Bilbo

I think it is was to forget what a shock to the system Jaco was when he hit in '76. I lived, ate and breathed him for a time but moved on as my tastes developed. I still go back every now and then and get a fix. It's his sound, groove and chops. No-one has made me sit up and listen as much before or since. PS first was Heavy Weather

One small thing that I found useful (and still do) is reading without a bass. I sit on buses, in my office etc with a chart in front of me, reading the rhythms. The discipline I find hardest to develop is not knowing which dot means which note but reading lines in real time, concentrating on the lines and reading the whole part. The skill can, at least in part, be pracised away from the bass.

It sneaks up on you, doesn't it? Good to see you going in the right direction again.

ANYTHING is good. Just do it and keep doing it. Don't stick to one piece until you get it right, jump around different pieces so you avoid learning them and not READING them. Anything. Two bars, two pages, two books - keep going!!

The wobbles should have forced some further takes but time ran away with me and I couldn't get to it.

Steve Rodby and Paul Wertico have made some incredible music together.

'Time To Turn' by Eloy.

When I was a teenager, I bought a roll of backing paper (wallpaper) and redrew the whole Yes catalogue of Dean covers in an endless mural across the top of my bedroon wall. Remember when we had time to do those kinds of things

Double bass, not EUB. If youir MD wants a double bass, he will want a double bass and EUB will not cut it (most sound like fretless electrics). Best crack on I say. Try Thomann or Gedo Musik. You will find something in your price range that will get you going. They ain't handmade Italian basses but they will get you off first base (see what I did there?). There are those who offer all sorts of complex advice about buying second hand but, to be blunt, the pros and cons of bass hunting at this level are mostly hair splitting. Get an affordable Thomann/Gedo bass, get it set up by a local luthier and you will be fine.

I am doing a Rock Blues gig with a Wal fretless next Tuesday that is going out live on local radio. The drummer is Brendan O'Neill, ex-Rory Gallagher, and it's going to be 'kin loud Anyone who thinks Wal's are one trick ponies is a eejit. Mine has done Jazz, Latin, Rock, Funk, Blues, Pop, Big Band, pit orchestra work live, studio etc etc. I have never had a negtative comment and have had plenty of positive ones. Wals deliver. End of.

The list of Muppet/Seasame Street appearances is legendary; James Taylor, Wynton Marsalis, Buddy Rich etc etc. I suspect it is as much to do with the fact that these artists have children that completely freak if they refused to do it!!

A random noise without intent can 'sound' musical, just as a picture made by a monkey can 'look like' art. But it isn't. Without intention, it is just noise.

I took it down a milimetre and it made a significant difference but I think I am going to try taking it down another one or two. Still no double bass gigs in the diary (at all, ever) so what's the worst that can happen?

JCS kicked my arse. Not done WSS or SB.

I have absolutely no idea what you are referring to!!

A sound is musical if it is intended to be. Without intention, it is just a nice noise.

I was thinking about this last night. I was rehearsing with a blues trio and we do a couple of tunes with the most basic root note pulse. I remember hating these kinds of lines when I was first playing rock music as a teen. Boring and predictable, uninspiring etc etc. Now, whenever I play in a rock/blues setting and have to play a straight, root-note shuffle, it's the [i]best [/i]feeling. The truth was, when I was seventeen, I THOUGHT I could play this groove but I couldn't. Last night, it was suggested that I was the man who put the Rob in throb I also find that ,. whereas I used to break up walking lines with all sorts of rhythmic jiggery and pokery, I am now content to stay on the quarter notes like Paul Chambers did. It is where the groove is. My position now is that, if you don't enjoy the basic grooves like a shuffle or a 4:4 walking line, it's because you aren't nailing it

