that sometimes I take it out of the case and just look at it from various angles for 10 or 20 minutes--just look at it, turning it over and over again in my hands. Work of art.


Yamaha TRB 6-string. I bought this one used for only $1000!! The guy I bought it from is a fabulous bassist who knows his craft and he did some subtle work on the frets. I call this a semi-fretless bass because he sanded them down until they are almost not there. It has a smooth sound of a fretless but gives you the precise intonation of a fretted. The thing about 6-string basses that most people don't realize is that they can and should be played like regular guitars. You can strum them and play full chords and they sound beautiful. My double bass instructor plays bossa nova on his 6-string and it's amazing. He's a one-man band on that thing! He taught me the usefulness of strumming chords on the bass. I do it on all my basses but the 6-string is the most versatile.

Almost forgot to mention that I own one of these. A lot of bassists hate these but to me it's iconic and I just had to have one. Actually the modern Hofner violin is a much sturdier instrument than the original 50s and 60s models. This was a really cheap POS bass. It was made for someone who needed a quick and dirty bass. But Paul (not the apostle) made it so famous that all kinds of bassists wanted one. So Hofner knew they could not keep handing out that same old flimsy piece of shit so they beefed it up--especially the neck-to-body joint which was REALLY flimsy. Now it's quite beefed up. The electronics are still the same--two volume knobs, one for each pickup and three toggles. One toggle activates the front pickup and cuts out the back, another toggle activate the back and cuts out the front. If these toggles are deactivated then both pickups are on but not as beefed up. If both toogles are activated, the bass won't make a sound because both pickups are deactivated. The third toggle is a soloing button. If you want a louder sound for dashing off a solo, you activate it. It works with any combo of the other two toggles except, of course, when both are turned on which cuts out both pickups. Then you can add further adjustment with the volume knobs.

My younger brother is a guitarist and bassist but does not play double bass. He likes this bass because he has stubbier fingers than me and his hands are smaller. I have quite large hands with long, spidery fingers. So scale length on a bass doesn't bother me. 34", 35" and even 36" are playable for me. My brother doesn't like anything over 34". But the Hofner uses a 30.5" scale so you can get up and down that fingerboard quickly and he really likes that. Shorter scale lengths blur the sound so 30.5" is not preferred. Jack Casady had the very first Alembic bass ever built and that had a 32" scale. The only one I've ever heard of.


Jack Casady's Alembic. It is now missing from what I understand. A guy saw it for sale in a shop (why would Jack ever sell it??) and bought it. He took it in for some work and it disappeared.

http://www.rawbw.com/~bobh/bass.html

awesome sounds DB thanks. that ellington/mills piece on the piano was gorgeous for waking up to.

that barney kessel took me way back tat, thanks, memories of a kid sittin' readin' guitar player mag and wonderin' about it all.

T wrote:John Bonham if I am recalling correctly used a single 28 incher.

ahhh thor's hammer

T wrote:Sitting here thinking about it:

glad you did T

DB hep hep! hellzapoppin'

ahhhh Milt lettin' us in, what an honour.

woohoo! some fine fine instruments.

but when a man has taste it stands to reason

fascinating

and the body even has a "stash box" built-in.

I've always been keen on old Dixie Land and the roots of Jazz with guys like Louis Armstrong.



And Django Reinhardt for guitar:



"...pencil thin mustache"

"...the sheik of Araby"

"...and only Jazz musician's were smoke'n marijuana, yeah!"

DJANGO!!!!!

tears and nuages (clouds)

'nuff said