#slapp bass lesson

[inspirebass]

Slap Bass Like Oteil Burbridge (My Personal Take)

[incorrecttwoset]

IM-

ASDFGHJKL- WHAT THE FUCK YES

Im not sure if this warrants a lesson time but fUCK IT IMMA DO IT ANYWAYS

Lesson time with Dani?????

The lesson we all learned here today is... that Davie was nice enough to put in markers. For the vid. So I can judge it better. You win just this once bass... just this once...

Anyways, LETS LEARN SOME LESSONS BOIS

0:00, the beginning (of the end) of the war. This part of the vid was a small teaser of what'll happen later on in the vid and a somewhat biased recount of the war. I'm saying somewhat because i just woke up and this is the second video ive watched today, first one being metling metal with magnets. Nice Dani is very much alive in the mornings... only if given ample time to ready themselves for socializing. oKAY BACK TO THE TOPIC. So after this recount of events, Davie transitions it to section 2:04 of the video with the line "bass is better than violin". And speaking of top 10 things to say if you wanted to be smited down by Ling Ling, lets go to that part.

2:04, they gave up? (Lol nopes) This section starts off with Brett's wonderful voice sightreading rapping to Eddy's lofi beats. (But no srsly, if you watch the vid it becomes sO APPARENT that Brett didnt memorize his LINES AHAHAHA HE KEEPS LOOKING OF TO THE SIDE AND READING IM DYING WHAT A MOOD) Which then goes into the famous transition from movement teo to three with that famous "sIKE" that probably tricked like, at least half the people that viewed. I know i was lol. Also, Eddy calm down with that tongue. You'll decimate half the fandom. But... he probably already did. And speaking of decimation, lets move to the next part shall we?

2:50, phone call. Violin-chan's life flashes before their eyes, wondering how the fuck Davie will end her life with a pizza cutter wHEN SUDDENLY. Ring ring. The phone rings. He answers it. (If you get that reference i love you) Its the bOIS! Just in time for violin-chan too. (Also dear god tHOSE WIGGLY EYEBROWS. EDDY IM A BRETT STAN STOP IT) They then show off a taste of the fruits of 40 hours practice by showing how they got his number and fINALLY legitimately declare battle directly to him. They then goad him into actually proving his worth as an instrumentalist, all for Violin-chan's sake. And we FINALLY ENTER INTO THE INSTRUMENT BATTLE. This is all for you violin-chan, we love you babe.

3:40, battle. Dude. Lemme just say. If they release a vid or a track with just the music from the battle, i will get it and blast it into my earphones all the time. I swear. Also, yt commenter TheVorshevsky was nice enough to get the piece names and place them all in their respective order. So, we'll follow that along with my own, albeit little, knowledge of classical music. Thanks for the help dude!

Pre-movement 1, WA Mozart Rondo Alla Turca AKA Turkish March. This part is short and sweet as it serves as the opening to the rest of the four movement battle. It slightly shows us how the battle will work, with alterations between bass and violin when its musically pleasing. (Dat butt wiggle dow. So cute! Thank you for stealing back my heart Brett) Of course, thats not how the whole battle will go as we blast off into the actual 1st movement.

Movement 1, JS Bach Cello Suite No. 1 G Major. As this part goes on, we see them take th main theme which they played at the start, and slowly add in their own twists and variations to it. And by slowly, I mean immediately after playing the theme. It was basically unrecognizable at the end. And i love it. And Brett showing off his perfect pizz? Oh baby, IVE MISSED THAT SO MUCH. Also, i love how they just ever so casually bUSTED OUT THE ADVANCED TECHNIQUES. LIKE OKAY. FLEX.

Movement 2, Vivaldi Summer. Personally, this feels like more of an endurance test to me. Like, see who breaks first. It would judge it musically but after finally being (slightly) educated on calssical music, I've looked back at all the times I've heard Vivaldi Summer. And oH GOD, IT WAS RUINED FOR ME. Well, not completely but like- its like asking a world class pianist to play Fur Elise. I mean, it's a great piece but its so overused. My music senses did not tingle with glee at this part. Twas only a light hum. Like how it sounded like. No offense. But I did like the intensity it added to the battle. Very epico in that regard.

