I had an old track of Oliv, Shi, and Wade in my watchlist in Wikiloops since quite a while. And I was busy doing other things, but yesterday and today I could play around with that track a bit. And after trying a few very different things I decided that once more it was best to keep it simple, and to let my bass just support these wonderful musicians a bit. So here is the result:
The list of musicians (so far, it was downloaded already):
So thanks to my friends and fellow musicians in the ‘loops, and thanks to you for listening.
If you’ve never been to Germany or are just trying to understand us “Krauts” a bit better, our public radio station Deutsche Welle has some funny videos about it – called “Meet the Germans”. Here’s the first of several I/we saw (and liked):
Seeing the funny side of the German language | DW English
I was reading the latest c’t magazine and also just watched an hour long video talk they had about the finest article in it. The topic: once a year they publish suggestions of ideal machines to build for yourself, with low power consumption, which are quiet, run smoothly, give you the best bang for the buck, and so on.
I find these very useful, and all of my self-built PCs – some of which are distributed to the wider family by now – were always at least based upon their suggestions.
While discussing PCs with my brother (his doesn’t start anymore at the moment, after years of service (it also was a very good one)) and after reading that latest article with a remark that multitrack music productions would love to have many CPU cores I decided to check my own one. So I’ve made a short video about it:
And yes, for what I’m doing, an old 4th generation Intel Core i5 is more than enough as you can see. So a nice actual 9th generation one is the one I’d take for any new build, these integrated graphics are more important to me than any assumed or measurable advantage of AMD chips…
There was that lovely folk song from Wikiloops member “Arnosolo” which I downloaded a while ago. And first I worked on noise reduction of the track a bit, made a video about that, and messaged Arno. He allowed me to show that video (and contributed another and maybe even better one) – but before I did that I sat down and played on his track a bit, and uploaded that to the ‘loops. So here’s his lovely song, with me noodling (improvising) on it:
Oh, and the videos and the forum article about adaptive noise reduction are here, in case you’re interested.
As always, thanks for reading, and for listening. And if you’re a musician yourself, then please consider joining us at Wikiloops – it’s free, and it’s fun! 🙂
I had uploaded my bass to the track at about the same time as Bothen did with his drums, so I offered to mix them together – and that gave an interesting 3/4 from me, with a 4/4 played over it by him (Arno’s template had this polyrhythm feeling anyway).
I also made a video of this track in my DAW, together with the settings for my bass, so in case you’re interested, it’s here:
Wikiloops Collaboration #153856: I miss you (already)
My own version got some remixes by others as well, so here’s the version from my own album:
As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and/or listening 🙂 And thanks again to Bothen for including me on your wonderful album – I feel very honoured! 🙂
Olympus cameras have a cool feature which is WiFi – so you can not only put photos taken with your camera to your smartphone for fast distribution, you can also use that smartphone as a remote control (and display) for your camera. Which means that you can get shots without seeing through the viewfinder or on the rear display, and without being able to reach the shutter. Cool; this opens all sorts of possibilities (like for wildlife/birds for instance).
I just used that feature a few minutes ago to take a ‘selfie’ 😉
Cropped it to a 3:2 aspect ratio, and adjusted the curves just a bit. It’s not 100% sharp because I was only lit by my monitor, had the camera on f/4 at ISO200, so the resulting exposure time was 2 seconds…
Self portrait with bass, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
You see me with my bass in front of my computer, and with Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’ on the sheet in front of me. And yes, I’m learning to play that, so it’s no fake.
I was asked to join a band lately, what an honour! More to that later, after first rehearsals and after they’ve accepted me as a new player. Plus the Wikiloops members’ meeting 2020 was announced, and I’m very much looking forward to that (like everyone who has attended one earlier I guess).
Time to get a bass amplifier.
During last years’ Wikiloops meeting we’ve had Marc’s small Markbass Mini CMD 121P which is one of the most sold bass combos out there, and it’s incredible. Small, light, loud. You see it behind my right shoulder in this photo:
Photo of me at last years’ Wikiloops members’ meeting (Steinfeld 2018)
There was more gear like Gijs’ stack behind me, plus some smaller amps upstairs in the acoustic/unplugged area. But whenever I played I used that small Markbass. It was perfect except that I personally prefer 15″ speakers to the 12″ it had/has built in.
So for the new band, and for next years’ Wikiloops meeting and any other events where I might have to be heard live, I wanted to get something like that Markbass amp, but with a 15″ speaker if possible. And there are several, and I took the cheapest option. Its name is Markbass CMD JB Players School, and its speaker is black instead of orange, and this is how it looks beside my bass:
My bass, my amp, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
Fits just perfectly in the trunk of our small Toyota, but not – as I had hoped but not measured – under our small Ikea tables (guess that 12″ would have fitted, but oh well, one has to make compromises, right?).
And yes, I have tested it against the Mini CMD 121P, and in my opinion, for my taste, and with a (fretted) P(recision) Bass it sounded better than its smaller, lighter, but also more powerful and more expensive brother. A propos loud enough: someone on bassic.de assured me that the one I bought is loud enough in a Big Band context, plus all these modern amplifiers have DI-Outs (and the ones in Markbass amps can even be switched pre or post pre amp just as it should be) – so in case it gets really loud, there’s always a cable running from the amp into the mixer (or recording device, whatever).
Perfect for what I need. And cheaper than the lens with which I took its photograph 🙂
I played on that awesome track by moonchild and by WhiteDrum55, and I also got a remix from FrankMil already, who also renamed the title to ‘Fading in 2 nothing’. Sounds like this:
