fretmeister

Yup - it's all pattern recognition at that point. To quote Billy Sheehan "If you're thinking, you're stinking!" That is the best modern translation of the old "Amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals practice until they can't get it wrong" saying.

You're half wrong / half right If you read a novel you've never seen before you can read it. If it's a kids book you could go stand at speakers corner and read it out first time to performance level. If it was a technical manual for something you have no experience of, containing words that you have never seen before, then there's a good chance you'd stumble over the pronunciation of those unfamiliar words. You might recognise parts of the work, like a prefix that is used for many things but perhaps not the entire thing. But for that kids book you are still remembering that when you put the letters "RALLIPRETAC" in the right order it says Caterpillar. Memory is necessary for reading. When you sight read something you have already played you are doing multiple tasks: 1: Reinforcing things you already know. Reading, even English, is a perishable skill given enough time. Reading things you know stops the memory files from degrading. 2: Building confidence in reading things you haven't seen before but have common elements. A common beginning or ending of a phrase or word (music or English) narrows the unknown element down. 3: Increasing your pattern vocabulary. Within a set key signature there are a limited amount of correct notes and so within a bar there is a limited way of setting them out. So just as every novel will use the word "and" there will be very common note progressions in a wide variety of music. "And" is a pattern of 3 phonetic sounds that your brain knows how to say as one word. A run of Root, 5th, Octave is a pattern that once absorbed as a pattern and the brain just plays it effectively as one instead of loading up the brain file for Root then 5th, then Octave. Reading or memorising is a bit piece dependant. Reading a Uriah Heap (or U2!) bass line is probably all memory after a few goes, so at that point the player is probably using it as a crutch or building confidence. Reading a Kyle Eastwood bass line is going to be more reading than memory, at least for a longer period. A Paganini violin piece is going to take even longer to remember. It's just more complex. We can all memorise a 4 line limerick. Not many of us can memorise The Odyssey, but we might remember little bits of it, here and there. The entire point of sight reading practice is not just the "reading" bit - it's to develop an internal vocabulary of phrases that can be accessed accurately and quickly and with enough confidence for performance. When you read a novel for the first time you are still using your memory - you know every word already but not the order that they will appear in, and this is the thing - your brain can predict future patterns. It knows that "and" is not going to be the end of a sentence. It knows that if there is a sentence of "It was the opinion..." then there is a really high chance that the next word is going to be "of" and the brain preloads that word before you get there. The same happens in music with practice. Music is a language just with different symbols for the alphabet and different rules of grammar and syntax. People progress with learning music in this way make far quicker progress - they know how to do it as they did it already for their primary spoken language. Bedtime reading with kids for 10 mins a day rather than just doing 2 hours in a Saturday is far better and it is for music too. As for different instruments, a lot of that is the instrument itself or the limited range of an instrument. Most bass transcriptions are just in bass clef even when playing high up the neck, the sheet will just have a load of ledger lines on it instead of showing the treble clef as well. Just because I know where the B is on a bass doesn't mean I know where it is on a tuba - reading on a particular instrument is not just reading the notes, it is the link between the page and the movement of the fingers or mouth or both. Without that link the reading skill is weak: it needs to become as instinctive as catching a ball. I can play a little piano and I can read the bass clef for piano, but I stumble on the treble because I don't do it enough. So my left hand is pretty accurate but my right is a disaster. A classical composer can read and write to an astonishingly high level: on the paper. That does not mean they can walk over to the violas and play their part on that particular instrument, even though the composer could play it perfectly on the piano or something else. Pushing the novel analogy to frankly idiotic levels: I can write an exciting ninja story. Doesn't mean I can pick up a sword and fight. But there will be a martial artist who can't write a good story but who could act out what I wrote, perfectly. I think a lot of people who do play many instruments who say they can only read for 1 of them are probably applying a personal standard to it. I'm sure a lot of them could sit down with the part and work it out by reading it, but not to a standard equal to their main instrument. It does remind me of a thing Marcus Miller once said - that in his experience the very best bassists he every worked with were all great piano players. The piano really is the biggest teacher of theory and harmony there is because of the vast range of the instrument and that 10 notes can be played at once. A final thought: There are pieces that exist that even Yo-Yo Ma couldn't perform perfectly the very first time he saw the sheet. Just like the Technical Manual example above there will be many phrases (words) that he can do easily, maybe even 95% of the tune and then there will be something that is brand new to him, or has a pattern/progression that he's never seen and is outside his personal prediction vocabulary for that key signature so he'd really like to practice before getting on stage.

It appears to be for sale https://www.business-sale.com/companies-for-sale/musical-instrument-retailer-supplier-fast-sale-asset-sales-fast-sales-south-east-670506

I forgot about that. I have it too. Great book.

