Too bad Chris Whitten doesn’t play bass

JimmyM

JimmyM

Diamond Member
www.talkbass.com

Nathan East hits a bad note, and they leave it in.

One of my all-time favorite albums is Eric Clapton's "24 Nights," recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall. It has great versions of some great songs....
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The laughs start on page 4. Some guy discovers a tiny little clam Nathan East made on an Eric Clapton live album, and some dope who obviously never played a gig outside of the Bucket O’Blood tries to argue that maybe Nathan intended to do it, that we don’t know what Nathan is thinking, and thinks maybe he did it to mess with Clapton.

I swear, stuff like this makes me want to pay a tattoo artist to hold him down and tattoo a big L on his forehead. Makes me ashamed to be a bassist. But more than anything, it makes me wish I could see Chris hand his ass to him! I did the best I could, but I’ve been kicked off so much that I don’t dare risk it again, lest I get banned!
 
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JimmyM said:
www.talkbass.com

Nathan East hits a bad note, and they leave it in.

One of my all-time favorite albums is Eric Clapton's "24 Nights," recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall. It has great versions of some great songs....
www.talkbass.com www.talkbass.com

The laughs start on page 4. Some guy discovers a tiny little clam Nathan East made on an Eric Clapton live album, and some dope who obviously never played a gig outside of the Bucket O’Blood tries to argue that maybe Nathan intended to do it, that we don’t know what Nathan is thinking, and thinks maybe he did it to mess with Clapton.

I swear, stuff like this makes me want to pay a tattoo artist to hold him down and tattoo a big L on his forehead. Makes me ashamed to be a bassist. But more than anything, it makes me wish I could see Chris hand his ass to him! I did the best I could, but I’ve been kicked off so much that I don’t dare risk it again, lest I get banned!
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For the avoidance of doubt, are you asking @Chris Whitten to pop over to Talkbass and feed them his plimsoll on your behalf?! This is old school gangster behaviour @JimmyM … :unsure: :ROFLMAO:
 
Chris Whitten said:
According to Miles Davis there are no wrong notes.
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Look, are you going to listen to me or your friends? ;)

I’m pretty sure that when the root note is an F and you momentarily play an F# over it, it’s a wrong note. But Nathan is so slick that you have to be listening with eagle ears to notice that little clam. One of the very quickest recoveries I’ve ever heard. And I always thought Miles said that the difference between a wrong note and a right note is dependent upon what you do next.
 
On The Byrds' recording of "Spanish Harlem Incident," bassist Chris Hillman plays a very noticeable clam at the beginning of the last verse. It sounds like a fart. I never noticed it until someone pointed it out a couple of years ago. Now, I always hear it. I even mention it on my radio show whenever I play the song.

Dino Danelli told me that The Rascals' albums are loaded with mistakes that were left in, because producer Arif Mardin, Ahmet, and others thought the tracks with the clams had the best feel. If you didn't listen super carefully, the were pretty much unnoticeable.

Charlie Watts' first snare hit on the intro of "Start Me Up" is a clam. But they kept it, and that was that.
 
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I need to start haunting TalkBass again....
 
BobC said:
Dino Danelli told me that The Rascals' albums are loaded with mistakes that were left in, because producer Arif Mardin, Ahmet and others thought the tracks with the clams had the best feel.
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With instruments on separate tracks you can easily fix any obvious mistakes. I presume The Rascals recordings are four or eight track, so no fix possible?
What no one mentions is that 'happy accidents' are often celebrated in the music industry. I'm sure The Stones thought Charlie's off-kilter snare hit sounded great. We're talking about it now right?
I think when Dire Straits were recording Money For Nothing they struggled with the guitar intro. One day they tried it again and the pedals had been left in an odd set up, the guitar sounded mid-range, honky. It's pretty horrible actually. But it's become a signature sound.
 
Chris Whitten said:
With instruments on separate tracks you can easily fix any obvious mistakes. I presume The Rascals recordings are four or eight track, so no fix possible?
What no one mentions is that 'happy accidents' are often celebrated in the music industry. I'm sure The Stones thought Charlie's off-kilter snare hit sounded great. We're talking about it now right?
I think when Dire Straits were recording Money For Nothing they struggled with the guitar intro. One day they tried it again and the pedals had been left in an odd set up, the guitar sounded mid-range, honky. It's pretty horrible actually. But it's become a signature sound.
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I read that Knopfler was going for a Billy Gibbons Les Paul tone on that, so much so, that he called Gibbons to ask him questions about how he got his sounds. Gibbons apparently got pissed and hung up. He doesn't give up his tonal secrets.
 
BobC said:
I read that Knopfler was going for a Billy Gibbons Les Paul tone on that, so much so, that he called Gibbons to ask him questions about how he got his sounds. Gibbons apparently got pissed and hung up. He doesn't give up his tonal secrets.
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He didn't used to. Now he's got two vids of Elwood showing everything and how it works. Plus a signature pickup that's great. But I really didn't think his sound back then was hard to get.

BTW, I think a midrangey guitar sound can work really well, at least for rhythm.
 
BobC said:
I read that Knopfler was going for a Billy Gibbons Les Paul tone on that, so much so, that he called Gibbons to ask him questions about how he got his sounds. Gibbons apparently got pissed and hung up.
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I read a lot of hearsay which often includes conflict and anger. If it's something I witnessed myself it usually bares little truth.
According to producer Neil Dorfsman (in an official interview):

One mic was pointing down at the floor, another was not quite on the speaker, another was somewhere else, and it wasn't how I would want to set things up — it was probably just left from the night before, when I'd been preparing things for the next day and had not really finished the setup. Nevertheless, whether it was the phase of the mics or the out-of-phaseness, what we heard was exactly what ended up on the record. There was no additional processing on that tune during the mix.

"Later on, a lot of people asked me how I got the sound on the record, but it was just one of those happy accidents that have not happened to me very often. I don't know if something was broken, but we could not recreate that sound again. All I know is, it was the sound of Mark playing, using his fingers instead of a pick, together with the Laney amp.
 
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