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I have it 1st hand from Jerry Douglas that the best dobro he ever had cost him $80.

I so want one.

"Plastic Jesus" is one of my all time favorites.

Reason isn't intended to do recording.   It's a massively sophisticated MIDI sampler.   You would use it to fill in all those other parts of the band.  I set up drum loops and samples with it, and record it's output directly in Reaper as a track.  Combined with my MR-8, it's pretty much the perfect home studio.

Indeed!  Sunday Morning Coming Down is one of my favorites.  Chris Christofferson wrote it, Johnny Cash made it famous.

"And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert...."

Fantastic stuff...

I'm seeing more of the images being broken here.  I've found that the hosting site I use is arbitrarily re-arranging the URLs, which is a generally bad thing.

The modes are exactly how those chords are derived. 

Lets use your example again, mixolydian over dominant 7s.

Why is it you suppose mixolydian sounds so good over a dom7 chord?  It's because the dominant 7 chord is what you get if you add that seventh from the modal scale, just like I demonstrated above.

G mixolydian (and G7) is derived from C major (or Ionian, in modal vernacular).   G is the V of that scale  and the two modes share the exact same key signature.

C Ionian        = C D E F G A B C
G myxolydian = G A B C D E F G

G7 is   the I  III  V  and VII of the G mixolydian scale, G  B  D   F.    That's why the scale works over that chord.  It makes use of the same notes as found in the modal scale.  They didn't just make it up to play over dom7.  Instead,   dom7 is derived from it.

If you know your modal scales, you'll never have to guess at how to construct a chord, nor will you ever have to guess at what scale to play over what chord progression in any song.  Those seven modal scales make up the very foundation of music.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EB … QKPZ180ZXW

Great investment, and will help train your ear.

It's a semantic issue for the most part.   F# and Gb major both use "odd" notes to account for the half step between the IV and V.   It's really a trick of notation, more than anything.

Ask yourself.  Does A really "exist" in a real sense, or is it just a label we give to a particular frequency?  And if it's just a label, why can't we give it any old label.

E# and Cb "exist" in the same way.   If you're a math geek, it's akin to using i as a number to get past the problem with negative squares.

Once a year I get to sit in a room with thousands of dollars worth of Dobros.  I love each and every one and play as many as I can.

The 1st thing you gotta do is pick up the instrument again.  Show it some love.  Clean it up, re-string it, tune it, and have it set up, if you're into that kind of thing.

Play it.  Put it next to your couch, and touch it a lot.

Until you do that, it's just furniture.

OK, here's the detailed layout of washtub bass engineering.

This is the $1.50 eye bolt used to connect the string to the tub.  As you can see, it is quite complicated.  The other side has an eyelet just like this one.  The line is nylon, I forget which size, but it's a 7' segment, and cost me $.25 a foot.

This is the actual tub.  There are two kinds of tub you can get.  "Hot dipped" which is shiny and stronger, and the other kind (like this one) that isn't as strong but sounds better.  This one is a 16.5 gallon tub.   Bigger is louder, or so I am told.

This is the Jerome's Not Yet Patented Goodwill Teak Delux Resonator.  Otherwise known as "a wooden plate."  This helps to transfer vibration to the tub, and it also helps to prevent from yanking the eyelet through the tub as you yank on the stick.  Stick not pictured.

This is the Deluxe Model Rubber Foot (a.k.a. "toilet plunger"), which helps keep the lip of the tub up, and allows it to sound out a bit more.  You can see the delicate custom fitting I cut into the top with a band saw and a metal hasp.

And when you put it all together, it looks like this.

I'm going to build a legitimate four string upright washtub bass the next time I get ambitious.

Built it.  Grand total of $47 in parts, and most of that was the tub, which I paid to much for because I bought it at the local small town hardware store.  If I'd have done the whole thing at Home Depot, it probably would have cost me less than $30.

I added a $0.59 teak plate I bought at Goodwill to the underside of the tub.  The string is held on with an eye bolt, and the wooden plate vibrates against the tub.    It's still out in the garage, so I'll go take some pics and see what comes out.