This is why there are different expectations of playing ability linked to the grade the player has achieved. For example, a grade 6 player ought to be able to play grade 6 pieces with practice and that includes memorising / being familiar with them. It’s the difficulty of the piece that makes it grade 6. A grade 6 player would not be expected to sight read a grade 6 piece to performance standard the very first time they see it but they would be expected to be able to do that with a grade 3 or four piece. There is always memory involved. Just like when you are reading a book you are not reading individual letters or even phonetics anymore because you have a memory of how the word looks as a single piece of information. That happens in Music as well. As for the question, how do you know if you are playing it correctly? If there is no access to a teacher, there are some apps available that will scan standard notation and play it back to you. They are not always the most accurate things in the world but certainly for simple pieces they do very well.

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/25036732.brighton-shop-gak-music-emporium-north-laine-closes/

GAK Online is set up as a different company to the shop, so if the shop has gone down I expect the online bit to stay. I hope it hasn't, I always got good service from them.

Stuart Clayton has an excellent series of bass reading books - they really helped me when I started doing this. Ed Friedland has a great one too https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bass-Guitarists-Guide-Reading-Music/dp/1912126435?crid=3CZFEX7IRCGYR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xpFsn7OUe28I47Kz9OxezivGCPTIWXdAeO1NsTGrM34tYiyjPop_7F8Mxwxy9Vj9kUc0ok1IchLdVU908iuOPtEPKeFXZQjM_rGnFi0m3CfndhEwUQL4E8vgN72hONLpyNwc6bqi1fNDbhgykhlyNZyGC8ok1THp4Ewslhsm6YQ8j2UKKjABXQTo69mDFIHqWn2Mu343G876gpDjSRNzL3qj_vkEeB7ZS9kmA4wk4A-UFgzKP291Y9tcW2aMPGLZ0dHmRHSpJYlLSEdXD6xx__nPJlFlolUWg5JgrDTI4gOFmI3dx4nTAZbD6UmsKI_DAWAzMTcZdan65dcPgLxLZHmvnhrjQcpitbDLKRb2IgSAqnsLcj_o0p_hazlwxEjFpXhjJvbGm6dvSO_CJ0aVtChjObnWd7Lfb_o0ynrWtgD5vqA8kIRPa120nIO51gcj.fkPNu6SGXyE68VslNB9mWsxvLG4bWAjZrI1h4V4qfos&dib_tag=se&keywords=stuart+clayton+bass&qid=1742993633&sprefix=stuart+clay%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-9 Then as BRX said - you must make sure you are reading and not remembering. For that I got a load of double bass and bass clef trombone example exam pieces. They are available for a few quid on Amazon - Grades 1-5 come in one book and then 6-8 in another. They are sightreading tests / examples of about half a page each in various key and time signatures. Very easy at Grade 1 and get harder from there. There's loads of them in the book so you can be sure you are reading them and not remembering them. I use these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1860960340?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1848493606?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_3 I just ignore any mention of bows. The notes are the same after all. A lot of trombone is written in bass clef too. When you start you kind of play phonetically like learning to speak words. Sounding out longer words in sections. Just like a kid learning to speak. Then as you get better you don't have to do that anymore - you have built a memory of a pattern that makes an entire word. The same happens in music. So if you see a 4 note run in a particular key eventually you'll see it as a single task rather than 4 individual ones. Practice frequency is vital. So many people do 2 hours on the weekend but nothing else. That doesn't work well. Doing just 10 mins a day is far more productive as it is constant reinforcement - just like learning English. The brain is far better equipped to learn that way as it keeps drip feeding the information and habits into the memory. 10 mins dedicated reading practice every day is perfect to begin with. Very best of luck - learning to read really opened up all of music for me and eventually got me in a 25 piece big band where reading was always needed. It's a brilliant skill, and it means you can pitch up and play with far more people, there's far more music published in standard notation that tab and you can dip into the bass clef of piano pieces too - I have to do that a lot.

Euromillions jackpot is estimated at £180 Million tonight. First thing I'd do is retire immediately! Then I'd find a nice house on the east coast somewhere. I love the North Sea when it's angry. Not too big a house. 4 beds is plenty, especially as I will be buying the kids a house each on the West Coast... and the Mother In Law a nice place in Spain. Or maybe Bogota. Then I'd order some more Sandberg Superlights to cover all the pickup options. Then I'd also pay them enough to redesign their 5 strings for a more Ray5 type neck and string spacing. I figure that if I paid for the tooling needed then they could easily make them for others too and maybe attract the ray playing crowd a bit more. Win/Win. I'm not one to swap between basses at a gig - I try to pick a bass that will do the whole show, so I probably wouldn't go that mad on basses. But I do love effects and different amps. Maybe an old B15, or an Acoustic360 - maybe even get a new one built to improve the pretty awful noise floor on the originals. And I'd be needing a lot of envelope filters and compressors. I love those things. And weird noise making pedals too. I've never had one, but some of those Chase Bliss pedals look great fun. I would get a Luis & Clarke Carbon Fibre double bass. Amazing things. Sounds just like wood ones but far less bothered by temperature changes. I've never had a good acoustic guitar. I played a lovely Taylor in a shop and while it was too rich for my blood then I'd get one of them. Loved the neck shape and the bright tone. And a good telecaster. Can't beat a good telecaster.

