I was mostly frustrated with him because it felt like he never learned a damn thing, At the beginning it seemed like he did nothing but made choices in a desperate attempt to appease his desire to regress to a simpler time and those choices later on turned into horrible mistakes that blew up in his face.
Granted we all make mistakes it’s a part of being human but when a character makes mistakes I expect them to grow from it and for the longest time it seems like Ethan was more disappointed that his hair brain plans didn’t work out rather than see why it wouldn’t have worked in the first place and that got me frustrated.
At the beginning of this comic I have the same type of animosity towards Joyce but that faded away when I saw her progress and learn from her choices and she then great on me and even become one of my favorites. Ethan on the other hand to me for the longest time felt like he stayed the same up until recently but I just grew used to not liking him. In the end eventually I would have had to learn to let it go.
Point is I can learn to be ok with any character in a story on a certain level as long as I know they’re trying the hardest to improve.
That And I hated who he was paired up with romantically. His relationship with Joyce was nothing but a lie that again with him stringing along a girl he had no romantic interest in just so we can get his old life back.
And then there was that thing with Danny despite him being with Amber but I feel like I lost my right to criticize that one anymore because I’m backing Joyce and Jacob to be a thing even it’s a slightly similar situation.
No offense to anyone who likes Ethan but for the longest time I thought he was a tramp.
Sunny
It’s “harebrained”. The word is derived from the animal and not from the stuff you (presumably) have growing out of your head.
HeySo
It’s important to keep in mind just how slowly time passes in DoA. Expecting Ethan to change significantly over a few weeks of DoA time isn’t really reasonable to how slowly real world people evolve. And, unlike Joyce, he hasn’t had repeated tragedy after tragedy to deal with to shock his system.
Even better, I was taught piano as a child, hated it and quit after awhile, almost 15 years later I have bought myself a piano after years of TRYING to play ukulele and suddenly realizing that I’m waaaayyy better at piano than I am at ukulele/guitar.
My mom is so proud of forcing me into those.
Joy
she has not earned her pride and by not the narrowest means deserves it. i learned the piano simply due to the fact that i grew up with one in my childhood house and my natural inclination. i began at age 11. if i had been pressured into it as you have, i would’ve been like you.
if she hadn’t done that, you could’ve been like me.
Djaevlenselv
We had an electric organ when I was 7. I never took the time to try learning it, and a year or so later we gave it away. Today I wish my parents had forced me to take lessons.
I had a terrible piano teacher in middle school. She used the ‘brute force rote memorization’ technique to teach the usual songbook of traditional nursery rhymes. No theory, no fun, just months of “play ‘hot cross buns’ and do your scales”. The experience soured me on learning an instrument for years.
Learned violin then self-taugh other instruments. I am grateful (now, of course) for those years (not months) where I had to exercise scales and play no fun tunes. After a few years, songs began to become a bit more fun (like Liszt or Berio), and I got to play in the music school orchester, first no fun lines, then solos (even if I never did like solos per se, just that they were more developed). Would I have never had brute techniques taught before, I’d not have been able to teach other instruments myself later on, because, you know, discipline over creativity is great to make you progress on mastering things. Of course without creativity, it’s hard to put any heart into exercising. So, when nobody was looking, I sung and composed for my very young self. The experience only began to sour me when I became a teenager and questioned my liberty, as I was taught by close family.
Other thing: sal should thank piano for being able to fine tune the uke. human ear is not made to her very well fine tune differences in the low frequences, so bass probably wasn’t what taught her to listen. Heck, I more than once voluntarily played songs half a tone under/over with my bass and nobody beside me remarked it (apart from one drummer once).
I had piano lessons as a kid but ended up dropping them because our piano sucked. My parents couldn’t understand why the piano drove me crazy. “These notes are *wrong*!” I said, pounding on certain keys that were out of tune. My parents were utterly baffled, it sounded fine to them, neither of them could carry a tune in a bucket or tell the difference between a C-note and a hundred dollar bill. Eventually I ended up teaching myself guitar, harmonica, Irish whistle, electric bass, and, finally, piano again — this time on an electric piano that can’t go out of tune, thankfully!
I’ve never figured out if that is a genetic thing, but glad you stuck to your guns as a kid.
Badtux
Yes, literally tone-deaf parents. The hilarious thing is that my mother was brought up in a church that required the congregation to sing, and she grew up singing every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening… badly, out of tune. Family Christmas caroling time was utterly painful! Anyhow, some years later I checked out a book from the public library about how to tune a piano and tuned the bloody thing myself since my parents insisted it sounded fine and thus didn’t need tuning… but that was years after the attempt at piano lessons died on the beach of a ridiculously out-of-tune piano.
