It's bovember, boys - 04/11/24
Hey.
So a couple hours ago (at the time of writing this paragraph), at 6PM to be precise, I went outside to take a breather. Despite being
november, it wasn't cold out at all and I could simply go out in a t-shirt, so thanks climate change???
I walked up to a spot at the outskirt of my town that overlooks a clearing and the view's not bad at all, on one side you have the
mountains, in front you've got the clearing and some trees in the direction of the sunset, and on the other side you can see from afar a
couple skyscrapers and the town's monument shining in the night.
It was late dusk, a bit late to see the sunset, but then again it would have been mildly difficult to look in the direction of the
sun.
This post was spurred on after checking out visualculture's website (Seriously, thanks for the
follow!).
It made me have thoughts in my brain (very rare event), and it'd be neat to have a smaller post in the meantime.
My Precision Bass
I've been playing bass on and off since about 2021. My first bass was an Ibanez acoustic bass and it was ASS, I got it because there's a
thing in my country where you are pretty much given a decent amount of Munies to spend on cultural/sports stuff and that's what I got since I
couldn't get an amp too.
It was a pain in the ass to setup, and I had to pay 140 Munies to fix some problems with the action and truss rod adjustment since it
was stuck. Now the bridge pins are busted, and I can't be fucked to spend more money and/or mental energy on some acoustic bass.
I may hang it on the wall as decoration or something.
Check out the neck-dive on this thing!
I got my second bass, a Sire Marcus Miller P5 in "Dakota Red", at the start of 2024.
I initially thought it looked a bit too flashy, but I really warmed up to it and now I love it and it's my baby and
noyoucanttouchitgoawaygoawaygoaway.
I was reading visualculture's page about their Path To Lyspial sequencer, and
while I have only a basic understanding of hardware synthesizers (and synthesis in general), I really resonated with a part in "Design
considerations".
More specifically, the part about designing in order to have no menu-diving and maximizing immediacy during the music-making process, it made
me think about the reasons I chose a P-Bass.
I think I always knew beforehand that my first electric bass would probably be a Precision, but it really got confirmed when I went to try
out basses at my local guitar store.
The salesman showed me a bunch of active basses and I straight up did not care for them. I didn't really care about tweaking knobs in order
to have a more "versatile" sound, I found the idea of simply switching up the way I played the instrument to obtain different tones more
appealing, and there are several ways to do that:
Where you pluck the string has an effect on the tone.
Playing near the bridge gives a brighter tone where the fundamental is not as loud, but the overtones are louder.
Plucking closer to the fretboard can give a warmer, rounder sound that emphasizes the fundamental tone, the overtones are not as loud.
And playing at the pickups is a good middle-ground between the two.
Playing the same note low down or high up the neck can give a different sound.
Playing G on the 10th fret of the A string sounds warmer.
Playing G on an open string sounds brighter.
How hard you hit the string is a pretty obvious way to change the tone. The more you dig in, the more the sounds of the strings buzzing
and clacking against the frets will come through.
And of course, with what you pluck the string is pretty important.
Playing with fingers gives a softer, thumpier attack.
A pick has a brighter and more clicky sound.
What I'm about to say might sound very conceited coming from someone who hasn't even played with other people but...
Some people say that P-Basses are too limited, or one trick ponies. In those cases, the lack of versatility lies not with the instrument,
but the player.
Photography
I also really love visualculture's photos, especially the ones they took with the Olympus
Pen-D, they have really warm and dream-like quality to them.
For a while, a little more than a year ago, I got really into taking pictures with my phone whenever I went outside. The reason for that was
that this phone, unlike my previous one, actually supported manual focus, what I loved most of all was taking close-up photos to capture
textures.
Here's some photos I took, you can click on them to get the full-size images.
What did I say about this being a shorter post? I usually upload this stuff after a day or so, but this took 4 days.