J bought me a Kala ukelele bass for my birthday
 

Those urethane strings are wild. Lower vibrations on a short scale, I guess?

It sounds amazing. Do your fingers have room?

The string spacing is definitely tighter than a typical bass. It's about halfway between bass spacing and guitar spacing. With that, and the fact it's fretless with a whole new length, it's a nice challenge.

Yeah and the strings are all wobbly, cos right, that's how it gets the low notes out, by being all loose.

I'll take it to open mics, because suddenly I play an instrument that's wildly light and portable. Never had that before.

Light, portable instrument. I'm jealous. I've experimented with minimal setups, but I really can't be useful without an instrument attached to both feet--so, a bass drum and a hi-hat stand. The two most clumsy, least portable things.

Interesting that the strings are wobbly. It's like tuning a drum lower and it changes the rebound.

neat! happy birthday!

Whut Jim said.

Exactly that! People wouldn't expect it to make any difference, but it's huge! Musician nerd alert

I was just watching Jaco Pastorious video from long ago, where he said, when I want to play fast, I pluck the strings down near the bridge. And I'm like, OMG, I never thought of that, but he's completely right. Down at the bridge, where the strings are anchored, they hardly wobble at all. At the middle of the string, they really move a lot. You have to fight all that, because you are actually forcing it to move a different direction.

With a drum, you're actually fighting with a lot of moving air, trying to get it to move differently...

*nerd alert*

18" bass drums don't just sound different than 22" ones-- it's a completely different instrument. 22 inches of diaphragm can "absorb" the kinetic impact of the beater, 18 inches cannot, and the beater "bounces" back at you. This is regardless of tuning, type of heads. It's just a physical characteristic of a that-sized object.

The sound of a pick is brighter when you pick near the bridge too. Conversely, if you want a softer lighter sounding chord, strum above the 20th fret. Jimmy page does a kind of swirling motion on some songs if you watch for it.

Jimmy Page parts *sound* swirly, didn't know they literally were.

What y'all are saying about playing near the frets is exactly like playing closer to the edge of a snare drum-- tighter, pluckier, better action, more articulate.

nearer the bridge would be tighter like the edge of drum.. the fret side is more in the middle of the string, so more rebound and less sparkly.

eh--bridge --yes, my oops

That, my friend, is damn cool.