Yeah, most people don’t get that if you buy a piano, you have to have it tuned by a professional. We had two at home, and the semi-forte, in a rather cold place, was tuned once very five years so we never used it much.
Khno
Reading this again, I sound like a snob (what isn’t an astonishment) privileged (that, as white, I am again) bourgeois – this part bathers me. I must then add that my family lived of these instruments (and other) and that it wasn’t décor or nouveau-riche fantasy.
Badtux
Plus pianos weren’t all that expensive back then. I think we paid $100 for ours. That was back in the era when it was expected that middle class kids would get piano lessons, and the pianos were dumped at a ridiculously low price after the lessons were finished, passed on from family to family. Today, the kids get XBoxes, and real pianos are stupid expensive even used.
legobil
Well if you want you could basically get a paino for free now, at least where I live. They are just too cumbersome to move etc, many relatives of older people who move away from a family home or pass away will basically let you have it if you only come get it yourself.
Thunderstruck on the guitar. My family is starting to hate that song. I am not there yet, although there are times I can’t bring myself to play it. If they complain, however, I start playing Smoke on the Water at loud volume and distortion cranked, usually shuts them up.
This is just my opinion that no one asked for but even though a Danny X Sal romance can work beautifully I can’t see it this time around. Sure at the beginning I suggested this but they seem more platonic then anything else.
I mean if you want to play Devil’s Advocate I could bring up how they share something in common about how they both have parents who give them expectations they want them to live up to and then are put down for it when they can’t. But that’s more of a thing they can relate to each other with more than bond romantically.
They seem to have more of a two peas in a pod buddy buddy thing going on.
Yeah I’ve got to agree. I think Sal is opening up to Danny as a replacement Marcie. As she’d have no interest in dating Marcie those feelings kinda attach to Danny. She’s always had that one person to air her troubles to, now that they’ve become unavailable she’s found a (possibly temporary) replacement in Danny, someone she sees as completely harmless in every way.
One of the first lessons in Psychology at university blew my mind. People are like points, any two of them defines a straight line, i.e. any random pair of people will have something in common, you just have to look. It changed the way I relate to people.
Food is often a good choice, though that presents some problems of its own through special diets. Still, most people have an indulgence they can get excited talking about.
Cool! I’d like to do something like that at my own wedding (if I ever have one). To be honest, I don’t know many piano songs, I spent most of my time fricking around and experimenting until I became an actually okay pianist? Nowhere near professional level, though. xD
I tried to teach myself piano in college. It didn’t stick. Guitar on the other hand, did for some reason. So much so I’m now (many years later) playing rhythm guitar in a band.
The original Marc Bolan/T-Rex version (with Flo and Eddie on backing vocals) was far superior! 🙂 (but you are right, the bass on the remake was pretty damned nice)
222 thoughts on “Bass”
Ana Chronistic
or “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”*
*viola arrangement
ugh
Violas are objectively the best instrument. I say this with absolutely no bias. Ignore the violas hidden behind me.
#justaltoclefthings
gen
What do you call 100 violas at the bottom of the ocean?
gen
A good start.
butting
What’s the definition of a minor second?
butting
Two violists playing in unison.
Roborat
A waste of perfectly good firewood.
znk
Violas are just like violins, except they don’t *necessarily* sound as annoying as screaming baby. There, I said it.
Zoey
*Internal screams*
King Daniel
Sal’s eyes in panel four
Arawn
I rather like her smiling in panels 6 and 7.
All-Purpose Guru
David, Sal’s expressions here are amazing.
znk
Yeah <3
David DeLaney
Agreed.
–Dave, BLESS YOU WILLIS
Deanatay
THE SCLERAS ARE COMING OUT
TheGrumpybear
Did someone say SHIP IT?! (cuz I definitely ship it)
4,000 spiders
i realize i’m a few days late on this, but walky-hating-comments-guy must be having a field day right now.
Yumi
He actually realized the error of his ways right around the time that Walky said that he was thinking of breaking up with Dorothy.
It was interesting timing.
newllend(henryvolt)
Sounds similar to when I grew out of my blind hatred of Ethan, feel like I can relate tor this guy your taking about.
Ansel
Can I ask what your reasons were? Ethan seems ridiculously inoffensive to me.
newllend(henryvolt)
I was mostly frustrated with him because it felt like he never learned a damn thing, At the beginning it seemed like he did nothing but made choices in a desperate attempt to appease his desire to regress to a simpler time and those choices later on turned into horrible mistakes that blew up in his face.
Granted we all make mistakes it’s a part of being human but when a character makes mistakes I expect them to grow from it and for the longest time it seems like Ethan was more disappointed that his hair brain plans didn’t work out rather than see why it wouldn’t have worked in the first place and that got me frustrated.
