#analog synth bass

[ymofan04]

Roland TB-303 & TR-606

[alphachromeyayo]

I don't use this instrument as often as I should, but when I do it's usually for a BIG FUNKY BASS 🍸

[neurosismancer]

Today's experimentation with my synth and drum machine:

[asepticvoid]

Eerie Ambient with Behringer TD-3-MO and Blipblox After Dark

[synthtv]

Analog Synth Bass

[hulkwasabi]

dat bassline..

[truethornsmusic]

Dyingpharaohs.com

[glasss99]

six and out - dance mix

[gloomybadger4life]

Katara/Azula headcanons. Musician AU edition.

- Katara plays keyboards and loves old analog synths.

- Azula plays electric guitar, she loves power metal but also plays blues and rock.

- Toph, Mai, Ty lee, Katara, and Azula have a band named Daughters of the Great War. Mai plays Bass. Ty lee sings. Toph is on drums, Katara does backup vocals sometimes aside from keys.

- Azula looks at Katara while playing guitar solos.

- Katara likes being held from behind and sitting on Azula's lap while practicing and jamming.

- Katara has an old upright piano that belonged to her mother. Azula learned to tune and maintain it.

- Azula has surprisingly few guitars. A flat black Yamaha Revstar, A custom painted sapphire Telecaster, and a black and white Flying V. She also owns an old acoustic that has been repaired so many times she has lost count.

- Katara and Azula both admire Martha Argerich.

- Katara loves it when Azula plays with her hair down.

- Azula massages Katara's hand before and after playing.

- Azula has dragons tattooed on her back, they sit on a hoard of vinyl records.

- Katara always carries a pack of very specific guitar picks for Azula.

- Toph makes dirty jokes during rehearsal which always makes Katara blush. Especially when Azula adds to them with a whisper.

@krista-kritical I think i told you about this AU

@local-enby Need to do this for Kyalin too.

[fuzzkaizer]

AKAI - SB1 - Deep Impact

"... for a lengthy spell, bassists that used pedals were given a side-eye.

But as synth pedals continue to be made, it’s hard to believe that some of its earliest heavy-hitters were released in the ‘80s and ‘90s, such as the Korg X-911 and the DigiTech XP300 Space Station. But while those faffed about with a more general kitchen-sink approach to the subject, it was Akai in 200X that came out with the most potent offering to date. This is the Akai SB1 Deep Impact.

Although some places claim the Deep Impact came out in the late ‘90s, nobody that I know is entirely sure when the Deep Impact was released. As far as I can tell, it was 2002. Prior to that, Akai’s “professional” website came out with guns blazing about its silver boxed series that included the VariWah and Intelliphase. However, a short time later, Akai Pro’s website appeared to go dark, resurfacing with pictures of gleaming mixers and MPCs. It’s too bad; the Head Rush, Unibass and Deep Impact were arguably the best pedals Akai ever produced. 

When a pedal’s endorsee list contains players like Bootsy Collins, Chris Wolstenholme and Paul Turner of Jamiroquai, you pretty much know what to expect: throbbing, guttural filter sweeps with a funk chaser. And yeah, you get that. But you get a pretty bang-on stab at a host of synth patches, including fifths, warbling pads and much more. It’s not without its limitations, though.

The Unibass and Deep Impact were centered on the frequency range of the bass guitar; the Unibass generated a fat unison mode with an octave up and subtle thickening, which is easily adaptable to six strings. However,  the Deep Impact in particular made no bones about its applications. When played with a guitar, notes outside of the bass frequency range cut through at a very distinct threshold, and not in a “hardware limitation” kind of way; there is a literal cut-off point. One note in a scale gets enveloped in the circuit, and the very next rings through as if there was no effect at all.

The way it’s used is deceptively complex. Like the old analog synths it seeks to replicate, dialing in a patch takes a little effort, and in the same way as many of them. Two of the unit’s three knobs are for input and output levels—the Input control is accented with a metering system and lets you set the clipping threshold of the unit before setting the output volume. While two-thirds of the knobs are standard fare, the money is in the program system. 

On offer are nine programs with a blank parametric slate. The left footswitch cycles through these programs in ascending order, while an optional footswitch cycles in descending order, and the center control cycles through 10 different parameters (and one preset loading option), all of which are fully adjustable with the rotary encoder in the center of the unit. Most of them correspond to controls on real analog synths, such as (filter) Cutoff, Resonance, Attack and Decay. When you factor in this multi knob, the Deep Impact actually has 12 controls for your tweaking pleasure, far more than the competition. And the ends to which you can adjust the tone are relatively absurd.

