Bassling blog

Chord Progressions

I put this in front of my son recently and he wrote a song.

Disquiet Junto 0742 Sensitive Math

The instructions this week are to "Record a piece of music that exemplifies the “sensitive math” genre."

I decided the sensitive part was going to give a reflective feeling, while the math component would be varying time signatures.

Last night I did most of the composing and thought I'd come back and add a melody to be a focal point.

However, when I listened back, it seemed there was enough happening and decided a lead instrument would be too demanding.

Then I looked at Archive.org for a video to suit the track and realised it was perfect for a chick flick.

Wrangling angles

Recently saw this idea to reverse the bridge pickup on a telecaster and realised I'd arrived at something similar with an upside-down stratocaster.

It really is refreshing to hear the zing on the low strings while taming the earache on the high ones.

I'm wondering if the angle on the pickup was originally a way to add more bite to dark-sounding wiring on early electric guitars?

Naviarhaiku636 – beyond the talus

The haiku shared by Naviar this week is another from the workshops I ran in February.

Around the time that discussion was occuring for a collaboration between Naviar Records and Red Earth Ecology, many of those who would become involved in the Stay Cool workshops attended the Haiku Down Under event that brings together poets in Australia and New Zealand.

Lisa Germay was one of the audience and we shared a few emails after the event.

Lisa is a multidisciplinary artist who writes haiku and haibun in the traditional Japanese tradition, seeking moments of beauty in everyday experience.

This Australian living in Arctic Greenland gave a presentation that started the Stay Cool workshops, so it is fitting to share her poem and also photograph.

Her presentation can be viewed here or a summary can be read at ree.org.au/2026/02/17/stay-cool-with-lisa-germany/

The Stay Cool project will culminate in an exhibition in the city of Griffith, Australia from 20 April that will include QR code for visitors to hear the compositions contributed by the Naviar Records community.

Mom

Disquiet Junto 0741 Balance Beam

The Junto assignment is to "Write music for bell and drone."

I shared Marc's prompt with ChatGPT and asked it to create lyrics, which I recorded while creaing music.

Sound of greasy wood

Yesterday I took my shot at installing the neck gifted by Stefan onto the blank from China. Using charcoal from a life-drawing class to mark the existing boltholes on the neck to the heel, then drilled narrow holes through a neck plate.

It might be sycamore, the body is light but I've enjoyed wiping layers of oils onto the wood grain and seeing it gain a sheen. The bolts secured the neck, which has an eco rosewood fretboard that grates a little like a blackboard under bending strings.

The pickups are yet to be wired, so I've only heard the intonation by strumming and the action is still high. However, the sound beams in a way that's like an acoustic guitar. When I lift another electric guitar the body sounds muted in comparison to this greasy blank that I only just screwed a bridge onto.

While I trying to think how to describe it, I remembered an interview with T Bone Burnett:

"I don't allow any synthetic surfaces anywhere around (in the studio). I don't like modern guitars because they're laminated. If you get an old-time guitar from the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s or even '60s – you can scrape the lacquer off.
"The new guitars are laminated, so you're already in a plastic age. You're already in an age of controlled sound, rather than an age of raw, free sound. And that's everything."

This guitar resonates in the planks that make the telecaster-shaped blank in a way that's distinct. I look forward to hearing how it sounds in front of an amp.

Naviarhaiku635 – can you hear the stars?

It's great to share a track responding to this poem, as Leanne was part of the workshops last month and offered this haiku.

Originally my piece had vocals, but I thought it suited Naviar's sound to go for a more minimal instrumental.

Bass boost

Disquiet Junto 0740 Polychord Amorous

The assignment is to write a piece of music based on a chord progression of polychords.

Polychords were a new term and I explored combinations of three-note chords on the guitar before arriving at two progressions.

The first is a kind of A over E, I guess, which is followed by a C7 and something.

I recorded two accompaniments on guitar as I ran through lyrics, which riff on pairing chords.