Movement 3, Beethoven Moonlight Sonata 1st Mvt. I'm still sHOOKT at how they transitioned it from the intense, heart racing, fiery tones of Vivaldi Summer to the calmer, more melancholic melody of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Like hUH okay. Show off your arrangement skills. Also, is it just me or does the part after they introduce the main theme of the piece sound like the Twoset Concerto Battle??? Because, ive listened to that concerto battle for AGES and honey, i detect some concertos sneakin in this here battle. Also when Davie tried to take over with that simple yet sweet bassline which was complemented by Twoset's violin playing? Ohhhhh we sTAN. Do we stan Davie? Twoset? Both? I dont know, and i dont care because this is probably the best world war ever. And oH JEEZ WHEN EDDY TOOK THAT BASSLINE AND MADE IT HIS OWN WHILE BRETT BOUNCES HAPPILY IN THE CORNER? Ded. I would gush more about this part but we need room for movement 4 babey!!!

Movement 4, Paganini Caprice 24. When you thought that fighting two violin bois was easy but then you were wrong. AKA AnimeBassMe's rETURN. Fuckin hilarious i love it. Lowkey think that AnimeBassMe, Edwina, and Brettany would probably enjoy each other's company. Or ykno. Do the same instrument battle.

And finally, the thing we've all been dreading.

7:00, holy slapp. Not much to say really. Let's all gove a moment of silence for violin-chan. Wherever she is. At least she got to hear the EPIC music from this battle. And that Davie, on some level, respeccs the Twoset bois.

7:36, what happened to Violin-chan? Well, we can only hope that our bois in soft Twoset merch can save Violin-chan. (Also look at Brett's little run off screen im-)

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Vol. 4, No. 1

Esmerine

Our first Dust of the year roots through overlooked discs from 2017 while taking tentative steps into 2018, seeking out, as always, the sounds that intrigue us in large and small ways. This edition ruminates on blissed out folk, minimalist Reich-isms, microtonalisms, Thai-flavored surf and the possibly apocryphal genre of falschwave, with contributions from Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Ian Mathers, Justin Cober-Lake and Jonathan Shaw.  

Ilyas Ahmed — Closer to Stranger (MIE Music)

PASSING LINES - ILYAS AHMED - Official Music Video from Stephen Slappe on Vimeo.

Ilyas Ahmed plays a dreamy, untethered acoustic folk music, anchored by guitar but awash in floating, fading, translucent overtones. A sometime collaborator with altered folk-blues atmospherist Theo Angell and a partner in Dreamboat with ambient saxophonist Jonathan Sielaff of Golden Retriever, Ahmed works mostly alone here (Sielaff plays on the meditative “Zero for Below”). His songs move slowly, paced by the most minimal percussion, and left to drift hazily in soft air; he sings elliptical verses, widely spaced by jangling tangles of guitar, clear tones of Fender Rhodes. “Passing Lines,” the single, puts a scratchy, friction-y guitar rhythm around smoke wisps of murmured melody. “Sleepwalker” is more assertive, dissonant blares of distorted guitar poking through its somnolent contours, a la Hisato Higuchi. Closer to Stranger isn’t built to knock you over, but rather to insinuate itself softly, gradually, into the spaces in your head.

Jennifer Kelly

 Beast — Volume One and Volume Two (Pre-Echo Press)

Beast - 'Chase Scene' from Koen Holtkamp on Vimeo.

Koen Holtkamp has made plenty of entrancing music, both solo and as one half of epochal drone/ambient duo Mountains, but that music has generally downplayed or even ignored the possibilities of rhythm. That’s what makes Holtkamp’s first efforts under the Beast moniker such an interesting turn; the music here starts with rhythms, brightly colored clusters of notes densely arpeggiating into infinity. Both LPs manage to summon up some of the same peace and grandeur that Holtkamp is capable of with Mountains through very different sonic means. The division between the material makes sense — Volume One was recorded live with minimal edits, whereas Volume Two is a little more formally composed. Still both volumes go together with Holtkamp’s recent work marrying the modular synthesis and virtual instruments found here with 3D laser projections, and both touch on everything from Reichian minimalism to the sleek pulse of more electronic focused Krautrock. That Holtkamp can achieve such deep focus and ecstatic effects as easily as from many, many notes colliding together as he did from the drone is just a sign of how locked in his work is here.

Ian Mathers 

 Pascale Criton — Infra (Potlatch)

Chaoscaccia (2014) de Pascale Criton et Deborah Walker (extrait : polyphonies mutantes) from lellodeb on Vimeo.

There are ways of carrying on a life in music that don’t involve putting out lots of records. Pascale Criton has been composing microtonal music since the 1980s. While she has published many pieces of music as well as writing about the intersection of philosophy and music, this is only the second CD devoted to her work. Ensemble Dedalus, a French new music ensemble whose repertoire includes work by Jürg Frey, Antoine Beuger and Moondog, fills the breach by recording four recent works that split notes into sixteenths. The settings vary from violin and cello solos to music for five pieces (violin, cello, guitar, flute and trombone). On each the microscopic focus that Criton and the musicians bring to bear on small gestures — an ascending tone, an abrupt scratch, a plucked rhythm — gives the music a paradoxically limitless quality that makes it pretty easy to keep hitting the repeat button. If you’ve warmed to the string sounds of Tony Conrad and Arnold Dreyblatt, Infra is waiting to make your life better.

