Grant Toupe

The SC in Southampton has only been graced by me on a couple of occasions in the last couple of years. I don't like the place, the service or the stock in general. It's great if you're a beginner i think - they have low, low prices and fairly reasonable stuff for sale. I just get the feeling i'm being sold to too much and that puts me off. I've always prefer the small independent shops that give you a coffee and just chit chat with ya. MM music in Southampton is perfect for that...nice guys, always have a joke and a laugh and let you sit there playing everything in the shop until you get bored or buy it. I'm not really a grear head either, so maybe they just tolerate me going in to just hang out and buy some strings eventually.

All i know about pulling at gigs is that as a musician it's not always with the sort of girl you'd always want to sleep with. Then i took up stand up comedy - and you get a much classier form of attention that would 'never touch a smelly musician in a million years, but comedians are different' - the quote is genuine. On the flip side, I've been in bands with female singers/keyboard players and they're always hit on. But i think girls aren't so stupid as to think a one night stand in a strange town, with a strange person who's interested in your persona on stage is a doubleplusgood idea.

[quote name='Alun' post='41254' date='Aug 4 2007, 01:23 PM']I'll have to try that - sounds wonderfully bizarre. At the moment, my tunings are quite reserved. Apart from standard, I mainly dabble with the B string on my six string - CEADGC and AEADGC but have written solo pieces in CEACGC and AEACGA. Have tried GCGDAD but didn't really come up with anything that exciting. Cheers, Alun[/quote] Wow - not sure my head would get around those tunings fast enough for onstage - tend to improvise quite a lot and combined with singing i try to make life easy on myself with comfy tunings. The BEGC thing works because i'm used to a BEADGC six string. Will have to try some of those out though - just for a giggle at least. Can't be doing with retuning on stage...that's one of my pet peeves in a band situation.

For the last year or so I've been giving my six string (Pedulla MVP6) a break and tuning my four string (Pedulla Series II) BEGC - two low, two high. It was just an experiment at first but found it really suited my style of writing songs as well. It's a six string with the two middle strings missing basically - makes for some wonderfully easy chords as well as giving you a different range to write with Anyone else tried it or and other strange tunings? Samples of my stuff on [url="http://www.myspace.com/toupe"]http://www.myspace.com/toupe[/url] if you're interested in hearing it.

HA! Not fallen off the end of the Earth - just found it hard to keep up. Been so busy lately...written a sitcom, a play, two books and published a novella. Plus the band, new album, touring and recording. THEN i decided i wasn't busy enough and took up stand up comedy! In amongst this, trying to maintain any sort of social life has been difficult but rewarding... I'll be doing my best to stick around on BassChat as much as possible - Got a new MacBook now - so stealing Wi-Fi on the road is much easier...i mean...err... Samples: You can hear three tracks from the album on our myspace page [url="http://www.myspace.com/toupe"]http://www.myspace.com/toupe[/url] - tracks are: Big Ones (a tale about an incident on tour in the US last year in the Deep South), The International Anthem (a tune for the whole world to sing along to) and Uraniborg (a big rocker about a 16th century Observatory in Denmark - founded by Tycho Brahe, who had a metal nose, a pet moose who allegedly died whilst being drunk at one of the celebrity parties that were thrown there - he also had a mind reading Dwarf jester called Jepp. - naturally, typical rock song territory)

Been talking to the crippled Ped online lately and thanks to his constant support of Toupe over the years I've sent him an online version of our new album to review in exchange for a little mention of BassChat in the artwork (lots of bass players around the world are digging on Toupé at the moment, so it seemed right to extend the networking ability of places like this and ebassist.com with a mention - without whom, we'd never have done as many things as we could have.) Anyway, on to the heads up, the new album Chat! is coming out in August. We've very proud of it and can't wait to get to touring it for the rest of the year and beyond. As a band with two bass players and drums we tend to favour the bass players and drummers in the world for getting a little more out of the experience of our music. If you want to hear a few tracks from it then please head over to www.myspace.com/toupe where you'll find a full on account of a run in i had with large chested girl when were in America on tour, an International Anthem the whole world can sing along to and a song about a Danish observatory from the 16th century...typical Toupé stuff. There is a pre-order thing going on that will entitle you to a running discount on future releases (alphabetical albums, we're only up to C...so that could be a giant saving in the end!) and also allows you to get a free CD of a sort of 'Director's Commentary' for the album that Karl (the other bass player) and I recorded this week. I used a bass tuned BEGC for the entire album, which made for some interesting basslines - Karl has more effects than ever going on. Jay has recently found a new level of drumming. So we hope you enjoy what you hear and hope to see some of you soon for a gig. Thanks for reading - I need to pop up here a little more...but dammit, I spend more time on the road with out the technology at the moment. Soon, I'll come back and get in on the low end worship! Take care - glad this place finally got settled down into a new home. Was chasing around trying to BW after a while. Grant

[quote name='five-string.co.uk' post='32405' date='Jul 16 2007, 10:34 AM']Thank you all for the welcome. In response to the questions... I play in various bands and recording projects. My main gigging band is with BLUESTATE (www.bluestate.me.uk), which is a funk / soul / blues band. Although its mainly covers, it does get me earning & gigging at least twice ~ three times a week on average. I do other work with some smaller side projects, and also have worked with American singer / songwriter Tamrah Aeryn, which is origional material simular to Tori Amos style vocals. Have a good day all, Greg[/quote] Nice one. My band is called Toupé - play around the place, original two bass player stuff. Lots of influences etc. www.myspace.com/toupe if you wanted to check it out. I actually live right behind the The Blue Keys hotel (in the bins) I'll drop by on a gig night.

Earthquake - Graham Central Station (goes without sayingm but it just came on iTunes:)) Call Me All - Paul Simon (best birthday present a man could have) Anything by Toupé

Yeah! I'm from Southampton too! Welcome to the board Five String! You playing in a band locally?