One of the influences on my playing this week is Nile Rodgers, particularly the way he'll split a big chord.

Going deep

I've been recording responses to the Disquiet Junto for over a decade

This has amassed over 500 recordings from, to date, 738 weekly prompts, those sometimes cryptic instructions issued by Marc Weidenbaum to an online community.

Most weeks there are dozens of recordings and I've learned as much from how the members respond, as I have from undertaking the tasks.

These activities are often musical, sometimes other audio formats, and interpretation is a lot more flexible than one might initially expect.

Some weeks it turns out worse than one hopes, but some weeks the results are surprisingly sublime.

There's a lot one learns along the way, but one of the highlights is when one sees something unexpected.

Just as we have many roles in our lives, there can be many versions in our audio productions and I feel I've explored other lives.

And some weeks, I see the prompt and can't help but watch my mind race ahead with possibilities.

Like this week I saw the title and got a way toward having a track finished before the prompt was published.

However, then the assignment arrived saying "Make music focused on sympathetic strings, or something akin to them."

And I realised that I'd misread the title as "Deepest Symphonies"!

Bill Callahan on staying hydrated

A lot of people, me included, only have so many creative hours inside them every day. It’s a little thing that gets replenished every day—but just a certain amount, like a jug of water. That’s your water for the day. No matter how much you wish there was more water in that pitcher, it’s just like, “No, it’s empty, but it’ll probably be full tomorrow if you do your other responsibilities and take care of yourself.” I learned and accepted that creative work is a finite thing. I used to treat it like an infinite fountain that I would just bathe in for 14 hours a day, but then I realized I’m just sitting in it. There’s no new water coming out of the fountain.

DAD bass

Quackology

Over a few months I've sampled a variety of guitar pickups

It began when I sensed a relationship between the bar magnet on the underside of a pickup and a strong attack in the sound it gave to an amplified guitar.

Last year I went overboard buying different types of guitar pickups and then trialling different wiring options.

Different pickups are often distinguished by their resistance, which accentuates the placement along the strings from the neck as higher amounts are favoured closer to the bridge.

While there are many aspects one would expect, such as dynamics and presence, I found the presentation of characteristics lack a specific quality.

There are charts showing brightness and darkness, treble and bass, harsh and muddy -- okay, I made up the last one -- but I can't think of any mentioning quack.

The quack of a pickup is a characteristic that exists on a similar spectrum and becomes more pronounced as one progresses from neck to bridge.

A quack is one expression of this sound, which begins more like a burr that becomes more throaty and pronounced as distortion adds harmonics.

I think telecasters are renowned for this honky character and I suspect the harmonics with placement of the bridge pickup are central to it.

However, many highly-wound and higher-output pickups seem to also accentuate this sound.

In my explorations I feel as though there's a scale of quack that begins with the Texas variety of pickup, then extends into bluesier and rockier characters as much as country.

As satisfying as the character sounds with a Tweed style distortion or a Marshall grunt, it's not always ideal.

For example, a serve of twang wouldn't sit with that classic stratocaster sound in the soaring leads of Clapton or Gilmour.

It's just a different flavour, yet the quack isn't as easy to pick as guitar builds.

I've figured out that I like single coils more than ceramic pickups, which use the bar magnet, and am now trialling double coils.

When I began installing different humbuckers I found that some had a twang, while others gave a harsh blast or a deep and thick sustain.

This is why I feel like a quack rating system is needed, and it could be represented with ducks.

I haven't paddled very deeply into the waters of humbucking, but I expect the pond is full of many styles of quack.

Potato Cake

Bought a guitar to try scalloped frets and am enjoying the expressive playing.

Also amused by the "fig leaf" sticker placed over the counterfeit branding of this purchase from China.

You can feel the cheaper materials in the shiny neck and plastic tuning pegs, as well as hearing a hum from the bridge pickup; but we live in an age where cheap guitars are made by automated routing in countries that don't respect IP -- so the playability is basically comparable with another Chinese guitar aside from copying the famous Swede.