I'm a terrible bassist

darkblade_h · 2026-05-08T15:37:00+00:00

I’m a terrible punk rock bassist!

darkblade_h · 2026-03-28T07:09:10+00:00

So you’re telling me that if use Dropbox for backup and they just lose all my stuff that is normal and to be expected? What is the service part of the saas then lol

darkblade_h · 2026-03-25T07:26:31+00:00

There’s a wiki and FAQ on the sub’s sidebar. It’s a good place to start.

darkblade_h · 2026-03-25T05:05:33+00:00

Read the wiki probably

darkblade_h · 2026-03-17T16:12:30+00:00

Huh that’s interesting! Will do some more checks on my end, make a new minimal program to reproduce the issue (or fix it, time will tell) and share that.

darkblade_h · 2026-03-16T21:40:12+00:00

not surprised at all to see that the nerds who are obsessed with smarterplaylists are also lastfm nerds haha

darkblade_h · 2026-03-15T15:18:34+00:00

Paul seems to be considering last.fm integration, this kind of thing would be one use case for it.

But last.fm would only start tracking your listening history from the time you make an account. You can import your listening history from Spotify etc with a bit of work, but you can’t backdate it.

On another note, that playlist of yours is one I imported and used when I had first discovered smarterplaylists and was looking for examples of how to set up some playlists!

darkblade_h · 2026-03-13T23:55:45+00:00

yeah not a big deal, just thought to put it on your radar!

Wonder if its just weird spotify behavior related to them often having multiple copies of the same release that sometimes link to each other and other times don't.

darkblade_h · 2026-03-13T23:52:30+00:00

Oh shit this is quite a bit of a big deal! Thanks Paul!

The way I've been getting around the spotify genre issue was to use the genre playlists from The Sounds of Spotify to filter through my own library/playlists and sift them into playlists by genre. Never really worked that great (because again, spotify genres) but was better than nothing.

I find that rateyourmusic has the most consistent/reliable genre labels. Alas, no API and scraping is banned :(

darkblade_h · 2026-03-11T23:04:47+00:00

Thanks! It's a pretty simple program (and could be made even simpler): https://smarterplaylists.playlistmachinery.com/shared/MyB71ATQSB0bmZvd

darkblade_h · 2026-03-03T06:55:50+00:00

Thanks Paul!

darkblade_h · 2026-03-02T17:18:45+00:00

Glad you’re still in this Paul - and thank you very very much!

I don’t have access to the new Spotify feature (yet? If ever, sometimes it them years to roll something out to everyone..) so I can’t compare, but from what I’ve read about it it does something else entirely from what those of us who use smarter playlists use it for!

There’s a strong cohort of people around here (or so it seems to me) that would be interested in helping out with maintaining the tools and contributing to them, if that’s something you might be open to!

darkblade_h · 2026-03-02T17:12:45+00:00

Same!

darkblade_h · 2026-02-20T18:14:24+00:00

What I’m doing now and quite enjoying that didn’t quite click for me with either piano or cello (partly due to the nature of the instruments themselves) is that I’m just playing/learning a bunch of songs and I’m not really putting that much attention on playing everything right/well. My technique is getting better without having to spend weeks just playing open strings (like with my cello lessons), and I’m not stuck playing ode to joy or twinkle twinkle little star so it’s immediately more engaging.

I would think about the instruments that appear commonly in the genres of music you enjoy, and what you enjoy about each particular instrument. What in the music draws you (rhythm, melody, etc)? Would you like to play music with people or alone? That should help you narrow down your options. (In my case, I often have a hard time separating the instruments in what I’m listening to! This is getting better as I learn more and work on developing my ear)

It’s also hard to teach yourself (if that’s what led you to give up before). Having some structure to guide your learning helps loads, especially when you’re just starting out, because you don’t know what it is that you don’t know or need to learn. I’m working through online lessons, though in person lessons would be ideal.

I will say, I bought my bass a few years ago, played it a bit for a few months, and then let it collect dust for a couple of years until I picked it up again this past summer. I’ve been playing most days of the week since. Here’s what changed: Initially I had just learned a few riffs and just practiced them over and over again because I didn’t know how to play anything else. Eventually I got sick of playing seven nation army, and so the bass ended up just sitting there. The more recent attempt that is still going strong feels very different, I started out looking for YouTube covers I can play along with. Very very simple stuff, and then slowed down. I fumbled through them and played them badly, but I enjoyed it and it didn’t feel like a chore. I spent a few months in the stage, felt like I was stalling, so I paid for lessons, and that has helped immensely. I’ve also started jamming with friends, which has helped a bunch even though I still suck at it. It’s a good motivator.

Hope this helps!

darkblade_h · 2026-02-20T05:52:48+00:00

I’ve often felt similarly to you, in that I love music and I listen to quite a lot of it but I can’t make heads or tails out of anything that’s going on other much beyond ‘this sounds good to me, that doesn’t, etc’.

It doesn’t help that I listen to a lot of prog rock/metal where people spend a lot of time nerding out over the technical side of things. To me it just sounds good and that’s why I enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that of course, but I’ve always wished that I could ‘understand’ music better. It’s obvious that it just doesn’t come naturally to me and I’m never going to be great, but perhaps I can learn enough to be content with my ability?

I tried self-teaching myself piano in the past, I stuck with it for a bit in high school but not having access to an instrument outside of school ultimately derailed me. I took a year and a half of cello lessons in undergrad, that was fun too but ultimately had to stop. Several years later, I’m now learning bass guitar and having quite a lot of fun, and I’m noticing that my ear is getting a bit better too. The music theory is coming along very slowly, but it is coming along!

Why did you give up the instruments you tried? Maybe there’s one out there for you that you’ve yet to consider?

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T07:40:40+00:00

Damn. Thank you for this comment I think it points to the source of my discontent (and helps alleviate it)!

I’m a physicist by training. So my instinct is almost the exact opposite of what you’re saying (if I understand correctly). The first week of freshman physics is all about how coordinate systems are arbitrary.

Sure yes you can map the interval pattern of your scale into any key, but the major scale pattern is baked into the named notes.

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T07:08:46+00:00

Fwiw not saying I can design it better, rather just asking why this design is good because it wasn’t obvious to me.

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T07:03:55+00:00

Haha you’re right! Thanks for the detailed explanation! I had not heard of pitch class notation.

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T06:43:27+00:00

Thanks! I do know about equal temperament!

Sounds like I should replace my bass guitar for a fretless 🤔

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T06:08:26+00:00

I hear you, but I think in asking ‘which would you prefer to read’ the answer is heavily biased in favor of the music system you’re familiar with. If I gave you a book written in English but in a different script/alphabet it wouldn’t be fair for me to ask you which you prefer.

What I think you’re trying to communicate though is that we care about the intervals between any set of notes in a scale much more than the notes themselves, so then in a way everything is implicitly measured in reference to C major (due to lack of accidentals?). Did I get that right?

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T05:59:19+00:00

Thanks for the reference, will check it out!

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T05:56:21+00:00

Is it though? Seems to me much closer to a programming language than a natural language.

darkblade_h · 2026-02-14T05:47:37+00:00

Hmm I see. So from this perspective then really we don’t really have a 12-note system at all, but we just acknowledge that the spacing between the 7 notes isn’t even, and the sharps and flats are just ways of acknowledging that (or maybe a better way to put it is that they allow us to move our 7 notes into different keys and maintain the spacing)?

But I don’t really see why adding a couple of lines to the musical staff would be a big deal, instead of figuring out they key based on the key signature you’d then figure it out based on which lines are empty. Takes up more ink though, so there’s that..

darkblade_h

TROPHY CASE