While vintage synths of yore can oscillate and destroy your ears when the resonance is cranked, Akai thoughtfully keeps the extent of the parameters usable. With that being said, the Deep Impact will mercilessly punish any subwoofer placed before it. Akai promises a four-oscillator affair within the Deep Impact and while there’s no way to dial it in solely based on those merits, it certainly sounds gargantuan. It’s probably why they are worth so much.

The original designer of the Deep Impact, one Andras Szalay, revived the project well after Akai washed its hand of the line under the company name PandaMIDI and the product name Future Impact I. For a spell, it was tough even to get one of those, and prices encroached upon the original. Now on its third revision, readily available and with a new brand name, the Future Impact continues to carry the torch. There’s just something about that Akai unit, though..."

cred: catalinbread.com/blogs/kulas-cabinet/akai-db1-deep-impact

[neurosismancer]

Further experimentation with my drum machine, synth, and some pedals.

[charlierosewriting]

This viewing of Stop Making Sense, in a cinema I went to alone, did two things: it ruined every other time I'll ever try to watch this film again in my life, and revealed itself to be what it has been this whole time. Anti-performance anxiety propaganda. It also cracked me wide open.

I've always seen Stop Making Sense in one of two modes - communally on a TV through it's built-in speakers, or on my phone alone with my big chunky noise-cancelling headphones. I pick whether I want to hear it with others but sacrifice the sound quality, or to hear it at its most beautiful but by myself. In a mostly empty cinema, Stop Making Sense becomes both at once. I can't be sure if it's the A24 remaster or just hearing it on a capital everything SOUND SYSTEM, but the entire experience feels warmer and human this way. Tina Weymouth's bass playing is clearer than ever before, the synths taking a bit more of a backseat to its rumble, and the percussion of both Chris Frantz's drums, David Byrne's boombox and (most transformatively) Steve Scale's set-up hit almost with the force of actual, unshielded, live drumming. After each song, the couple behind me cheered and whooped (half-ironically), and after the midway point I joined in (completely earnestly). It's still not perfectly analogous to a live concert, even then. The audience noise is near immersive in surround sound, but it still feels as distant as the band does all the way over up on that stage. When the songs end and the crowd noise begins, the cinema experience feels strange and hollow and disconnected. I love this way more than a perfect Disneyland imagineered recreation of a Talking Heads concert.

That last point is actually where the most magic is found in seeing Stop Making Sense in a cinema, and what really started to pierce into me; the craftsmanship is more visible. These are small chips in the paintwork you can't see until you get your nose right up to the masterpiece, and every one of them adds more texture and beauty to the whole.

It's easy to be swept away by the sheer magic of Stop Making Sense in any of my usual viewings, because it's already perfect. In Crosseyed and Painless, the camera pans between Alex and David as they trade absolutely cracked guitar solos, and it is a frontrunner for my favourite shot in any film. The whole thing feels effortless and fluid from beginning to end, a document of a band in their peak, beautiful moments of improvisation and genius popping up from both the performers and the cameramen, something divinely ordained.

But when Tina Weymouth is 20ft tall, you notice her lips don't quite match the audio track on Genius of Love, and remember that the film was shot over four nights, not one continuous concert. It isn't a gift from the goddess of music, it's a team of creatives sweating in a studio with probably not great A/C to make something that feels cohesive. When David dances with Ednah and Lynn on Burning Down The House, they perfectly match his strange movements and mimic the guitar playing, and when they're 20ft tall you remember that there must-have been a rehearsal. You remember that the physical CD of Stop Making Sense you own includes a booklet, in which every movement and stage direction is documented, and you wonder if that was written before or after the performance.

One I noticed long before I saw it in the cinema was during the objective pick for best Talking Heads song, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), when David enjoys watching the lamp he dances with wobble back into place for just long enough that he misses his cue to sing, and is back at the microphone just half a beat AFTER he starts singing on the audio track.

This is not nitpicking. This is revelatory, this is beautiful, this is the best the film has ever been. This is the autism of Stop Making Sense.

Like Stop Making Sense, I am profoundly autistic. I have been autistic all my life, and I will continue to be autistic. If you asked me if I'm proud to be autistic, I'd say yes, but at the same time I'm sadly not sure if that's true. I have masked so thoroughly and for so long that removing the veneer isn't freeing. Taking it off doesn't let my skin breathe, it exposes raw flesh so tender that it is stung by the air. Some people never have experience with air, tell you not to worry about it, but I think that David Byrne has.

He writes more songs about buildings and food, he dances either like a marionette or like a panic attack, he sings like he is bearing his soul or like he's having a panic attack, the polyrhythms the band finds are joyous grooves or they are panic attacks. Talking Heads is sensory overload about sensory overload, confusing music about being confused, failing radio transmissions about badly communicated emotions.

