[Dixielandjazz] Bass Amps / true harmony

[David McCartney]

Wow. Not that I'm a bass player with an amp,
which I am. (I know tom-toms by drummers really
piss me off - my sound is canceled.) But:

But the phenomena you mention happened to me
in a barbershop quartet. Not just any 4 guys, but
we were 4 sharpies who have that rare moment.
Acoustically, the lobby of the Marines Memorial
Hall on Van Ness in San Francisco, is to die for.

There was a point in singing a "tag" - as especially
super group of chords and voicings, that our voices
came out of each other's mouth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This relates to your big sax story, I thinks.

If you whistle in harmony with another person, you
can have a weird tickle hit your lips that is hard to
take. A blast of a tickle.

What makes barbershop special when sung by actual
talented, trained guys is the fact we use the true
harmonic scale - not the tempered scale as you get
from a piano.

A chord is based upon a tonic note and should have
a true mechanical ratio/relationship that is based upon
that frequency. The third is sung a bit higher than
the piano and the fifth also, but less. If you're
producing a minor 6th, you flat the 3rd and make it
light in volume, but dark in timbre.

If the bass or the bassist comes in with a note
a 5th below the tonic of that minor 6 chord,
the tonic is stolen and replaced by that note and
it turns into an exotic, fun new chord.

We get used to the tempered scale, but string
or brass or sax qtets that perform a capella can use
this same tuning. You get shimmering overtones
and (subtly) roaring undertones. As a singer, it
feels orgasmic, truly. We call it "Ringing a chord"

Producing any sound sets up a harmonic situation.
The frequency will unite with other sympathetic
sources and amplify and encourage them. In our
music, we manipulate these relationships and it
can feel realllll good - yes!

But enough of that


David McCartney / Captain Rapture



LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing wrote:

> Although I'm not a Bassist I have had some experience with playing low notes and a thing that happens with them.  I play Baritone sax occasionally in several groups.  While I was playing a tour with the AF band in Equador at 10K ft the reed would just stop vibrating cold.  I had noted that happened occasionally when I was sustaining a low note softly.  At 10,000 ft it was a problem but intermittent.  Some of the reed guys and other AF people who had played at high altitude thought it was the thin air.  I think It had to do with intonation too.  If I wasn't matching the band exactly the sound of the band would cancel out the vibrations in my sax.  The sax acting like a giant ear trumpet with sound going in as well as coming out.