Post your covers! (2019-2022)

Yeah it’s just super cool. Achievement Unlocked :slight_smile:

You got some great praise too!

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That IS really cool, @terb! :+1:

I can’t really think of a greater compliment than that. Who knows? If the rest of the band really likes you, maybe you could even fill in for him someday! :slight_smile:

Cheers, Joe

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That’s how Henry Rollins got his start :slight_smile:

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Arkansas is not really in my close neighborhood :joy:

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You guys should never have sold all that land to the Americans back then :joy:

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So what better way to end 2019 for me?.. Post my tribute cover to those I served with from ‘71-‘75 in the Western Pacific aboard the old Diesel Electric Submarine USS Sailfish (SS-572).

“We Gotta Get Outta This Place”

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Oh yeah @Lanny, I don’t know if it’s the last cover of 2019 or the first of 2020, as we are not on the same time zone :grin: for me it’s the first of 2020

You made a nice slideshow with the old pictures and you did well with the pick ! playing a bass with a pick is not really the same feeling than with a guitar, you can’t really “slide” over the strings and you have to manage the wide amplitude of the bigger and heavier strings. I noticed you plays near the bridge, you should have less amplitude but a lot of string tension here !

Anyway, yeah, the pick gives very interesting options, it’s my favorite technique not only because it feels a bit more familiar to me than finger plucking, but also and more importantly because it gives a different feeling and I find it makes us play in a different way. and it happens to be a way I like :grin: (but I like finger plucking too which sounds warmer and more organic)

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@terb That’s fucking AWESOME!

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@Lanny You’re a machine!

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@eric.kiser - Must be my new pacemaker!!

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So true @terb. Playing bass with a pick is certainly a new experience and so many different tones can be achieved depending on where and how you do it.

I found that it was easier for me to hit the notes if I played either over the neck (more bass tone) or close to the bridge (more amplitude). I chose to go close to bridge since the tone was different than the original song and resulted in a little more of a ‘cutting edge’ feel to the groove.

What was tough for me was to get use to the difference in spacing between the strings on the bass in comparison to the strings on either my Tele’s or my acoustics. I found that I kept missing string changes and my pick kept ending up between strings (where a string ‘would’ be on my six string guitars).

All in all a great learning experience though and I know that I’ll need to work a bit more on my pick technique this upcoming year (along with some slap and pop!)

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Nice one, @Lanny!

I’ve got to say that I hardly noticed the playing because I was engrossed in the photos, so you can’t have been too far off at any point otherwise I’d hope I’d have heard it.

There was a photo of a sailor with a HMS cap on, I couldn’t make out the full name but it looked like “HMS WASP…” - put a Brit out of his misery and tell me which ship it was.

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yeah, this gives you a more focused tone and an agressive punchy midrangy attack. it StingRay-ize your tone :grin:

I usually hit the strings near the neck pickup, a little bit clother to the neck, this is where the string tension is what I like and it gives what I think is a good balance between a fat tone and an agressive attack. but in this area, the string amplitude is pretty wide and you can’t do small pick mooves like with a guitar, you have to moove the pick for real :sweat_smile: also those who watch the videos carrefully might have seen that on my last cover I play between the two pickups (closer to the bridge than I usually do) : the reason is that with the Drop-C tuning the string tension was very low, and hitting the strings closer to the bridge gave me a little bit more resistance under the pick, it felt a bit more like usual tunings.

A lot to say with pick techniques ! :sweat_smile:

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That was excellent, @Lanny . . . :+1:

Very nicely played AND produced . . . :wink:

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@PeteP - HMS Wasperton. A Royal Navy Minesweeper that was converted to a Hong Kong patrol craft back in 1971. When our Submarine pulled liberty R&R liberty in Hong Kong in 1972 after a 30 Day patrol in the South China Sea, the HMS Wasperton was assigned as our “Host” ship while in port. The sailor wearing the cap was one of our “Machinist Mates” who traded one his US Navy “Dixie-Cup” hats with one of the Wasperton crew members.

As it turned out, our week of R&R in Hong Kong resulted in only a 5 day period because our crew apparently partied a bit too hard one night and our boat was “forcefully asked” to leave (we were kicked out of Hong Kong)…

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You could most certainly teach a pick style bass class @terb!! Then again, your preferred style/genre of music most definitely requires that a pick be used more often than not.

So, so true on the different areas to use the pick. I found my problem to be somewhat of a double edge sword since with arthritis, trying to hold a pick between my thumb and forefinger without loosing it is a bit of a challenge. I tried using a thumb pick (like I had to use during the B2B course), but the ones I have are a bit too bulky (too thick/rigid and not pliable enough) and didn’t give me the tone that I was looking for. The other reason is that I just couldn’t find a good comfortable spot to anchor my hand (reference point) to on any if my bass’s like I can on my Tele’s.

I guess it’s just gonna take me some more “practice with a pick” time in order to be much more comfortable in the technique.

Keep on Thumpin’!

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yes I understand that … I hold my pick with 3 fingers, which is not at all the official technique but I always did that way and it allows me to manage the angle of the pick regarding to the strings, and also it allows me to hold the pick very firmly. maybe worth a try ?

another interresting point here ! I have the same “problem”, especially considering the fact that my attack zone is very far from the bridge. so in fact I don’t really have any anchor point ! but as I always mute every string I’m not using, I always have one or two fingers touching the strings. very often I have the pinky on the D and G strings, it serves somewhat the purpose of an anchor point. I realize that it’s the same thing with a guitar, my attack zone is near the neck pickup and I never really anchor my wrist.

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So, dear BassBuzzy friends, with the new year starting it’s time to make the counts !

since the beginning of this thread in August 2019, and if I counted right, we have an amazing total of 28 covers already ! all that in less than 5 month, it’s pretty awesome ! :heart_eyes: it’s more than one new cover posted each week ! incredible !

I’d like to thank every player who posted some covers this year : @Lanny , @JoshFossgreen , @joergkutter , @vik , @PeteP , you all rock !!!

With new BassBuzzians every week, and considering that the ol’Buzzers are being more and more experienced, I’m pretty sure we will have a lot more bass players who will post covers in a close future, I can’t wait to ear/see all this !

For the newcomers, it may be useful to remember the Sacred Rules of Covering : there is no rule really. You just have to record your bassline over an existing song and that’s it, that’s a cover. You can do it more or less “professionnally” (regarding the recording and producing methods and techniques), you can play the exact same bass line than the one on the album, but you also can play your own bass line, you can simplify the existing line if you want, you can use a different plucking technique than on the original song, a whole different tone if you want, you can change the pitch, the tempo, use strange tunings … to sum up you can do pretty much what you want, as long as you play a cover :grin:

If you hesitate : don’t ! Your only risk by posting a cover is to learn a few things (or a lot), to have fun, to practice your bass playing, and to have constructive advices.

Again thanks a lot to everybody posting and reading this thread, and let’s make great covers for 2020 !

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Thanks to @terb for the 2020 season kick-off message, and all the other contributors: be it posting a cover, offering feedback, or explaining the technicalities of recording.

I don’t do new years resolutions, but if I did it would be to get back to my mid-year practice regime, post at least one cover each week, and lose weight - but that one’s nothing to do with playing bass.

(do we have a rule about posting a new version of a cover we’ve already posted?)

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NO RULES!!!

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