Category Archives: music

Bass Playin’ Fool

music

I played bass at Westport Church out in Hillsboro this morning. It was good to play since I haven’t played the bass anywhere for nearly a year.

I was filling in for their bassist who was out of town. I’m going to be playing a bit for them here and there for a while because they’re a little short of bass and electric guitar players. I’m really excited to get a chance to play electric guitar because that’s where my passion has been lately. I will say though, that it has been fun digging the bass out, dusting it off, and straping on that big slab of wood and letting the low notes rumble out. I’ll get plenty of chances to play bass because I understand their bass player really likes playing electric guitar as well, so I want to make sure I give him a chance to fulfill that desire.

It’s kind of an interesting story how I got connected with Westport so I’ll try to give the condensed version. I’m subscribed to a email group called ChurchBass that has around 500 bass players on it from around the world. A message was sent out a few weeks ago that a church in Hillboro needed to borrow a bass amp for someone who was filling in on bass for them. I replied that I had one to borrow so that’s how I got connected to Jamie, their Director of Worship Arts. The funny part was that the bass player turned out to be Todd of Ethnos fame.

Robert Fripp – Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

music, tech

At first, it seemed odd to me that Microsoft would go to the trouble and probably decent expense to get Robert Fripp in the studio to record sounds for the new version of Microsoft Windows (Vista): Robert Fripp – Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

But it starts to make sense as I pondered what Robert Scoble points out:

I was sitting in the studio listening to Robert Fripp a few weeks back play for hours. Why? To find one 2.5-second clip of sounds.

Why take that effort? Cause that sound will play trillions of times over the next decade.

Althought I’m not a huge Robert Fripp fan, I do recognize him as an excellent source for putting together soundscapes.

Anyway, this combined two of my favorite subjects to be geeky about (music, technology), so I had to post.

My Electric Guitar Setup

music

Chris asked about my guitar setup, so I thought I’d lay the basics out here.

I started with a Fender Texas Special American Strat, and added a L.R. Baggs X-Bridge (a piezo pickup) to get a pretty convincing acoustic guitar sound. The X-Bridge signal goes to a DTAR Mama Bear to pre-amp, neutralize piezo pickup unpleasantness, and add in acoustic guitar emulation as needed.

The Strat’s magnetic pickups go into my DigiTech GNX4, which is just crazy all by itself. Sometimes I refer to it as my semi-portable MP3 player.

Anyway, I then mix in my piezo/Mama Bear signal into the GNX’s line inputs so I can have straight acoustic sound, electric sound, or my favorite: the acoustic/electric blend. It’s pretty fun and almost too flexible with all the tone-tweaking possibilities.

The signal currently is just going into my bass amp/cab–a Fender Bassman 60.

So no tubes–at least not yet…