Bill Meyer

 Dead Rider — Crew Licks (Drag City)

The latest missive from Todd Rittman’s band of what I previously described on Dusted as musical werewolves both pulls back and goes further; he and Jake Samson and Matthew Espy still throw in all sorts of weird noises, shapes, and structures, but the digital blurring, shearing, shattering and shivering all over 2014’s Chills on Glass is mostly absent here. Instead the focus is on textures that are more overtly rock (or even rawk) indebted, whether that’s the fierce thrash of “The Floating Dagger” or the potent gloom of the closing “When I Was Frankenstein’s.” There’s even a cover of the Dead’s “Ramble on Rose” that at times sounds like it’s disappearing in front of your ears. The going further is that, while the technology and writing on Chills on Glass could feel oddly poppy, here Dead Rider sets out for deep in the forest/swamp/basement/dungeon and sounds like they might never come out. For simpatico creatures of the night, that’s an advertisement.  

Ian Mathers

 Esmerine—The Mechanics of Dominion (Constellation)

Mechanics Of Dominion by Esmerine

Esmerine, an offshoot of the experimental scene that grew up around Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Montreal, has been making music since just after the turn of the millennium, winding Rebecca Foon’s wonderfully supple cello through magically lighted, abstracted landscapes of piano, percussion, acoustic bass and orchestral instruments. Foon is a veteran of Thee Silver Mt. Zion, while her main partner Bruce Cawdron, has played percussion in Godspeed, but here they weave gentler, statelier, more melancholy textures, along the lines of Clogs. In the chamber group’s sixth full-length, sounds are warm, emotionally resonant and hyper clear; you feel that you are hearing more sharply than usual. An abbreviated orchestra accompanies them into calm, luminous spaces, adding scratch-y runs of bass, surges of brass and the limpid calm of malletted percussion. Long intervals of soothing sparseness give way to exuberant excess, as when “La Lucha Es En Sola” erupts late-cut into a giddy, horn-blaring, drum thwacking procession. The title cut, too, has its moments of drama, a tumultuous battering of drum heads and cymbals kicking the piece into a higher, more triumphant gear. Yet the impression you’ll come away with is one of quiet, truthful beauty, as intricate interworkings of rhythm and tone distill into pure sensation on the gorgeous closer “Piscibus Maris.”  

Jennifer Kelly

 Mary Gauthier—Rifles and Rosary Beads (In the Black/Thirty Tigers)

Mary Gauthier co-wrote these eleven songs with wounded veterans, as part of the non-profit SongwritingWith:Soldiers effort, working alongside people had never written music before to distill their stories into lyrics. Gauthier, whose own work has been unflinching, translates these materials into powerful, unsentimental narratives that seem, in a rarity for songs about military, entirely honest and devoid of cliché. Neither Gauthier nor her co-writers shy away from difficult subjects. There are songs about drug addiction (“Morphine 1-2”), sexual harassment (“Brothers”) and the women who care for the damaged returning home (“The War After the War”). Yet this is not protest music, and it’s not anti-military. These tunes convey the deep pride and satisfaction that comes with serving, though they make clear that there’s nothing easy or simple about it. Gauthier’s project would be worthy just for the way it reclaims these narratives and takes them seriously, but it works wonderfully well as music, too. Her steady, vibrato-tipped alto reinforces the unstarry-eyed clarity of the song’s sentiments, the melodies, pared back and traditional, lend a heft and historic resonance to their stories of sacrifice. This is a fascinating project, providing an unfiltered view into what forever war means for the people who bear the burden. Those of us who don’t can learn a lot by listening.

Jennifer Kelly

 Khruangbin — Con Todo El Mundo (Dead Oceans)

The trio Khruangbin drew some attention when their debut album The Universe Smiles Upon You mixed Thai funk with some psychedelia and surf into its own sort of groove. The group's follow-up Con Todo El Mundo ostensibly draws its sound from much of the mundo, and, while it's tough to pin exactly where these sounds originate, it doesn't seem to be the group's home base of Texas. The album starts strong, with its slinky funk locked in by Laura Lee's bass, which remains the focal point of the disc and the group's greatest strength. Guitarist Mark Speer tends toward the psychedelic, and the interplay of his spaciness and Lee's grooves define the sound of the band. Khruangbin's at its best when it keeps itself moving; some of the more out there meditations wander a bit. Those later tracks don't dissipate, but it makes sense to let Lee do her thing. Regardless of the style of any given song, the production keeps plenty of space, and the lack of crowding aids the album's explorations while revealing the connection between the three musicians, making for a smooth, collective listen.  