At the beginning of this comic I have the same type of animosity towards Joyce but that faded away when I saw her progress and learn from her choices and she then great on me and even become one of my favorites. Ethan on the other hand to me for the longest time felt like he stayed the same up until recently but I just grew used to not liking him. In the end eventually I would have had to learn to let it go.
Point is I can learn to be ok with any character in a story on a certain level as long as I know they’re trying the hardest to improve.
newllend(henryvolt)
That And I hated who he was paired up with romantically. His relationship with Joyce was nothing but a lie that again with him stringing along a girl he had no romantic interest in just so we can get his old life back.
And then there was that thing with Danny despite him being with Amber but I feel like I lost my right to criticize that one anymore because I’m backing Joyce and Jacob to be a thing even it’s a slightly similar situation.
No offense to anyone who likes Ethan but for the longest time I thought he was a tramp.
Sunny
It’s “harebrained”. The word is derived from the animal and not from the stuff you (presumably) have growing out of your head.
HeySo
It’s important to keep in mind just how slowly time passes in DoA. Expecting Ethan to change significantly over a few weeks of DoA time isn’t really reasonable to how slowly real world people evolve. And, unlike Joyce, he hasn’t had repeated tragedy after tragedy to deal with to shock his system.
Doctor_Who
Danny IS dangerous. He goes to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.
(Any opportunity to quote Douglas Adams is a good one.)
The Other Mike
Now there’s a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is.
Geneseepaws
A: Well, that’s life.
B: Life? Don’t talk to me about life.
Deanatay
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper. You call that job satisfaction? I don’t.
Daibhid C
What is this, judgement day?
Ed Rhodes
Oh, do we get to see that as well?
Yumi
Part of me wishes that I had learned to play an instrument early on, but mostly I’m glad I never had to take piano lessons.
Joy
ironically, i’m a self-taught pianist
Suzi
Even better, I was taught piano as a child, hated it and quit after awhile, almost 15 years later I have bought myself a piano after years of TRYING to play ukulele and suddenly realizing that I’m waaaayyy better at piano than I am at ukulele/guitar.
My mom is so proud of forcing me into those.
Joy
she has not earned her pride and by not the narrowest means deserves it. i learned the piano simply due to the fact that i grew up with one in my childhood house and my natural inclination. i began at age 11. if i had been pressured into it as you have, i would’ve been like you.
if she hadn’t done that, you could’ve been like me.
Djaevlenselv
We had an electric organ when I was 7. I never took the time to try learning it, and a year or so later we gave it away. Today I wish my parents had forced me to take lessons.
Bast
You aren’t a pianist until you can play Boogie Woogie Stomp…. Now do it! :3
Needfuldoer
I had a terrible piano teacher in middle school. She used the ‘brute force rote memorization’ technique to teach the usual songbook of traditional nursery rhymes. No theory, no fun, just months of “play ‘hot cross buns’ and do your scales”. The experience soured me on learning an instrument for years.
Khno
Learned violin then self-taugh other instruments. I am grateful (now, of course) for those years (not months) where I had to exercise scales and play no fun tunes. After a few years, songs began to become a bit more fun (like Liszt or Berio), and I got to play in the music school orchester, first no fun lines, then solos (even if I never did like solos per se, just that they were more developed). Would I have never had brute techniques taught before, I’d not have been able to teach other instruments myself later on, because, you know, discipline over creativity is great to make you progress on mastering things. Of course without creativity, it’s hard to put any heart into exercising. So, when nobody was looking, I sung and composed for my very young self. The experience only began to sour me when I became a teenager and questioned my liberty, as I was taught by close family.
Other thing: sal should thank piano for being able to fine tune the uke. human ear is not made to her very well fine tune differences in the low frequences, so bass probably wasn’t what taught her to listen. Heck, I more than once voluntarily played songs half a tone under/over with my bass and nobody beside me remarked it (apart from one drummer once).
Khno
*piano lessons
**hear (not her)
Badtux
I had piano lessons as a kid but ended up dropping them because our piano sucked. My parents couldn’t understand why the piano drove me crazy. “These notes are *wrong*!” I said, pounding on certain keys that were out of tune. My parents were utterly baffled, it sounded fine to them, neither of them could carry a tune in a bucket or tell the difference between a C-note and a hundred dollar bill. Eventually I ended up teaching myself guitar, harmonica, Irish whistle, electric bass, and, finally, piano again — this time on an electric piano that can’t go out of tune, thankfully!
ValdVin
Literally tone-deaf parents?
I’ve never figured out if that is a genetic thing, but glad you stuck to your guns as a kid.
