mix critique It's a Bank Holiday - if you are bored here's a bass quiz.

[paulears]

A group I'm in to do lockdown quizzes - got us all to do a nominated round - I got given a bass round to do. Now it's over I'll share it if anyone is bored silly!

Basically - the bass line from ten songs that I've played live at UK holiday centres, cruise ships and theatres over the years. Played as is - so yes, there are mistakes, but it was a quick and dirty quiz, so I know I messed quite a bit up, but that's life. If you fancy a go - most quite easy, but a few kick you when you get the answers.
Questions

Answers

The fun thing was while I expected the copyright police to pounce on the answers - I got one on one of the questions!!!

 

[DogsoverLava]

7/10.... missed #3, #6, & #9 ---

 

[paulears]

Annoying isnt it!

 

[DogsoverLava]

6 & 9 I should have gotten.... in some ways I think missing #3 was a badge of honour.

 

[Davedog]

I thought I posted the other day??

I got hung up on #5 and #6 but easily got all the rest. At the reveal I realized I had also played both 5&6 before.

 

[paulears]

Yep - they're the tracks you always play at these places. 6 got a copyright claim - not on the answer, but on the bass only version! How did that work?

 

[DogsoverLava]

It's interesting how some of the bass lines you are playing along to the muted original tracks sound a bit "wrong" on their own without being able to hear those tracks. Being untethered from the track itself shows the interdependent nature of time in recordings, or at least exposes when an instrument is subordinate to time - particularly in the pre-grid days - but even now. When you ask where the groove is - it can be true that the bass or the drums or even the guitar establishes the groove, but it can be equally true that the groove only exists in the liminal "coming together" space of all the instruments and doesn't exist without the sum of its parts. Ergo - the whole is greater than the sum. This was actually a really neat exercise and example.

 

[paulears]

I thought I'd gone mad - the timing was really awful when I played back the track - I spent very little time on it - I just took the original (for ease, downloaded from YouTube) and copied it 6 times. The edit computer is at the office open plan end of the video studio - so I just DI'd the bass, pressed record and then headed to the camera end, picked the bass up and usually missed the first start, joined in then started again on the second. If I made a huge mistake - usually forgetting where I was, I just waited for the next. Take two and three was the norm - for the quiz night, good enough. Oddly the very last one in 5/4 was hardest - mainly because I'd drift off and play the last change a bar early!

I never listened to any till the whole ten were done and then I couldn't believe how sloppy the timing sounded - but once the track was added, most of the sloppy playing suddenly locked in. Some you almost had to wait for the chord change it seemed, but with the track it worked OK? really weird isn't it!

 

[DogsoverLava]

It’s a fascinating exercise.... the same thing happens when you listen to isolated tracks for some songs on YouTube.... sometimes you can’t believe the part you are hearing is the part from the song.... the phenomenon really does call your attention to the idea of magic being in the interplay.

 

[paulears]

Pre covid, my band who have been track free 100% live for years had a problem. Our keys player has rheumatoid arthritis and some drugs that had worked for years got withdrawn while they were tested and reapproved. As soon as he stopped taking them his knuckles enlarged and his hands warped, permanently. He can’t play, and when the drugs were approved, the damage was permanent. He can’t play without horrendous mistakes. There not chords are five, and he can stab a melody with the thumb. Awful. I took one of our live recordings, the 2 x 60minute play everything show, and spent ages building a click for every song we sing, and then I played his part to the click. I had real grief doing this because the tempo was all over the place on every song. We of course blamed the drummer! The strange thing is he has real problems following the click too. We’re a tribute from the 60s/70s so did things suddenly change in the 80s for synth pop?