I was not aware of Audiobus - I'll have a look. I kind of doubt it as there are no settings in the iOS vid app to change the input source. I have looked for other video apps and I've tried a lot of the free ones but so far I haven't found any with any audio routing controls at all. I have a very janky solution at the moment as shown here: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/509698-ios-video-app-audio-stupidity-work-round/ I'm trying to cut down the amount of kit - so if I added an Element I would still need to go into a separate interface from the headphone out on the Element to make it work. As far as I can tell the cheapest option to get rid of the interface would be a Line 6 Stomp. That would allow backing tracks coming through unprocessed, and bass sounds with / without IRs and feed them as equal mix to both sides so iOS doesn't split them hard left and right. Then I can use the Stomp for the bass sounds too and further cut down on stuff. I'm not against that idea as I already use a Helix Rack as the heart of my home recording set up, but it's also a lot more money to spend.

I've had an email chat with Chris Kollias at Darkglass. He even sent me a load of photos about using the Element as an iOS interface into garage band - that's all cool. I then asked him about audio routing with the iOS Camera/Video app that has no controls for balance / forcing mono etc meaning that iOS takes 2 inputs but hard pans them left and right. So backing track in 1 ear and bass in the other sort of thing. He actually went off to find an iPad to test it for me. Alas, the same problems happen when using the Element as an interface - to get a proper mix the headphone out has to be used into a separate interface, which is what I'm doing with other kit already. It's not a fault of the interface or the Element, it's just the way the iOS Camera/Video app deals with audio. So, although it won't do exactly what I want I have to say I'm very impressed with Chris for going above and beyond for me. Many makers would have just emailed a "We have not tested that" response. I'm still tempted by the Element for the IR loading and so on. I'll have to wait and see. Three Cheers for Chris though!

I have 3 shorties, 2 err, longies, and 3 medies (midies?) I find it dead easy to swap between the long and the short ones, but then going to the medium scale throws me off and I have to look at the fretboard. I have no idea why this is. Maybe it confuses my brain that there is a halfway point. It's bothering me to the point that I'm thinking of selling off the medium scale basses. Is it just me?

It's not just Class D. Most bass amps do. Stops inaudible frequencies reaching the speakers, wasting energy and causing excessive wear on the speakers. It's normal and a sensible part of bass amp design.

I'll sort that out when I get home from work.

Another one to stick on the try list - the EBS ones. I saw that Ian King video (London show pit player) uses one and it sounded excellent. Helped of course by him being a much better player than me! From about 7 mins in. He uses the acoustic one, but there are other models too.

How very odd! The crack is probably the core snapping. I wonder if Dunlop have a bad batch? I have a set of nearly new ones (maybe a week of use) that I took off a precision when I realised I really wanted flats on it. They are 45-105. £12 posted if you want them?

The La Bellas were the Low Tension Flats at 43-100 and I picked the Cobalts at 50-110 so not comparable at all. I like the LTF on 34 scale basses but they are a bit too flexible on a shortie. I've had other 45-105 flats on it before including EB Group flats but I wanted a bit more tension. I like a really really low action so to avoid excessive clank I tend to use a higher tension string. I couldn't get the action with the LTFs quite as low as I wanted. Based on the 50-110 shortscale ones if I buy a set for a 34 scale I'd have 45-105. Hope that helps a bit!

I’ve just installed a set of the shortscale ones on my Lionel and I’m really liking them. A lot less grabby than the La Bellas I had on, and a lot brighter. Cobalt is more magnetic than iron based stuff so the output seems quite a bit more. Slaptastic with the tone up, and deep & plummy with the tone down. I have a 0.1uF capacitor on mine to get super deep when needed.

I’ve never had that. Are you putting a hard 90 degree kink in the string for the bit that goes into the tuner central hole? They Dunlops are hex core, but the core is really small so they need to be treated like a round core. Scale length shouldn’t matter - I use them on short scales too where loads of the fat bit goes round the post.

I’ll send a message to their support. If it will do it properly then I’ll buy one.