Musicians are full of s***. Seriously, though, I think it is important to remember that the world of music is full of people with some very different ideas and ideals when it comes to the instruments they choose and this is reflected in the secondhand market. Most kids start off buying something that they can afford whilst gassing towards the bass that their idol plays. It is likely that most 'idols' play a Fender Jazz with some minute variation that collective hysteria accepts constitutes a signature model. That is the market that Fender probably leads. same with Strats and Teles and the same with Gibson Les Pauls. Every Jazzer has a Gibson ES175, every fusion/studio player has an ES335 and so on. Not a problem, they are great instruments. There is an assumption that the custom market is informed in some way by the desires of a massively informed and tasteful elite who are able to discern the inherent sound properties of a certain piece of wood cut in a certain way of the south facing slopes of a certain mountain in Sicilly etc etc. Like art critics and wine snobs, there is plenty of evidence that these elitists are as likely to be charlatans as they are to be conniseurs. Being allowed to choose the wood, shape, finish, pick up configuration, fret size etc etc is a lovely indulgence but I for one would have no idea what would make a bass better or worse and what would render it simpoly different. One look at the custom archive of the Alembic website will show you that, like tattoos, allowing people to choose their own designs is as likely to result in an hysterical joke as it is a piece of art. Add in the fact that the number of people who know about the maker is much smaller, the desire to seek out that custom job and to 'wait until one appears on the market' is simply not there and you begin to get a sense that the purchase of a secondhand boutique bass is much riskier than a staple model. Like buying a chopper instead of a Harley. you are not sure what you are getting and you are not sure if you can sell it on if you change your mind. Also, the benefit of a boutique bass is 'this was designed for me', arguably THE main selling point of a custome bass, is not an aspect of the instrument that transfers on when you sell it. In short, by selling it on, you have immediately compromised it's greatest asset. Smaller market, lower inherent value to the purchaser and higher risks in terms of resale = cheaper prices..

[quote name='JamesBass' timestamp='1444923193' post='2887400'] On the topic of actors, you wouldn't expect an actor to be able to turn up to the first day of a huge budget shoot having only watched the directors previous films or having seen the 1962 version and expect them to know all the lines perfectly AND sound EXACTLY like Cary Grant. [/quote] Absolutely brilliant analogy!!

[quote name='ambient' timestamp='1444907163' post='2887154'] One even asked me if I'd let them keep the charts that I'd painstakingly written out for the gig, so they'd have it for use in the future. [/quote] Charge them an hourly rate for the production of the paperwork! Playing a funk line with your thumb or playing a tumbao with a muted tone is not what I would describe as sounding like the original, it would be genre specific alterations. To my mind, altering technique to suit a tune by playing nearer the neck pick up on a swing tune, picking up a fretless for a ballad etc are routine and not gig specific. Rolling off the top end for a reggae feel etc. This doesn't need rehearsing, hours of preparation or even mentioning, it just needs a sense of context.

Because I am not Carol Kaye, Bob Babbitt, Pino Palladino, James Jamerson, Freddie Washington, Nathan East, Abraham Laboriel, Duck Dunn..... You get my point.

[quote name='Muzz' timestamp='1444899905' post='2887053'] As a side note, I notice no-one's given any attention to listening to the tone used in certain songs...if you want to produce a convincing performance of a song, then at least an attempt to recreate the tone of the original (if it's at all iconic or distinct) is pretty important, which does require a listen. Punters might not care about our core bass tone, but they'll appreciate when a song played by the band sounds like the one they're familiar with. It's all about degrees, but if I'm following Never Too Much with Folsom Prison Blues, I at least have a twitch of the tone knobs... [/quote] You are 'avin' a giraffe!! I would no more seek to replicate the 'tone' of the original tunes than I would dress up as the bass player who played on the original recording of each track!!

If you trawl through the Alembic Custom archives, you will see an astonishing number of fugly basses. I haven't looked for ages but recall only one or two that I would consider buying if money was no object. I have to say that I rarely like the sound of them either (Jimmy Johnson is the exception that proves the rule). Have played three and didn't like any of them. [url="http://www.alembic.com/info/fcvault.html"]http://www.alembic.c...fo/fcvault.html[/url]

I love his playing on the McLaughlin album but have never heard anything else from him. The thing about the JM Trio is that they rehearsed for nine hours a day for two weeks before they toured. I think most of us would do our best playing under such circumstances!

I would have no problem learning one or two tunes but 40? It would take me weeks. As if I haven't got other things to do. My point is MY professionalism is drawn into question because I haven't got about 20 hours available to learn an evening's material whereas the MD's professionalism is NOT drawn into question despite the fact that s/he cannot be arsed or lacks the skills to put together a pad. For the record, when I did Karl Jenkin's The Peacemakers last year and Jesus Christ Superstar the year before, I spent hours with the pads making sure I was ready. The charts were perfect and I had something to work with. If I had just been given cds and told the 'learn it', I would have told them to f*** off. (Interestingly, on the Jenkins gig, I wonder how many of the 20+ orchestral musicians and 60+ choir members were given a cd and told to work out their own parts? (PS it was one gig on one night)