The difference is, Talking Heads will express that feeling, that disconnect, that hellish radio static in the back of my mind, and make it listenable and funky and fun. When I'm overwhelmed, I'll storm out and cry alone, when David Byrne is overwhelmed, he writes Born Under Punches. When I'm happy, I smile and, if around no-one but my girlfriend, maybe giggle and flap like I wish I could more often - before regaining control and putting the mask back on. When David Byrne is happy, he releases Don't Worry About The Government and the world listens to it.

I want to write songs about buildings and food! I want to write songs about Garak and Power! About the career of Ahmed Johnson! Let me! But I won't, and I don't. I don't think I can right now. But then there's Stop Making Sense.

Stop Making Sense takes every complicated, negative emotion in the discography of Talking Heads, and does something amazing with it; it makes it a party. In its original studio form, Life During Wartime is midtempo and reverby and distressing. The groove is there, but feels intentionally shot in the shin, only allowed to lope in a way that brings out the tension and danger of the lyricism. Then it Stop Making Sense it SKYROCKETS!!! The panic is still there, that essential tender skin of autism, but it is transformed into one of the most bracing and captivating performances of the whole film. Rather than monotonal, almost krautrocky guitar solos, it is given ecstatic synths and almost double the tempo. The studio version of David feels cramped in his situation, the film David runs in place! He wriggles! He sprints laps around the entire stage! The crowd claps and screams! I clap and scream!

This is Stop Making Sense in minutia. The tension and overload of autism is constant, it is pervasive, but what is present is the joy and not the pain. When I stim around my girlfriend I feel completely free momentarily, Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense feel completely free for eighty-eight minutes, and it's infectious.

Masking, at least for me, is performance anxiety. I have an ideal self in my head and, despite my constant trying to change this, she doesn't openly present as autistic yet. I want to perform my best, ideal self, and I need my autism to be part of that, but revealing myself that much to the world is terrifying.

But, once again, here's Stop Making Sense, and its perfect flaws.

The version of Tina we see sing Genius of Love isn't the version we're hearing, but she is beautiful, and I love her. David misses the cue to go back to the microphone, but I still hear his wolf howls and I smile. Chris beams like a headlight at all times, he's having the time of his life. Ednah and Lynn are always so ON that they feel more like Energizer Bunnies than people sometimes, and I wish I could be more like either of them. Jerry is consistently serious looking and kinda wooden, and he's doing so damn well up there. Alex seems to only know one dance move, it's to kick about as high as his chest and look to the right, and it's the coolest thing I've ever seen every time. Bernie looks so self serious at all times, which makes his basic ass solos on Making Flippy Floppy so much funnier and better. Steve Scales, on top of having the best name ever, keeps looking at the crowd like a kid whose parents have come to see him in the school play, and I love him. I love them all.

They are and were real people with interiority and darkness that I'll never know or comprehend, they all did bad things to good people at some point in their lives, and the version of themselves that was captured across these four nights and painted into this eighty-eight minute gasp of euphoria are my family and they are my friends.

David gets to the microphone too late and I hear the wolf howl and I smile, they all continue the song together and I clap, and then I squeal and then I shake and I flap my hands and the mask falls to the ground, and there are two people behind me who can definitely see me right now and they can definitely tell, they can so definitely tell, but this must be the place (naive melody) is the best song ever so I dont really care and the song ends and i find there are tears in my eyes and they dont fall, and before i can reach to pick up what i dropped the synth arpeggios of once in a lifetime start and i no longer have time so i sit theere and i watch and i listen and david dances and now hes wearing glasses and I'm just an animal looking for a home and, share the space for a minute or two! And I'll love you 'til my heart stops! Love you until I'm dead. Eyes that light up, eyes that look through you. Cover up my blind spots, hit me on the head! Awoo!

Postscript:

I tried writing this once on my phone, but the app crashed and deleted my progress and I almost had a panic attack lol. Glad I rewrote it, I want to put this somewhere, but it is somewhat more masked and less raw than the original version. Oh well, it's probably better written.

The one concert movie I've seen that REALLY goes into exposing how it's a construction over different nights is Beyoncé's Homecoming which is a masterpiece in its own right. The way it blatantly shifts outfits and colour schemes across shots is wonderful, people need to talk about that more. Probably shouldn't be me though lol.

[1spy]

1989 | Michael Penn - “No Myth”

So these posts I've been writing are documenting a project: A playlist that gets to the core of how I've experienced music in my life—one song for each year I've been alive. As I've been going through the process, I noticed most of the songs I chose are from foundational artists with long careers. Most of these artists have multiple songs and albums that are special to me. And I've had a REALLY hard time picking just one song and one year to represent these them.

