It's a deep candy blue with four active pickups two volume and two tone controls. It's an Ibanez and it's the best bass I've ever owned. Right about now my hands are killing me, but I'm happy in a dimension I haven't felt in quite some time.
Truth be told, the July weekend I was out at Big Bear with the Joneses (I'll have to introduce you later), I picked up their old acoustic and plucked away all night as we played trivia games and sung songs. I realized that I could still do it, think it and play it well enough for somebody else to recognize it. That set the stage for my purchase down at Sam Ash. And so now I can boogie oogie oogie.
What's astonishing is how little bass music is in today's hiphop. I started by putting on all the hiphop tracks in my iTunes. Then I realized that my categories are all out of whack. There's Hiphop Hip Hop Hip-Hop Hip Hop/Rap Hip-Hop/Rap Rap... So I stuck to Hip-Hop. Nelly Furtado has all of three notes in 'Turn Out the Light'. PE's Black Steel is an atonic three notes. But then Black Sheep throws me a curve ball. Bass lines! Still the best I came across all night were 'The Lost Breakbeats' of The 45 King. I'm looking forward to the challenge of Steve Arrington.
The trick I'm going to have to do is start stretching my fingers all over the place. I want to do this organically and then conform my own understanding to a formal technique. That way I get to play Brick House and Good Times to amuse and delight myself (and teach my kids something about the Old School - Boy's favorite off the top of his head is Iron Man, yike we're suburban!) without having to stick to the stupid Volga Boatmen tunes in the novice books. I already see there's a lot of action going string to string off the third and fifth frets.
The nice thing about this bass is that it's quiet and sweet in the higher registers. I've never wanted to play up there, just bang on the lowest open string back when I was 19 and in thrall with my 99 dollar pawn shop red bass. And I'm actually going to try to play School Days. Chords!
Well, that's where it is now.
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