Paul: Its a bloody nuisance. Its effectively stopped me touring. Its a constant ringing, around 5k. Its a bit like having a phone ringing in both ears constantly. I've had it 8 years and can point to a particular
loud gig with Captain in France in 1994 (due to abysmal monitoring)after which it kicked in big time and got progressively worse. That and playing with cymbal-mad drummers for 20 years. I know I played loudly but tinnitus is exacerbated by high frequencies. I think tho' the main cause was songwriting on headphones. I always used headphone monitoring, partly cos'I preferred it and partly cos' I used to write thru' the night. After a few beers your top end of hearing goes, so you whack it up a bit. Your ears start to get used to teh volume so you whack it up bit more. before you know it you've been working 6 hours and don't realise how loud its got. I have to wear special earplugs every gig I go to now, and its even hard to enjoy going to a pub if its noisy, even traffic noise is sometimes hard to handle. Its a bummer! i've been with this Professor who was Pete Townsends consultant - apparantly my tinnitus level is one of the loudest ever recorded, which I could well have done without knowing! Advice- try not to let it stress you out but its easier said than done. I find a few gins always helps too! Theres gonna be a whole lot more younger people with it soon - walkmans are deadly - and the level in dance clubs is way up on most gigs. I generally find newsgroups and website useless.
Q: Anything else you'd like to say...advice for aspiring bassists or other snappy comments? :)
Paul: Don't worry about getting it note perfect. i've probably never played the same song in the same way twice, ever. If its been recorded then history, someones already done it, theres no point trying to work it out note for note. Its all down to inventiveness and feel. Take the basics and make it your own. I think my best playing is on "Hubble Bubble", the Mischief album which will be available at the beginning of 2002. It was great fun to record. Theres some pretty mad basstuff on there that, makes me laugh every time I hear it! I defy anyone to work out "Hyperventilating"!!
THANKS AGAIN PAUL!
Be sure to check out his site WWW.PAULGRAYBASS.CO.UK for loads of Damned related Paul Gray info as he mentioned. Also visit WWW.MISCHIEF-MUSIC.COM , Paul's current musical project!