Badtux
Yes, literally tone-deaf parents. The hilarious thing is that my mother was brought up in a church that required the congregation to sing, and she grew up singing every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening… badly, out of tune. Family Christmas caroling time was utterly painful! Anyhow, some years later I checked out a book from the public library about how to tune a piano and tuned the bloody thing myself since my parents insisted it sounded fine and thus didn’t need tuning… but that was years after the attempt at piano lessons died on the beach of a ridiculously out-of-tune piano.
Khno
Yeah, most people don’t get that if you buy a piano, you have to have it tuned by a professional. We had two at home, and the semi-forte, in a rather cold place, was tuned once very five years so we never used it much.
Khno
Reading this again, I sound like a snob (what isn’t an astonishment) privileged (that, as white, I am again) bourgeois – this part bathers me. I must then add that my family lived of these instruments (and other) and that it wasn’t décor or nouveau-riche fantasy.
Badtux
Plus pianos weren’t all that expensive back then. I think we paid $100 for ours. That was back in the era when it was expected that middle class kids would get piano lessons, and the pianos were dumped at a ridiculously low price after the lessons were finished, passed on from family to family. Today, the kids get XBoxes, and real pianos are stupid expensive even used.
legobil
Well if you want you could basically get a paino for free now, at least where I live. They are just too cumbersome to move etc, many relatives of older people who move away from a family home or pass away will basically let you have it if you only come get it yourself.
Danni
SAL OPENING UP!
Fridge_Logik
Literally opening her ‘windows to the soul.”
PoliVamp
Pop Goes the Weasel on the recorder *shudder*
Roborat
Thunderstruck on the guitar. My family is starting to hate that song. I am not there yet, although there are times I can’t bring myself to play it. If they complain, however, I start playing Smoke on the Water at loud volume and distortion cranked, usually shuts them up.
Jamie
Welp. Now I’m shipping them.
Mr D
ALL ABOARD THE ROOMIES OG SHIP :toot toot:
BBCC
Same.
Keulen
Now I’m shipping them too. Damn it I can’t stop shipping random pairings!
newllend(henryvolt)
This is just my opinion that no one asked for but even though a Danny X Sal romance can work beautifully I can’t see it this time around. Sure at the beginning I suggested this but they seem more platonic then anything else.
I mean if you want to play Devil’s Advocate I could bring up how they share something in common about how they both have parents who give them expectations they want them to live up to and then are put down for it when they can’t. But that’s more of a thing they can relate to each other with more than bond romantically.
They seem to have more of a two peas in a pod buddy buddy thing going on.
Jack Spade
Yeah I’ve got to agree. I think Sal is opening up to Danny as a replacement Marcie. As she’d have no interest in dating Marcie those feelings kinda attach to Danny. She’s always had that one person to air her troubles to, now that they’ve become unavailable she’s found a (possibly temporary) replacement in Danny, someone she sees as completely harmless in every way.
DailyBrad
It’s cute seeing characters bonding over stuff who, at first blush, wouldn’t appear to have a lot in common.
missilentmurmur
One of the first lessons in Psychology at university blew my mind. People are like points, any two of them defines a straight line, i.e. any random pair of people will have something in common, you just have to look. It changed the way I relate to people.
DailyBrad
Food is often a good choice, though that presents some problems of its own through special diets. Still, most people have an indulgence they can get excited talking about.
Passchendaele
haha, I found a compromise, I self-taught piano for…three or four years now? It’s been that long? o-o
Emperor Norton II
I self-taught playing Bach’s Joy to Man’s Desire to play at my wedding. It included playing two-handed for the first time.
Of course, I did find the absolutely simplest arrangement to do so.
Passchendaele
Cool! I’d like to do something like that at my own wedding (if I ever have one). To be honest, I don’t know many piano songs, I spent most of my time fricking around and experimenting until I became an actually okay pianist? Nowhere near professional level, though. xD
Liquid Len
I tried to teach myself piano in college. It didn’t stick. Guitar on the other hand, did for some reason. So much so I’m now (many years later) playing rhythm guitar in a band.
Stephen Bierce
*can’t help but think of that great back-and-forth between the guitarist and bassist of The Power Station on “Get It On (Bang A Gong)”*
Van Jealous
The original Marc Bolan/T-Rex version (with Flo and Eddie on backing vocals) was far superior! 🙂 (but you are right, the bass on the remake was pretty damned nice)
Mr D
NERDS OF DUMBING OF AGE I CALL UPON YOU:
ZA WARUDO VS KING CRIMSON
GO
Needfuldoer
King Crimson, because between the two I’ve only heard their material.
ValdVin
King Crimson, for the fact that Adrian Belew’s “Oh Daddy” should have been a #1 single.
vlademir1
That is literally the most absolutely bizarre question I’ve seen today.
Liquid Len
Who?
Geneseepaws