But "No Myth" by Michael Penn isn't really that. It's just a great song that haunts me. A song that felt formative in my life, even if I never really cared about anything else he did. I mean, it's nothing personal. Michael Penn has had a long and fruitful career. He's released multiple critically acclaimed albums. He's the brother of famous actors Chris and Sean Penn. He's married to one of my all-time favorite songwriters, Aimee Mann. He's been a prolific film and tv composer.

So while It's accurate to say "No Myth" was his only Top 40 hit, I don't consider Penn a one-hit wonder. Still, that's kind of what he is for me. I've heard a bunch of his other stuff, and it's fine. But I only liked this one song. 

But, damn, what a song.

The insistent marching drums (for which the album is named). The oblique, literary lyrics. The hummable, descending bass line in the verse. The exquisite Lennon-esque vocal melody over a simple, driving acoustic guitar. Hearing this song is when I started to figure out what I love about music. And when I started to write my own songs, I was trying to build songs like this.

But I said haunting, and what haunts me is the Chamberlin organ the song uses to augment its god-tier guitar solo. As I learned from MTV, Harry Chamberlain's invention was a precursor to the Mellotron: an analog electric keyboard that played short tape recordings of music each time you pressed a key. Essentially, it was a machine built to play back samples of music before samplers or synthesizers existed.

The sound of the Chamberlain undulating beneath the lead guitar is intoxicating. And for a long time after hearing this song, it became what I demanded when I sought out new music. I wanted guitars and keyboards, but I no longer wanted songs that sounded like the bright synths and super-compressed lead guitars of the 80s. I wanted stuff that evoked the Beatles and Stones. Stuff that sounded like classic rock but also sounded new. Back then, I would describe this as "organic," years before organic food was really a thing. I was probably reading too much music criticism (I definitely read too much music criticism).

Fave Lyrics:

Some time from now you'll bow to pressure Some things in life you cannot measure by degrees I'm between the poles and the equator Don't send no private investigator to find me please 'Less he speaks Chinese And can dance like Astaire overseas (okay)

P.S. Lots of people I know love the rest of the album. They love multiple Michael Penn albums. But, as I said, I only really like this one song. I made a whole other playlist of songs that are like this for me. Not necessarily one hit wonders. Most of them aren't hits at all. They're just songs by artists both obscure and well-known where, for whatever reason, only one song ever did it for me. The playlist is called The Sound of One Song Hitting.

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/.../the-sound-of.../pl.u-y9XVfz4y41v

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EpdbOvAPpvMrqRElfjZmo...

[book-ishgirl]

Album Review: Dybbuk Tse!

By: Yoni Mayraz

Album Details:

Genre: Jazz

Released: June 2, 2023

From The Artist: Yoni Mayraz states that the "Dybbuk, known from Jewish folklore, is a malevolent wandering spirit that enters and possesses the body of a living person. It’s a cursed soul of a dead one that wanders tirelessly for sins committed during their life. The most vulnerable victims are the young and the sinful. Possession can be taken literally or as an analogy to the burden that young people carry generations back, which they have no influence on, and which they have to accept. Dybbuk can only be removed by exorcism. The titular ‘Dybbuk Tse!’ is a command to remove the spirit from the possessed body. The album is a story about possession but also about exorcism through music."

Album Review:

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars [⭐⭐⭐⭐.5]

Favorite Track: As We Entered Jericho

Authors thoughts: Wow, wow, wow! What an album! Mayraz has a truly unique sound and artistic voice that comes through here beautifully. A fusion of jazz, 90's NYC hip-hop, and Middle Eastern music, this album harbors a vibe like no other and a rooted story within. These three genres are blended beautifully together through structure, rhythm, melody and star-striking solos from each member of the band. The solos flow from instrument to instrument perfectly and the group seems to be in that state of "musician communication harmony" together. In particular, I enjoyed the groovy and flowing bass lines which Eli Orr rips out on bass guitar with a nice, rich, but synth-like tone. Somewhat dark yet light at the same time, Mayraz delivers his usual style of production while simultaneously experimenting with tinges of murkiness and gloom, resulting in the aforementioned dark/light contrast. I, personally, could not help but get up and dance to some of the tracks on here. My only real critique here is that the titular track (Track 5: Dybbuk Tse!) falls kind of flat in comparison to the rest of the album and the opening vocal sample on it feels out-of-place. Finally, I think the album art is surreally beautiful and worthy of mentioning here because it is just so cool. Very much worthy of it's high rating, I would recommend this album to anyone interested in or looking to get into fusion/contemporary jazz.

Got suggestions or feedback? Let me know in DMs or Asks!