If you happened to be at the Maker Faire in the Bay Area about a week ago you may have spotted a young lady in a sun dress roller skating around with an odd contraption. The young lady was Jeri Ellsworth, the contraption was a Commodore 64 Bass Keytair.
“The difference in this from any old keytair is that I’m doing a frequency count on every each string, so each string has a piezo pickup,” Jeri said
“And then I’m doing a frequency count to determine what nots being played, and then I’m resampling it through the original Commodore 64 sound chip.”
You’ve got to hand it to her for the unique design and build. But how does it sound?
“It sounds pretty much … umm … bad”
Still, it’s an interesting sight to behold.
[via CNET]
[pictures via makenai and Blake Maloof]
Flatwound strings should help reduce overtones.
The 64 Ruled in the day!
Can’t think of a better tribute to it. Nice Job.
-RH
NO!!!For me, the use of a pick is an option that I use for a ctaerin effect or if it really hurts my fingers to play.When I play electric bass, I strike the stings with my index and middle fingers about 85% of the time.Some players use their thumbs, but I find the thumb method to be too slow.Some of the incredible bassists use [what I call] the slap-pull method, thumping the lower strings with their thumbs and striking the higher notes with their fingers.If the slap-pull method is what you want to adopt, learn the basics first.Check out the many different styles of playing. That includes orchestral bass parts (large ensembles which back up singers) down to the crudest players. Don’t limit your studies to the stuff that you like.Also important: practice!!!You will never be considered for any marathon runs if you don’t first master the complexities of crawling first.I wish you success in your endeavors.
Awesome. I never though of making a bass out of my apple 2c.