Justin Cober-Lake

  The Railsplitters — Jump In (self-released)

The Railsplitters, with their loose feel and roots in tradition, don't seem like a statement-making sort of band. Their play with bluegrass boundaries challenges style while letting each musician make his or her case musically, with banjo player Dusty Rider usually at the fore. The group's collaborative talent stands out, too, as they've quickly developed their sound. Jump In, though, is singer Lauren Stovall's album. Not only does her voice effortlessly fit the performances, but she has a number of timely (yet not didactic) statements to deliver. She sounds fed up. When she dismisses a bad partner on “Lesson I've Learned,” it initially reads as just as a kiss-off, but her voice develops across the album. “To Do” raises questions about identity, position, and self-definition. The memorable “Somethin' Sweet” manages to fit the #metoo era without while remaining audibly light and catchy. Stovall sounds like she's arrived and knows exactly who she is. She closes with “Baxses,” a song about the dire need for forgiveness that lets the album complete the group's vision, an approach that's both broad-hearted and sonically open.  

Justin Cober-Lake

  Swiftumz — Game Six (Fruits & Flowers)

Game Six by Swiftumz

Appearances can be deceiving. The just-folks sleeve image, baby-talk name, and Bats-like lilt of “Game Six” make this feel like something you’d have bought from the Ajax Records catalog c. 1996, maybe in the same batch with a new Lois or Olivia Tremor Control record. But tune into the story behind the winsome melody and you’ll hear an acknowledgement of a friend’s death, numbly registered before you switch back to the game because… well what does a guy do? The B-side has a more frankly narcotic vibe with a reverb-laden guitar solo that pushes from the edge of sleep to a place of ineffable sadness, which raises the question — just how did that guy die?

Bill Meyer

 Various Artists — Entertaining the Invalid: 80% Falschwave Blitzkrieg! (Hot Air)

ENTERTAINING the INVALID by The Flying Eyes

This diverting compilation purports to sample from a bunch of synthy, weirdo post-punk records put out by obscure players in and around Manchester, c. 1980. But given the comp’s subtitle, it could all be the pranksome work of the comp’s curator (or “curator”), Matt Wand, of Stock, Hausen, and Walkman semi-fame. Falschwave? It’s hard to know for sure — the interwebs aren’t forthcoming with info about the alleged artists. And the insert booklet that Wand has prepared is a lot more interested in Matt Wand than it is in passing along scraps of info about bands. It may be a sort of in-jokey love letter to a scene, a time, a feeling evoked by some obscure 7 inches in a dusty bin by the stereo stand. In any case, the most interesting stuff is credited to the Flying Eyes, Low Odour, and Kalte Insel. There are also two songs of soul-crushed anti-jazz by an act called Witness to Fatigue (or W2F). “DESIRE [frozen]” is a strangely effective piece of work, whatever its provenance. Favorite band name: Arthur Appliance and the Warm Suds. Favorite song title: “i smell burnt ear hair.” That about sums it up. 

Jonathan Shaw

 Matt Weston — Searchlight Sings (7272 Music)

Searchlight Swings by Matt Weston

Now that 7” singles cost more dollars than LPs used to, there are just two reasons to make them — quixotic amour and aesthetic necessity. This single exemplifies both. Matt Weston is currently based in upstate New York, but he grew up in the Midwest at a time when kids still put 45s on little record players and cranked them up for their friends. He knows first hand what a gas it is to put the fuzzy needle on, say, “Magic Bus” or “Dream Police” before you head out to the school bus.  But this single is no mere nostalgia trip. The grown-up Weston is an improviser, electro-acoustic composer and multi-instrumentalist (albeit still a drummer at heart) as well as a rock and roller (albeit more mod than rocker). He knows that while singles never really caught on in the free jazz and experimental music worlds, there’s something uniquely communicative about a brief blast of densely packed sonic information. On this record you’ll hear extensions of free jazz blowing, hip-hop drumming and that razor-sharp static groove thing that Cabaret Voltaire did for a minute before they went disco. Two tracks, each under two and a half minutes, each packed with more event than recent presidential press conferences, but designed to enhance rather than deaden the senses — what more could you ask from seven inches of vinyl?

Bill Meyer